Howard Horowitz is best known for his eponymous company Horowitz Associates, Inc. a full-service market research company specializing in research for distributors, networks and technology companies on television, digital and multiplatform services and content. Howard discusses his background in political, media and market research, trends over past decade in the multicultural landscape culminating in the release of Census 2010, and the anticipated impact the coming of age of a new generation of young people will have on television usage.

In Dudley Moore's portrayal of "Arthur" (I haven't seen the Russell Brand movie), there's a classic scene in which he observes that waiters are wonderful people because "you ask them for things and they bring them to you." Arthur was about innocent discovery, most often of the obvious. We are all Arthur today, it seems, rediscovering everything, because some of the things around us are new. Last week a breathless report announced, "Yahoo study connects relevance to advertising." Really?

The Big Apple can feel like a small town sometimes, so I wasn't too surprised to find myself at Chelsea Piers two separate times last week, for two very different events: a three-on-three basketball tournament, which my team almost won in the finals on the Garden floor after the Knick-Cavs game, and the GigaOm Structure Big Data Conference, where I spoke on a panel about how data-driven solutions are driving revenues for advertisers and networks alike.

e are in an industry of continual transition. Digital compression spawned the recent migration from analog to digital. As a result, there is a range of converter and adaptor hardware that helps analog homes convert to digital or enables analog homes to convert digital signals to be viewed on an analog set. Here are terms and definitions related to converters and adaptors:

The advertising marketplace is evolving quickly, with the introduction of new platforms, new metrics and new technologies. Jeff Siegel, SVP Advertising for Rovi, has experienced them all in his career -- from the broadcast model to cable to a company like Rovi, one of the new players in the media space that is changing the framework of viewing preferences, content platforms and ad models. In a video interview conducted a few days before the roll-out of a new Rovi initiative on Smart TV, Jeff talks about the differences between the broadcast, cable and new platform marketplaces, Set Top Box data, …

With the recent announcements by Time Warner Cable and Cablevision that they will launch iPad apps to stream (some of) their cable television offerings to subscribers, three questions immediately came to mind. First, how, if at all, do current carriage agreements address the possibility of iPad distribution? Second, how will iPad viewing be measured and ratings allocated? Third, before this turns into another classic case of industry parties negotiating with each other over how to divide presumed incremental revenue, here's the most important question: What does the consumer think regarding the value created by this new capability?

If you've been as glued to your screens as I have -- thanks, NCAA, for the excellent iPad app -- you know that this year's Division I college basketball tournament has been the most compelling in years. The Final Four offered up a great show this weekend, and some attention-worthy lessons for the teambuilders among us looking to win in what has become a very competitive environment.

We could fill up several columns with definitions that apply to the concept of digital media. This week we focus on digital hardware -- from the server to the box to the remote:</