With the emergence of on-demand services, a big shift in home entertainment is underway. On-demand video services such as Hulu and Netflix offered niche services a few years ago, however, these platforms for streaming movies and television shows are increasingly becoming a big part of media entertainment.
Streaming video services are increasingly becoming a commonality in American homes, according to a recent survey carried out by a leading market research firm. Not only this, many homes use multiple services and are viewing more content than subscribers of conventional cable or satellite service. As such, with so much focus on streaming video, on-demand video services is emerging as a big business lately. However, it has had an adverse effect on revenue generation through advertising on conventional television broadcasts. As more American switch to on-demand services, the revenue generation through advertising could easily dwindle.
The emergence of on-demand services initially seemed to be a win-win proposition for both on-demand services cable satellite and on-demand services. However, this appears to be a dangerous trend for both parties, as on-demand services wean audience from live viewing and train them to enjoy viewing content as per their convenience, sans commercials. While audiences are viewing more television than before, they are watching less of live TV, causing ad revenue to shrink considerably.
Use of Regional Content Storage Servers Facilitate VoD Streaming
Since its inception, video-on-demand (VoD) has suffered inadequate network bandwidth, thereby resulting in bottlenecks and long download times. VoD works well for content streaming over wide geographic regions or on the satellite-based network provided the demand for content streaming is modest. In the event of a high demand by a large number of consumers for multiple programs on a continuous basis, the total volume of data involved can overload network resources.
To address this, programmes are stored on geographically distributed servers and are provided to local users on request – a technology called store and forward. Using this approach, not only the availability of the programme but also system reliability is increased in comparison to a single gigantic repository. The other advantage of store and forward technology also lies in allowing local providers to maintain their systems and devise billing structures independently.
The concept of VoD is not new. The first commercial VoD service came into existence in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. In the U.S., the first commercial VoD service was introduced by Oceanic Cable of Hawaii in 2000. Today, VoD is provided by several providers, especially those who offer triple pay services. The application of VoD lies in educational institutions and can improve the interface of presentations for videoconference needs. VoD is also offered in most luxury hotels. VoD is expected to become usual as fiber to the home (FTTH) services expand in the future.
Popularity of Animation Content Favors Growth of North America VoD Service Market
The proliferation of content-on-demand (CoD) services, easy access to high reliable data networks, and vertical unification by social media platforms to provide streaming video services are the major factors driving the VoD service market at present. Changing consumer preference to view content as per their convenience in place of television’s linear schedule and increasing penetration of high-speed Internet services in emerging economies are propelling the market’s growth.
However, factors such as high bandwidth requirement, technical anomalies resulting in unavoidable disruptions during content play, and non-availability of offline content streaming feature of several service providers are detrimental to the growth of the VoD service market.
North America currently dominates the animation content type segment of the VoD service market. The region is dominant as animation content is popular due to being a historic region for the creation of animation content. The growth of the VoD service market in North America is further bolstered by lucrative deals offered by VoD service providers for increasing subscription of their services.
The information presented here is sourced from Future Market Insights latest report on the Video on Demand Service Market. A free sample of this report is available upon request.
