Video: How Can Content Providers Deliver a Consistent Experience Across Devices?
One challenge that content publishers and channel providers face in a growing and diversifying OTT landscape, with its variety of devices, is how to guarantee a coherent, unfragmented viewer experience on different platforms. Do content owners really want to get into the business of endless app creation? Can they solve the problem through strategic partnerships? Plex's Greg Edmiston, HBO's John Narus, and Machinima's James Glasscock sketch out the problem and suggest solutions in this excerpt from their Great OTT Migration panel at Streaming Media East 2016.
Learn more about OTT UX design at Streaming Media West.
Read the transcript:
Greg Edmiston: Right now there isn't a clear answer to giving a coherent experience, giving an unfragmented experience across all those devices. With Machinima, you have content between YouTube and your own first-party apps and own first-party experiences. I think we're still trying to figure it out; not everyone wants to be in the business of maintaining 12 apps across a dizzying array of DRM combinations and device combinations.
At the same time, we want control of how those experiences are offered. I think that's what we're trying to figure out today, for Machinima, HBO, and Plex. How do we get to that coherent experience that gives users a consistent offering, with consistent constraints? We talked about DRM protection, at the same time as giving a fair deal.
John Narus: Another way to maybe achieve the goal is to look for partners. Now you can see HBO content through Dish or DirecTV. We don't necessarily have to maintain all the different apps. We look at partners, really, as a distribution channel.
James Glasscock: There's no one size fits all. It's a great example, being able to find HBO in these different combinations. There's not one of those that solves it for all the consumers of HBO.
If you're a programmer like we are, there's always going to be trade offs to building your own inaugurated strategy, versus licensing content, to a bunch of other store fronts. If you want control, you got to pay for it, it's and it's a different investment profile than if you're just licensing content. I think it's so early. We're in the middle of a transformation from primarily being a YouTube multichannel network to being a premium multi platform programmer to consumers.
One of the best ways to figure exactly what the consumer wants is just to get your cards on the table and find out. This is how we developed a lot of our programming in the past, just by looking at the data. As we start to learn about what programs work in certain environments, we'll have a hit program in an AVOD platfor that won't work so well in SVOD. Or one that will work great in SVOD but won't work so well in AVOD. Now's a great time to be learning it. There's no secret formula to it.
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