The U.S. will have over 103 million pay-TV households by the end of 2014, with two-thirds of pay-TV subscribers expressing interest in features they currently do not have, according to new research announced at CES today by Parks Associates.

Digital penetration will exceed half the TV households in Sub-Saharan Africa very soon, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. The Digital TV Sub-Saharan Africa Forecasts report estimates nearly every home will be converted by 2020.  

Analog terrestrial switchover will account for much of this growth, with more than two-thirds of TV homes receiving DTT signals by 2020 - up from fewer than a fifth at end-2013. Around 28% of TV households will have satellite dishes (pay and FTA combined) in 2020. 

New research from Irdeto that explores consumer television and video viewing preferences revealed that 53% of consumers believe that mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will replace television sets in the next eight years as the most common way to consume entertainment. Of that group, 31% believe that change will actually occur sooner, in the next one to five years.

In light of swift reductions in pricing, IHS has boosted its forecast for UHD liquid-crystal display (LCD) television sets. IHS now predicts 38.5 million UHD LCD TV sets will ship in 2018, up from 1.5 million in 2013, according to the TV Systems Intelligence Service at IHS released at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

Shipments will increase more than 500 percent to reach 10 million in 2014, according to IHS.

New research from Parks Associates finds subscribers of OTT (over-the-top) services spend more per month renting and buying video downloads than the average household, which contributes to the success of Amazon’s business model of integrating transactional services with its Amazon Prime subscription service. Two-thirds of Amazon Prime Instant Video subscribers use Amazon transactional service.

The 4Q-2013 Competitive Assessment for the US$ 10 Billion Network Managed Services calls out its leaders. ABI Research finds the lead positions in the Telecom race goes to the companies keeping an eye on the long-haul and those with flawless execution in a seemingly stagnant market. Overall leaders in order are Ericsson, Nokia Solutions, and Alcatel-Lucent, based on a combination of Implementation (market traction) and Innovation (managed service as competitive advantage) criteria.

Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its Broadcast and Streaming Video Equipment and Pay TV Subscribers report, which tracks pay-TV subscribers and video equipment sold to telco IPTV, cable, and satellite TV providers.

Global IPTV subscriptions are expected to reach 102 million in 2018, with the fastest growth coming from Latin America and Africa and the Middle East, according to the newest report in the Research in Focus: IPTV series.

By 2015 there will be 202 million Internet-capable TV devices in U.S homes, a 44 percent increase from the 140 million at the start of 2013, according to the new Connected Home Forecast report from NPD Connected Intelligence. Among those devices, 65 percent will end up being connected to the internet by consumers in 2015 compared to just 56 percent currently connected.

Predicting a future of increasingly connected living rooms with improving streaming capabilities, the global number of Connected TV Devices is set to grow from an average of just 0.5 per household in 2013 to 1.0 per household by 2017, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.