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Apple TV has best video start time, highest picture quality among set-top boxes

Conviva, which specializes in global streaming media intelligence, has released its quarterly State of Streaming report for quarter three of 2019, revealing time spent streaming continues to climb – up 53% year-over-year – as consumers embrace on demand videos (63% of all streaming viewing is on demand) on their TVs, computers, and mobile devices. 

The connected TV category once again led all other devices in growth, up 58% in viewing hours year over year compared to computers (up 36%) and mobile (up 33%). While Roku maintained the top position by ending quarter three with solid 44% of market share, its Q3 growth rate for viewing time (73%) was slightly lower than Amazon Fire TV (78%). Amazon Fire TV closed Q3 with 20% of market share, followed by Apple TV with 9%.

Roku also improved its quality over the past year and now delivers the lowest rate of video start failures at 0.18%, down 52% from quarter three of 2018, and nearly three times as much improvement as Amazon Fire TV which dropped 17% to 0.37%. Xbox again has the least buffering at a mere 0.15%.

Apple TV is the most improved with buffering down 40%. Once again Apple TV has the fastest video start time at 2.6 seconds and highest picture quality at 6.8 Mbps on average.

Data for Conviva’s State of Streaming report was primarily collected from Conviva’s proprietary sensor technology currently embedded in three billion streaming video applications, measuring in excess of a 100 billion streams per year and a trillion real-time transactions per day across more than 180 countries.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.