With the fall of Megaupload, legal VOD sites are quickly gaining back popularity as consumers are eager to watch fresh video contents on all their connected devices. If you are a content owner, a TV channel or a telco, it may be the right time …

As household budgets continue to tighten, the array of OTT services, particularly those on on-demand video platforms, are beginning to attract consumers towards unbundling their main TV packages. Cutting the cord may be regarded as overly cavalier by many Pay TV subscribers for the time being, but cord shaving could well continue to gain momentum over the next few years.

Blog by Guy Bisson, Research Director, Television, IHS Screen Digest Every morning, around 8am, I rest my head gently on the shoulder of a woman I’ve never met. A short man nuzzles my armpit with his nose while the blond locks of the girl to …

Google and Apple have been leading successful innovation in the internet and media industries, but so far they haven’t been able to succeed in the OTT TV space. Google TV has in fact been an unmitigated disaster the first time out. Like Google, Apple’s previous attempt to launch an OTT service failed to capture the market in the way they hoped. Is it a matter of time, or are there simply too many obstacles for these companies in the TV industry?

Pay OTT TV is increasingly being seen as an effective way for operators to extend their existing services, increase ARPU and reduce subscriber churn. However, can other companies leverage existing billing relationships with subscribers/end users for profitable pay OTT TV services across devices?

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) face multiple technology-related challenges these days. In order to get a deeper understanding of the happenings in this field, we have invited Lionel Bringuier, CTO of Anevia who deals with these challenges on daily basis, to answer some of the prominent questions OTT providers are concerned with when it comes to CDN.

When I hear people talking about the challenges of building and running a VOD platform, those discussions typically focus on the technology – video bitrates, DRM choices and CDN costs – rather than what I think is the fundamental key enabler and issue in this area, namely creating and satisfying consumer desire for your content.
I’m a big believer that value and desire is not latent, it’s manufactured. As the media world morphs from one of limited supply (few broadcast channels) to one of unlimited supply (huge catalogues of readily available VOD programming), the real challenge is to understand and drive consumer demand.

The content security perspective of OTT TV – an interview with Steve Christian, Verimatrix:
“A key driver is to be able to cover the bases of additional screens in the home, which from a defensive perspective would gather eyeballs of competitive or niche services. From a more positive standpoint this raises the competitive bar for other pay-TV operators in the same franchise area or region.”

A recent purchase I made of a video streamer led me to ask myself a question which until now I had always thought of only as an abstract concept: “Am I a cord cutter?” Cord cutting is a phenomenon that refers to the act of cancelling a pay TV subscription and replacing it with an Over-the-Top alternative. Although some still dismiss Cord Cutting as a myth, there are plenty of those who believe that it is very real. Operators who understand that subscribers now have access to cheaper alternatives are beginning to take Cord Cutting seriously.

You may be familiar with the story already but if you’re not here’s a synopsis: the world’s biggest satellite company, DirecTV, with almost 30 million customers across the US and Latin America, announced that it was launching a “premium VOD” service called ‘Home Premiere’ in April which would let subscribers watch a movie on their television sets just 60 days after its theatrical release.