Top 5 Tech Articles You Might’ve Missed - Week of February 17, 2014

This week, ARRIS traveled to Tampa for the NCTC Winter Educational Conference, where we demonstrated our continuous work to evolve the user experience. CableFAX discussed ARRIS CEO Bob Stanzione’s fireside chat, highlighting the company’s investment in WiFi everywhere, and monetization of the technology. Separately, CED Magazine shared our fourth-quarter earnings, highlighting a 43 percent increase in set-top box shipments compared to the previous quarter.

In other news, consumers’ desire to stream content remains at the forefront of news, with Gigaom featuring a report by the Diffusion Group, finding 63 percent of U.S. broadband households own an Internet-connected TV. Additionally, Home Media Magazine reported 16 percent of Netflix subscribers streamed at least the first episode of “House of Cards” Season Two last weekend compared to the two percent that watched last year’s series premiere.

Finally, second-screen continues to garner headlines, with Rapid TV News sharing research from Infonetics revealing value-added services including second-screen apps and enhanced DVR capabilities will be key in attracting and maintaining cable subscribers in the future.

• Cable Operators and Vendors on Monetizing WiFi (Feb. 19) By Joyce Wang, CableFAX: There’s no doubt that WiFi is key to cable operators’ growth. And vendors are eyeing it, too. “WiFi everywhere is a big initiative we are looking at,” Arris CEO Bob Stanzione said at the NCTC Winter Conference Tuesday. “Managed WiFi is becoming more and more important as more devices are introduced to the home,” he said, noting Arris is “investing a lot” into improving WiFi performance.

• Set-top box sales fuels strong Q4 for Arris (Feb. 20) By Mike Robuck, CED Magazine: It’s good to be Arris. The company reported its fourth-quarter earnings last night and the headline for Arris was that its set-top box shipments increased by a whopping 43 percent when compared to the previous quarter.

• 3 out of 5 broadband households now have a connected TV (Feb. 13) By Janko Roettgers, Gigaom: 63 percent of all U.S. broadband households now have a TV connected to the internet, according to a new report from the Diffusion Group (TDG). That number is up notably from last year, when 53 percent of broadband households had at least one of their TVs connected.

• 'House of Cards' Valentine’s Day Streaming Surges (Feb. 17) By Erik Gruenwedel, Home Media Magazine: About 16% of cable households with Netflix subscribers watched at least the first episode of the second season of “House of Cards” on its Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) launch, according to data from Procera Networks. This compares with 2% of cable households that watched the first episode of the first season of “Cards” last year.

• Second screen apps, enhanced DVR key for pay-TV ops’ future success (Feb. 13) By Editor, Rapid TV News: As they battle it out for subscribers in a TV anywhere world, pay-TV operators will be using value-added services like second-screen apps and enhanced DVR capabilities to both attract and maintain customers, says Infonetics Research.