A Defining Moment for OTT?
So here is a challenge. Imagine you are entering into a lift and a fellow traveller strikes up a conversation as you ascend skyward. “What do you do?” he asks, “I’m in OTT” you proudly respond. “What is OTT?” he probes. So now you have six floors to go, about 30 seconds of talk time left and your professional reputation to defend. What do you say?
Do you talk about the technology? About the content? Reference a website your companion might already use? Enthuse about applications, widgets, catch-up TV, music, search, recommendations, on demand games, social media, UGC/PGC or home media hubs? Let’s face it, most of us will need to be riding up the Empire State Building to deliver even a semi-coherent description of the power of OTT and still wouldn’t have critiqued the choice of devices that can handle OTT.
In my view, it is the challenge of defining OTT consistently to consumers that will either make or break its commercial success. Not the device technology, not the content, not the licensing issue, not the network capacity, not the standards but the ability to define and deliver against a mass market expectation of OTT.
I do applaud Youview’s attempt to brand a common hybrid/OTT experience in the UK market but of course it is failing to actually launch anything to cement that experience in the consumers mind. Similarly, a number of pundits are using Smart TV as a descriptor but that is being used to refer to TVs, set-top boxes, tablets and mobile phones. The user experience also spans a simple widget on an early TV through to a powerful media centre acting as a hub to play all possible types of media from all possible media sources.
Or do we define OTT not in terms of features and functions but as an experience, a religion, an aspiration, freedom, liberty, empowerment, rebellion, and self-realisation? A grander mission to break the control of our archaic TV providers and establish a new libertarian regime of information and entertainment from all to all? Lovely idea and sometimes I do think we are defining a new world order but I would suspect that the masses aren’t feeling overly repressed by their current TV service!
Let me proffer a solution to this conundrum. First of all we are simply offering enhanced TV. Just like DVR, HD and 3D. Second we should focus on the most valuable enhancement OTT can offer and that must be catch-up TV. Third we should think the best ‘televisual’ way of presenting that enhancement to customers which has to be the backward EPG. So for me, OTT is about presenting broadcast content from the cloud in the most customer friendly way. From that functional ‘anchor’, we can then add all of the wonderful enhancements that an internet connection can deliver. But these are just marketing noise. Noise that has the potential to confuse, distract and deflect. Let the history books define the evolution of TV to be analogue to video recorders to digital to DVR to high definition to 3D to catch-up TV. It is a branding that does what it says on the tin, one that people can immediately see value in and one that does not contain three letter acronyms! Well done Virgin Media who are doing exactly that with these next gen TiVo units. From a purest point of view, not that latest technology, not the most comprehensive feature set but a proper, usable, customer-friendly backward EPG.
I’m not saying that the backward EPG must solely reside on the television or set-top box. It could equally be on a second screen with content ‘thrown’ onto the TV. It doesn’t have to appear as a grid (sorry Rovi) or be two dimensional as the vast majority are today. It can be contextual and linked to the related long tail content. It could spawn apps that are synchronised with the content being watched. It could contain recommendations from family and friends on what to watch. But most of all it takes a consistent, editorialised and embedded paradigm and enhances that with OTT-powered catch-up TV content. That is what will excite the masses to spend their hard-earned cash on OTT-powered features. That is what our industry can hang lots of innovative new services on. That is what providers should embrace to retain and grow their customer base. And that is what I could easily describe in the few floors I have left in my journey in that metaphorical lift.
Is that what you think? As always, let me know…..
Glad that you state OTT for what it is… just like IPTV before it which should be described as just TV, OTT is enhanced TV… period.
The only hope is that all those people who are now pushing on-screen widgets and tickers also remember what does not make money, and what does not engage the customer as we found in 1999 to 2004.
Apps are great… as long as they put video to the fore and make use of the second screen for personal interaction and widgets/tickers.
English
Greetings from Puerto Rico.
Yeah! That’s amino and thanks for supporting meego as a platform.
I’m waiting for when it goes on sale buying Amino ,Now if it would be nice to have a remote control on one hand a small keyboard, similar to Boxee.
Bye.
Español
Saludos desde puerto rico.
Si! Eso es Amino y gracias por apoyar a meego como plataforma.
estoy pendiente para cuando salga a la venta compra Amino, Ahora si seria bueno un control remoto que tenga por un lado un pequeño Teclado , algo parecido al de Boxee.
Hasta luego.
Hi Andrew,
That’s a really interesting perspective and I think touches on quite a fundamental point that many people overlook.
It doesn’t matter what the industry call something unless it relates to the benefit that the purchasing customer experiences.
OTT while now a well established term still means nothing to the end users.
Many end user video viewers are still not aware of what’s possible/available, so even if they were familiar with the term OTT they still wouldn’t actually appreciate what it truly means to what they can expect from equipment vendors and service providers. Even the companies selling the proposition tend to vary on what they mean by OTT.
As in all marketing people buy benefits and justify their purchase with features, so rather than trying to sell them features it’s important to focus on the core benefits that the new features will bring and clearly communicate those to the masses.
Your backward pvr hedgehog concept is a great starting place as deferred time viewing is definitely something that has reached the public consciousness and it’s becoming a default expectation when people invest in new home entertaiunment technology.
Combine that with Youtube (and other) video content sources, Facebook and Twitter and you’re starting to bring the feel of the internet (already quite well appreciated by the end user) into the perceived value of the video viewing devices and the centralised home entertainment concept that people have been pushing for years now.
The great thing about OTT is that there really are actually only a few core technological advances and much of the perceived value come by default due to improving broadband connections and the ability of technologies like HLS to deliver video acrooss networks that traditional IPTV has never managed.
When we moved from traditional broadcast video delivery to IPTV (using mpeg encapsulated in UDP) there was a huge focus on the requirement of the delivery network to be robust, which historically had all manner of retry mechanisms and collision avoidance, which resuled in service providers having to manage all sorts of delivery issues because they started from a position of using existing network infrastructure that was never designed to carry video.
With improved networks and improvide delivery mechanisms like HLS, we’re finally reaching the point where excellent quality and reliable service is actually possible for most people.
Now the fun comes from things like OTT and communicating the benefits in a way that the lay person can truly start to get excited about what is coming their way.
Thanks for sharing your insightful views.
Andy