Over-the-Top Video: Who's Winning and Who's Losing?
The Streaming Media East panel "Winners and Losers in Over-the-Top Video" wasn't afraid to name names. Panelists voted "winner" or "loser" for all the major devices and services that bring streamed content to the TV.
One of the surprise winners was traditional cable. In fact, Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of Stage Two Consulting, called it a "huge winner" and was enthusiastic about the value it offers consumers.
"To most people, $100 a month for cable is an amazing deal," said Toeman. "You actually do the math on the amount of TV you can watch for 100 bucks, and the average home watches eight hours a day, and you just compare that to any other way to consumer content, it's a wonderfully good deal. It's amazing, and it's all high-quality, it's all high-produced. I always say this, even though I'm a big proponent of OTT: TV's great, you turn it on and there's content. It's never even buffering; it's just there. It's awesome."
Despite his enthusiasm, Toeman sees potential dark clouds on the horizon for cable.
"The only potential stumbling block is the, I don't look at even cord-shaving, I say the cord-never-getting. If you watch college kids today who think that this is a great entertainment device," Toeman said, holding up a notebook computer, "And they are really, really used to finding free stuff out there, it's going to get really hard to convince them to do something massively different."
To view the entire discussion and find out how your favorite OTT device did, watch the video below.
Winners and Losers in Over-the-Top Video
Smart TVs have joined new set top boxes, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and media center PCs as ways for internet-streamed video to reach the big screen. But with so many choices, how do you pick which ones to develop for, which ones to deploy on, and which ones to ignore? This session explores everything from the possible emergence of a standard stack for Smart TVs to handicapping Roku, Boxee, Google TV, and more. It also explores best practices in developing apps that work across many of these devices.
Speaker: Edward Lichty, GM, VUDU
Speaker: Jeremy Toeman, Founding Partner, Stage Two Consulting
Speaker: Justin Eckhouse, Senior Product Manager, Emerging Media Platforms, CBS Interactive
Speaker: Tara Maitra, VP, GM, Content Services, Ad Sales, TiVo
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