Video My Way
You have settled in for the evening, a bowl of popcorn and a tasty bevy at the ready, eagerly anticipating the reaction from friends and family members to sharing one of your favorite films via streaming Netflix or Pay-Per-View on your big screen tv.
The movie is about a quarter of the way in, your brother, who is a bit ADD, asks you to pause the film because he has to take an urgent phone call (mistake #1). You comply, only to find that when you try to start the film back again, it has frozen, or the cable box must reboot and you’re back at the beginning.
Now we’re losing the momentum of the drama building on-screen, sadly replaced by our own form of personal family drama, playing out right before us. I don’t blame my brother, whose girlfriend’s “urgent call” was more of the “needy” variety, (just saying), but rather my ubiquitous cable provider, the one I refer to as Übermediamaster.
Most of us tend to be willing to pay big money each month to have content to entertain & inform us, readily available. My cable company continues to deliver their services along with a heaping side (should TD really be on a menu?) of technical difficulties, naturally occurring on a weekend. Of course, a technician is never available until the following week, arriving at my house within a 3-hr window of time, when I can’t leave work to meet him.
But are our only choices for content, between cable and even more expensive satellite providers? Not when you can opt for an appealing alternative with a content delivery model known as Over-the-Top Technology (OTT) service.
You are already using OTT, and the content from a third party, if you watch Netflix, NowTV, WhereverTV, Hulu, or myTV. Once regular TV content can be accessed purely online, instead of with a cable subscription, more people will opt for this streamlined, more economical approach that frees you from paying for channels and programming that you never watch.
Other new players to this field include AT&T through their merger with the Chernin Group
, Walt Disney’s acquisition of Maker Studios (one of YouTube’s largest multichannel networks), and Amazon Prime’s partnership with HBO.
AT&T/Chernin Group intends to place itself as a direct competitor to Netflix, which should benefit the consumer, particularly if they follow Netflix’s
approach to creating original content. They may have a conflict of interest issue, as AT&T provides the ISP that enables services like Netflix, but I like to think of the possibilities, and put that predicament in a “that’s a YOU Problem, not a ME problem” category, or possibly, that’s my mistake #2.
Walt Disney’s Maker Studios
claims to be the #1 producer and distributor of online content for millennials in the U.S., providing 50,000 channels which generate an estimated 5.5 million page views a month. They organize their programming into four networks with the categories of Men, Women, Family, and Entertainment. I only hope that the first three categories are not exclusive of the fourth.
Amazon Prime has announced plans to offer streaming video of classic HBO tv shows, like “The Soparanos” and “The Wire,”
although a line is definitely drawn between older shows like “Deadwood,” which will be available, and new seasons of “Veep,” “The Newsroom” and “Girls,” which are still only accessible through HBO’s own streaming service to existing subscribers, HBO GO. I’d still go with their classic fare over the new shows, and recommend the brilliant series “The Wire,” for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and another marathon session for those that have.
Your entertainment options will continue to expand with technology, but what about getting content like your company video
up on your own website? We all know that strong visuals are a great selling point, and having a video on your site can be very compelling for your business and branding needs. Videos tell a story, are dynamic, engaging, and can induce an interactive reaction with an audience. Best of all, they can be switched up as often as your company’s needs or products change.
If you would like to feature your company’s video on your site, please contact Border7 Studios, and let us make that work for you. We’d love to hear from you!
