This past Christmas was a boon for over-the-top ( OTT ) services , with 52 % of viewers around the world predicted to have used an online TV service during the festive season , suggested a new Research Now study , commissioned by Paywizard .
The study , which was carried out in Australia , Brazil , Germany , Singapore , the UK and the US , found that around 25 % of consumers already use an OTT service , and a further 27 % were planning to go OTT post Christmas last year , taking advantage of free trials and special “ Black Friday ” offers . Mobile devices such as laptops , tablets and smartphones were the platforms
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of choice for OTT viewing during Christmas for 66 % of respondents , although when it came to Christmas viewing , generally , 80 % of respondents still preferred the traditional TV set .
However , for operators such as Amazon Prime , Hulu and Netflix , the joy could be short-lived . According to Research Now , 45 % OTT of subscribers plan to cancel their subscriptions “ immediately ” or within six months — 15 % of subscribers plan to cancel their services this January , with a further 30 % following suit in the next six months . They attribute the decision to perceived poor value-for-money and a lack of sustainable content
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choices .
Bhavesh Vaghela , chief marketing officer at Paywizard , said : “ While OTT is disrupting the entertainment market , it ’ s pretty clear there is much to do to keep customers subscribed for a sustained period of time . This global survery shows that key demographic groups like the over-55s are not being catered for , while the core 24-35 working adults are running out of relevant content that is of interest to them .
“ If OTT providers are to succeed in a highly competitive environment , it ’ s essential they provide a more personalised service based on a full understanding of customer behaviours and viewing habits .”
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A new study found that while there was a surge in OTT subscriptions over the 2015 Christmas period , 15 % of OTT subscribers plan to cancel their subscriptions this month , with a further 30 % following suit in the next six months .
Of the group of consumers who intend to cancel their OTT subscriptions , 54 % said they could be persauded to stay due to “ rich
content ”, while another third cited better value for money to be a critical factor in keeping their OTT service .
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7Live , a new round-the-clock live streaming platform from Australia ’ s Seven Network , got off to a recordbreaking start with the commercial free-to-air broadcaster ’ s coverage of Australian jockey Michelle Payne ’ s historic 2015 Melbourne Cup victory last November .
According to Seven Network , Payne ’ s victory saw more than 488,000 live stream views throughout the day , with more than 346,000 concurrent live streams during the day itself , an Australian live streaming record .
Delivered over the Akamai Content Delivery Network , the 7Live is powered by Elemental Technologies ’ Elemental Live streaming encoders and Elemental Conductor encoder management systems , supplied and commissioned by Quinto Communications , Elemental ’ s local partner in Australia and New Zealand .
Yahoo7 Plus7 users in Australia can now view live streams of all three Seven Network ’ s main channels : Seven , 7TWO and 7MATE ,
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Elemental Technologies is powering 7Live , a new round-the-clock live streaming platform from Australia ’ s Seven Network .
round-the-clock in both desktop browsers and on a wide variety of mobile devices . In order to provide different , localised , live streaming versions of these services , Seven Network created a total of 37 different individual TV services . Presentation output is provided as HD serial digital video the
Elemental Live streaming encoders , for H . 264 video with AAC audio encoding and streaming format packaging .
An Elemental Live appliance occupying just one-rack unit of rack space is able to take in and encode eight HD serial digital video service feeds , encoding each in
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multiple different resolutions and bitrates simultaneously .
Seven ’ s requirement to create a total of 37 different streaming video services is thus achieved using just five Elemental Live streaming appliances , occupying only five units of rack space at the Melbourne Docklands playout centre .
With each channel being streamed at multiple bitrates and resolutions to provide streams optimised for a very wide variety of consumer devices and Internet connection speeds , these five Elemental Live units perform in excess of 170 individual real-time H . 264 video encodes concurrently .
Two Elemental Conductor management and monitoring appliances , configured as a highavailability cluster for redundancy , provide for the configuration and monitoring of all of the live Web streaming services , from a single intuitive operator Web browser interface . The Elemental Live encoders on-board Web servers also
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serve streams locally to the Seven in-house network monitoring , in addition to the Elemental live encoders delivering the streams to Seven ’ s Internet Content Delivery Network partners .
Damian McNamara , Seven West Media ’ s head of Digital Technology and Development , concluded : “ I ’ m very happy to have had Quinto and Elemental as key partners in [ the ] delivery of our new live streaming services . Their immense expertise and effort in the field of live streaming video services ensured our recent launch has been a success .”
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