How fast to change channels?

It can be one of the most annoying things, when the TV viewer presses the remote control to change channels and, for what seems like an eternity, nothing happens, but this channel change time is actually being measured by a monitoring specialist organisation, Witbe, who are based in Paris.

It turns out that the average time it takes to change a channel via set top box is 1.9 seconds.

Witbe use their monitoring technology to study thirty TV operators in sixteen countries on four continents.

They use their equipment to monitor the channel changing times on DSL, FTTH, Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial TV.

However, they only measure these changes through the P+ and P- buttons in order to get a more precise reading.

The fastest channel change was IPTV through Microsoft Mediaroom at 0.6 sec, while it was also found that IPTV was twice as fast as other platforms.