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TV buyers in France, Germany, Italy and the UK are increasingly looking for big screen connected TVs according to research by comparison site Idealo. Analysing 8 million price and product comparison searches during 2012, Idealo has uncovered the preferences of would-be TV buyers in the four countries. The popularity of TVs with a screen size of 42in (106cm) or larger has increased from 38.8% in 2011 to over 54% at the end of 2012, when more than 80% of available TVs offered internet connectivity.

Samsung is by far the most popular TV brand, chosen by nearly 42% of searchers, well ahead of nearest rivals Philips (17.2%) and LG (12.4%).

Visit www.idealo.com for more information

A new direct-to-home TV service for Turkey has started broadcasting from the ASTRA 1G satellite at 31.5°E. Anadolu Networks is currently broadcasting six TV and eight radio channels free-to-air from the 11.817GHz/V transponder, including the national TRT Turk channel, Black Sea regional channel Kaçkar Karadeniz, and Mersin news channel Kanal 2000, to provide access to the channels in regions of Turkey outside the reach of terrestrial signals.

Georgia’s first domestic direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV service, MagtiSat celebrates its first anniversary this month with an agreement to use a fourth satellite transponder for its broadcasts from ASTRA 31.5°E.

TV manufacturer Samsung has been giving a glimpse of the TVs you could be watching in the near future. While many manufacturers are introducing large screen OLED (organic light emitting diode) sets, which they claim produce better quality images than existing LCD or plasma screens, both Samsung and LG have demonstrated 55in (140cm) OLED sets with a concave curved screen that they say will give viewers an IMAX-like experience in their living rooms. Samsung says its curved TV could be in the shops later this year.

European cultural channel, ARTE will broadcast a day of 3D programmes on Sunday February 19. The ARTE HD channel, which broadcasts free-to-air from ASTRA 19.2°E, will carry five 3D productions from 3pm, including animal documentary, Little Monsters, the glossy documentary France's Most Beautiful Coasts, dance film Flamenco Hoy, and a 2010 concert by Marina and the Diamonds.  Viewers without the 3D receiver and TV required to watch in 3D can watch the programmes in conventional 2D on the other ARTE channels on ASTRA 19.2°E.

Connected TV is set to take off in Spain this year. Following formal adoption in Spain of the HbbTV standard for integrating online content with broadcast TV, connected TV applications and agreements have been announced by several channels including Canal Plus, Antena3, Tele5 and TV3, and La1, La2, Canal 24 Horas and Teledeporte from the state broadcaster, RTVE.

The HbbTV service from RTVE includes access to 50,000 programmes and will be available through smart TVs including models from LG, Samsung and Sony. Spanish electronics and ICT industry association, Ametic estimates that 25% of the 4.5 million TVs expected to be sold this year will be HbbTV-ready sets.

The HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV) standard, founded by broadcasting and electronics companies including SES (operator of the ASTRA satellites), enables content delivered via the Internet, such as catch-up services and television ‘apps', to be seamlessly combined with broadcast TV.

Visit www.ametic.es for more information

Although nearly 40% of US homes now boast a TV or set-top box connected to the Internet for downloading TV, Knowledge Networks has found that viewers of all age groups still prefer to watch conventional ‘linear’ TV channels. The Home Technology Monitor found that in homes with a connected TV, almost half (47%) of viewers choose watching a programme at its scheduled time as their first choice, with a PVR recording coming in second at 23%.

“Defined by presence in the home, connected TVs are now clearly a mainstream technology,” said Knowledge Networks, “but actual usage is a different story”. In Europe, ASTRA satellites broadcast over 2400 linear channels as well as interactive multimedia services.

Visit www.knowledgenetworks.com for further info

A report by Digital TV Research forecasts that the number of DTH pay-TV households worldwide will reach 195 million by the end of 2016, up from 139 million last year, and 119 million homes will watch FTA satellite in 2016 (up from 97 million in 2010). India will lead the field with nearly 45 million pay-DTH homes in 2016, with US second (36,469,000) and UK third (10,682,000).

Visit www.digitaltvresearch.com for further info

It took just three months from the launch of Samsung’s connected ‘Smart TVs’ to sell over two million worldwide, the company says. In comparison, Samsung’s LED TVs took over eight months to reach 2 million global sales. Over 710,000 of the connected sets, which access online content such as ‘over the top’ video services in addition to broadcast TV via ASTRA, etc, have been sold in Europe.

ASTRA won first prize in Samsung’s Smart TV Challenge to design an innovative app for connected TVs in March 2011.

Visit www.samsung.com for further info

There will be two connected devices for every person on the planet by 2015, forecasts networking equipment and services company, Cisco, and a large proportion will be connected TVs providing ‘over-the-top’ catch-up video and supplements to broadcast channels such as those on ASTRA satellites. Cisco’s annual Visual Networking Index predicts that in four years there will be 3 billion internet users and 15 billion internet connections, with total internet traffic of 966 exabytes (or nearly 1000 billion gigabytes) and one million minutes of video crossing the internet every second.

Visit www.cisco.com for further info