The trend in TV use is towards watching any live or delayed content at any time, at any location, on many different devices and via a wide range of transmission systems.

At the same time, home electronics are advancing steadily, and innovations are entering the market at a faster and faster pace. New devices and standards are gaining acceptance in the market at different rates (for example, 16:9 is being adopted rather slowly, DVD players rather quickly). The following developments can currently be observed in the area of TV: HD-Devices have proliferated rapidly, flat screens have become affordable although having more functions like different tuners and internet. Digital technology and hence set-top boxes are becoming more and more common (via cable, satellite, phone lines/ADSL and terrestrially). Also set-top boxes (with built-in hard disks that can store video signals) have found their way into TV households.
TV content is no longer viewed exclusively on a "classic" TV set in the living room. Increasingly, it is also viewed on PCs (via the Internet and TV tuner cards) and away from home, often on hand-held devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.

It is important to closely track the development of the distribution vectors and consumer devices, to keep today's measuring systems up to date and to supplement them with state-of-the-art technologies so that new devices and transmission processes are recorded with the same reliability as existing technology.