ott story_ott cover story 21/04/2015 20:35 Page 3
OTT providers, these are real risks. “It’s worth
noting that linear TV is still by far the most
valuable asset and so it will be interesting to
see how linear OTT will develop over the
coming years. It seems that the best route is
one of collaboration between OTT and linear
TV (FTA or pay-TV) operators in each
country,” he notes.
RIGHTS. “Some OTT vendors have grown
sufficiently large that content security is now
critical; they are attractive enough for highcost hacking attempts to be made. In relation
to Service Providers’ OTT services, we have
seen that content rights, although evolving
slowly, are still typically lagging compared to
OTT capabilities and the demands from
viewers. For instance, the rights to provide
time shift TV and cloud DVR services, both of
which have proven to be of high interest to
subscribers, are still inconsistently available
(or unavailable) depending on country and
content provider,” he advises.
Trudelle agrees that such factors constitute
legitimate hurdles to overcome to run a
successful OTT TV business. “They indeed
show the complexity of the new emerging OTT
TV model, and these challenges are also a
reality for incumbents that are adding OTT
capabilities to their platforms. “Securing the
OTT TV revenue model against fraud and
piracy is clearly an area that will require
sustained investment from service providers,
and where companies like NAGRA, with a
successful track record in the pay-TV space,
can concretely contribute to the solution.”
“On the business side, it’s clear that the
economics of content production, sourcing or
rights selling differ from other business
drivers. OTT delivery can help all three
dimensions, provided the proper sets of
technologies and industrial partners are
aligned to offer a superior service. The pay-TV
business ecosystem has achieved this result
“Over the next 20
years, Internet TV
is going to replace
linear TV.”
Reed Hastings,
Netflix
with an impressive track record
over the past two decades and is
well positioned to leverage OTT
the same way in the future,” he
notes, suggesting that NAGRA
can bring significant value to Service
Providers, including to emerging OTT
companies.
According to Steve Christian, SVP
marketing at Verimatrix, the OTT video
landscape is muddied by an overall trend
towards apps rather than browsers for
accessing content, simply because tablets and
smartphones have clearly been established as
the second screen of choice for long-form and
TV viewing. “Operators have embraced the
app model for their branded services because
apps put them fully in the driving seat of
content access, discovery and also security.
Even as HTML5 matures, the browser
interface shows signs of becoming a battlefield
of competing technology interests that will
“Operators face a choice between
stepping up investment in OTT
and allowing competitors to
come in.”
Steve Christian, Verimatrix
activities,
and in
particular
from
content
delivery.
Business
volatility is not the same, and mixing two
different company profiles within the same
entity can lead to shareholder pressures to
unlock the value of the better performing arm
of the business at some point. Some OTT
players could very well be split over time, or
change their content strategies under such
financial pressures,” he predicts.
DIMENSIONS. “Down the road, content,
experience and reach are the ultimate value
16 TV Everywhere
complicate rather than simplify service
profiles,” he suggests, adding that as
consumers demand support for more devices
to access their preferred OTT services,
complexity seems likely to increase further,
with operators required to support multiple
streaming formats and DRMs native to
browsers and device families.
“One ca