Spending on content delivery networks (CDNs) increased, while spending on contribution encoders and video-on-demand (VOD) playout servers decreased, the research note said.

Infonetics forecasts the total size of the broadcast and streaming video equipment market will be $2.5 billion by 2018.

The research agency said CDN platforms are evolving to support an increasing number of over-the-top (OTT) formats such as HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Microsoft Smooth Streaming.

CDN edge servers will grow at 17 percent CAGR from 2013 to 2018, and multiscreen broadcast encoders will increase at 8 percent CAGR.

OTT and multiscreen TV drive spending on broadcast and streaming video equipment

CDN edge servers and multiscreen broadcast encoders are the two substantially growing segments in the broadcast and streaming video market.

Pay-TV providers are using a mix of platforms, from GPU-based devices to software only, to create massive and distributed encoding horsepower in the cloud—all managed centrally via software-defined networking (SDN) controllers.

“We are very early in a long-term transition to software-based and SDN-controlled video processing, but we believe the shift will result in increased spending on both multiscreen encoders and content delivery network equipment, as pay-TV and over-the-top (OTT) providers begin purchasing these platforms to more efficiently process and distribute video content,” said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research.