So much for the death of the set-top. Analyst firm In-Stat put out research yesterday projecting that global revenues from HD DVR set-tops will increase by 61% between now and 2014. That’s because there is still a shift underway from analog to digital boxes. Overall set-top shipments will actually decrease in the next four years, but higher-end (i.e. higher-margin) boxes will dominate over their less expensive analog and standard-def counterparts.
The big question for the coming years is what actually constitutes a set-top? Do DTAs count today? Will gateway devices count in the future? The numbers could skew significantly based on what products are included in analysis. Today In-Stat categorizes set-tops as cable, satellite, IPTV, and terrestrial. In a few years, we may see those categories re-defined. Not set-top death, but set-top evolution.
