By now, it is common knowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a big shift in online media consumption, in all forms. Businesses across the online entertainment space are spending a lot of effort to keep users engaged. Video streaming statistics show that the online streaming services market is projected to grow to $149.96 billion during 2020-2024 progressing at 18% during the period.
Online consumers, particularly users of Disney + and Netflix are spending dramatically more time browsing these services. Platforms streaming video on demandcontinue to invest in creating their own movies and TV series to cater to their growing user bases as it is becoming increasingly important to understand the changing interest of viewers as the pandemic continues.
As we already know, people are spending more time online during the Coronavirus pandemic. 55% of online video streamers said that they have been viewing videos while 47% of viewers spend more time watching broadcast TV. Whereas, over 42% of viewers said that they have been watching streaming services more during the pandemic. This data also indicates that people have discovered new interests during the pandemic.
The impact of Coronavirus pandemic on viewing habits
Online users seem to escape the continued anxiety around the Coronavirus outbreak by spending more time on online media and increasing the time they spend on digital devices and video streaming platforms. Although each streaming video on demand service attracts viewers looking for different types of content, many have been discovering new genres they never thought they would enjoy. We have gathered together a series of data insights across the video streaming spectrum to understand key patterns of how viewers are responding to the current changes. If you are looking for how to start a video streaming business, analyzing these insights can help you deliver high-quality viewing experiences for your viewers in times of pandemics like these.
Users like it when genres blend
In the initial days of the Coronavirus outbreak, Netflix dominated the video streaming landscape with its own show, Tiger King. The show covers documentary, crime, and cringe comedy which might have contributed to its success. It seems like Netflix users of today want to see more content in diverse categories. Most users prefer watching fantasy content, adventure, documentary, or drama. The Majority of Netflix viewers spend more time on the streaming platform exploring multiple genres. This implies that if you are building a VOD platform, it is important to integrate a diverse range of content in your streaming service to satisfy the varied interest of your audience.
Need for better streaming quality
Sudden increase in the number of viewers can have drastic effects on the quality experience that viewers have. As the traffic increases, the streaming quality must increase as well. To understand how the traffic affects streaming quality, you must understand video streaming and how it works. Video streaming allows viewers to watch videos without actually downloading the media. With the use of content delivery networks, video providers must be able to improve streaming performance and reduce the buffering time according to the incoming traffic.
So how does online streaming work? Just like any other information that is broadcasted over the internet, video streams are broken down to small chunks of data packets. Each data chunk contains a small piece of the file that is sent to the video player of the client device’s browser that interprets the flow of the data. When compared to transmitting text-based content over the content, sending videos calls for a faster method of transmission which gives importance to reliability over speed. Hence the VOD platforms must have the right technology and tools to handle the traffic spikes in the VOD platform.
What are people watching on VOD platforms?
As online viewers are spending more time at their home during the lockdown they would watch more content, and the type of content being streamed will also be altered.
Let’s look into the type of content people are watching and the changing viewer behaviors during the current pandemic.
News
The interest of viewers in live news content is increasing. As the whole world prepares for the pandemic, people tune in to video streaming platforms to tune into current news. The main topics of focus onVOD platforms are politics, world news, entertainment, technology, science and health, business, and sports. Most news streaming platforms cover multiple sides of sites thus giving the viewers balanced and fair coverage, which is what most viewers are looking for.
Religious content
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, religions are embracing online communities and live streaming to connect with the congregation. While the transition was easy for congregations that had embraced digital tools and live streaming, others have struggled to adjust to the digital experience. However, the advanced modern technology and the ease of access toVOD platforms allow making this transition smooth for all.
A decade ago, religious websites were not commonly used by people, but today considering the global lockdown and restrictions to access the church has caused a significant increase in the adoption of religious streaming services by people across the globe. Video streaming statistics show that about one out of five adults consumes Christian online media on a daily basis.
Fitness
The COVID-19 pandemic has left millions of people around the world adjusting to life indoors. As fitness studios are shut down, most of them are shifting their classes online In response to the pandemic, a variety of video on demand services have emerged to ensure people can continue working out while social distancing. Popular fitness studios across the globe are offering their customers online services instead. If you are planning on how to start a video streaming business, you can consider building a fitness platform if you are already in the fitness industry.
Here is the share of adults who watch more online exercise videos during social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.
The COVID-19 has changed how sports fans participants engage in sports events online. Some sports leagues have resumed with others to follow as the fans cannot gather in the galleries until the spread of Coronavirus is under control. Sports broadcasts are harnessing the power of technology to connect both online and offline fans to present the sport in a much more attractive and engaging way during and after the pandemic.
Conclusion
The culture has gone virtual in the new norm of COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing which can be seen in the rise in usage of VOD platforms and Facebook and Instagram Lives. The worldwide lockdown has also led to a shift in viewer behavior, specifically in terms of demographics. However, these are testing times for both viewers and video providers alike. In unpredicted circumstances like these, the need for a backup plan, accurate, and reliable data is becoming more important than ever.
Video streaming providers who can react quickly to the streaming needs of their viewers have the unique opportunity to connect with users as they adapt to new scenarios. If you are planning to start a video streaming business, now is the right time as the future of streaming is quite bright. If you are looking for any guidance to get started with your video streaming business, please get in touch with us, our expert team is here to guide you through the entire process.
As the devices are getting smarter and the internet is getting faster, the closely associated trends are also clutching the stage. Online video streaming has gone through an unprecedented evolution and has influenced the market share of its closely related segment –traditional pay TV t a great extent. Looking at the stats released by Deloitte for the year 2017, we can conclude that-
55% of the US population is now using paid video streaming services.
48% of US consumers stream the same TV content via online services.
US consumers paid $2 billion monthly subscriptions to video streaming services.
The taste of entertainment and media consumers is changing. We can see a shift both in the ways video streaming services function today and the ways consumers consume the media content. Though this massive shift did not occur overnight. It was a gradual proliferation that actively involved the advancement in the technologies being used to-
Broadcast the online content to the global audience.
Consume the online content from the end-users’ side.
How did this shift occur?
2015 was an imperative eon for upgrades in the streaming friendly internet technology. We saw a shift from the legacy streaming protocols to the specially crafted overlay networks, dedicated streaming protocols, and custom servers for faster buffer free content delivery. The new infrastructure supported the advanced content delivery mechanisms like –
Breaking data packets in small chunks
Enlarging the geo-boundaries and loss-less streaming.
HTTP-based WebRTC streaming directly direct browsers.
These advancements when implemented on contemporary video streaming software, aided streaming services to –
Reduce video infrastructure cost.
Simplify the network organization.
Upscale the IT and server infrastructure.
Enhance video streaming quality and UX.
How it affected the legacy streaming operations?
For most of the video streaming services and organizations that used the legacy technologies, infrastructure, and protocols, the modern shift was a decisive modulation. For example, the new setup offered a better alternative. So most of the video streaming software development companies,white label streaming services, infrastructure providers, and the associated service vendors adapted to the change and closed their legacy operations.
Now, the video streaming services still stuck with the legacy technology faced a forced situation to adopt the inevitable change. Otherwise, they would have to be ready to face challenges such as –
Limited choice of hardware infrastructure
Limited streaming software support
Limited vendors for associated API support
An eventual boost in the delayed migration cost
Bottom line: The shift to the modern stack was not an option but a necessary move if the streaming services and business intended on continuing their operations and enhance the end-user experience with a better tech stack, reduced operational cost, and up-scaled streaming quality.
How the world adapted to modern video streaming?
Early adopters took no time to migrate. They saw a new arena of broadened possibilities and enhanced video streaming business operations. However, this transition was not a sudden explosion. The 2008 Summer Olympic had already laid a foundation of new expectations for it.
For the first time ever, they streamed the entireSummer Olympicin high definition video quality. With a partnership between Microsoft and NBC, they delivered the smoothest video streaming world had ever seen by then. In a very short span of just 2 weeks, almost 50 million unique visitors streamed 70 million times to watch 10 million hours of video content.
This joint venture by a tech giant and the well-known broadcaster laid a milestone. It’s not that such attempts were not made in the past, but this time a complete broadcast in HD quality was a wonder. The event made it clear that the internet is much scalable to stream huge, high-quality, stable, and seamless video content.
Foundations of Modern Streaming Technologies
The success of HTTP streaming for the Olympics was mainly an indication for something bigger. They used the simple but very powerful architecture. HTTP streaming proved its significance by fully adapting to the laid network topology and leveraging the stateless and cache-based internet architecture. Contrastingly, the custom streaming protocols hinder the underlying architecture and fail to leverage the internet to the fullest.
Here are a few of the fundamental aspects that make contemporary video streaming infrastructure better:
1. Content delivery in small chunks:
The modern transmission protocols divide a video file into multiple smaller chunks and transmit each chunk independently through different routes across the internet. The routing manages the sequence of the delivery and transports the final content in the original form at the user end.
2. Independent chunk transmission:
Each of the chucks takes independent routes while in transmission and none are dependent on the previous requests. That means the video playback is independent of the need for a persistence connection between the device and the origin server.
3. HTTP-based transmission protocols:
The chunked-segments travel across the internet and the local WAN networks using a single HTTP protocol. The HTTP protocol is equipped with both abilities to transmit unencrypted content through TCP port 80 and 443 for SSL-encrypted content.
4. CDN-based global HTTP caching:
Content delivery networks (CDN) have made transmission smoother through dynamic caching. CDNs use HTTP caches across the internet and corporate WANs. This helps them to cache and store segmented data to different nodes and deliver them to the nearest device much faster. This passive network architecture ensures a dynamic buffering of the content from the nearest nodes without fetching them from the origin server each time.
5. Adaptive bitrate switching:
The biggest driver of advancement in the video streaming market is adaptive bitrate switching. The video is encoded on multiple formats and resolutions for different qualities. Streaming engines use adaptive bitrate switching to dynamically adjust the stream quality according to the internet bandwidth and device playback capacity. It minimizes the buffering efforts and delivers seamless packets in an adaptive environment.
Benefits of modern streaming for businesses and consumers
The advancements in the tech stack and addition of modern protocols opened doors for easy broadcast to the multitude. The HTTP streaming was indeed superior to legacy protocols like RMTP and RTSP in terms of streaming quality. However, it also made the paid streaming services possible and allowed an enhanced user experience to the end users. Ultimately, we could see the positive effects on business operations as well.
1. It slashed the infrastructure complexity
The default HTTP streaming using TCP ports 43 and 443 were competent to adapt to the caching-friendly internet architecture. Unlike legacy protocols, you are no more required to develop dedicated infrastructure for caching management.
HTTP protocol can seamlessly travel the firewalls. Every corporate network always keeps its TCP ports 80 and 443 open while restricting the RMTP and RTSP protocols. Hence, it made the streaming implementation easier in corporate WAN networks and businesses could by-pass the need for dedicated infrastructure to manage the flow of traffic from white-label video streaming services.
2. It reduced the overall implementation cost
In addition to the cost saved by eliminating the need for above to separate infrastructures, the streaming services and corporates can now also save the investments in server hardware and additional software to manage video overlay.
Next, by using the CDN based dynamic caching, the business can now save the extra bandwidth required to fetch the content from origin server each time some user makes a request. The HLS based streaming can adapt to the existing HTTP server network and save the cost of extra hardware and software for caching. CDN implementation made streaming smoother and allowed branded and white label video streaming services to expand their business globally.
3. It enhanced the user-end payback experience
With dynamic bitrate switching the video streaming has become accessible through any device and even via a slower internet bandwidth. Besides that, HTTP can adapt to the popular video and audio codecs (H.264, AAC, etc.), which make streaming further accessible across a wide range of devices. It gave a broader consumer base to the video streaming services and opportunity to expand their business. Now a user could stream both from a high-speed Ethernet connection and through a mobile internet network.
4. It scaled the infrastructure for streaming businesses
Legacy protocols had limited scalability. Streaming services could upscale their broadcast capacity only by investing in additional hardware and software. With HTTP-based modern protocols, they got inherited scalability and also some advanced native supports like mirroring and edge caching, which also allowed seamless CDN integrations.
Using it, now a particular stream was accessible by the masses and CDN services could use the existing infrastructure to boost the reachability with reduced network latency. With faster content delivery, the HTTP protocol now supported both on-demand and high-quality live video streaming.
The above benefits allowed white-labeled video streaming services to extend their operations from corporates to general consumers. Now they could broadcast as many content to as many users at a time. Which ultimately got the names of branded video streaming services or OTT streaming services. For example, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, etc.
5. Introduction to the e-sports
The reduced latency and improved stream quality did not only evolved the way video was broadcasted but also for a lot of other media too. Be video, image, text, or Gif, the contemporary HTTP based CDNs can transmit any type of content.
On this budging edge, a new form of streaming is budding gradually- eSports. The new concept leverages multi-player video game competitions as content and broadcasts the live gameplays direct to the internet audience. This sphere alone is a multi-billion dollar global industry and is expected to grow over $1.5 billion by 2020.
Video streaming market has changed a lot since modern protocols were introduced. There is a lot more that can be done in this industry. With this rate, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see global Paid TV market being surpassed by the OTT-streaming very soon. The coming era of 5G infrastructure is yet to come. You never know what is possible with a 5G speed and what else can you broadcast further. It is certain that AI will become an inseparable part and we will see some intelligent routing, bitrate adaptation, and smoother content transmission. AR and VR streaming will become more prevalent. For now, just know that the finest of online video streaming wonders is yet to arrive.
Video streaming is a buzz now! The old cable TV is having less deal now. Those days are gone where people used to wait to watch their movie on the television. With time the scenario has changed when online content came into existence.
With the digitalization, users are shifting from analog to digital, which helps to make a choice and get the required content, resulting in increasing their entertainment experience. Also, Viewers can access personalized content with various devices of their choice and record the same content to watch the same in the later period.
The most dominant type of VoD content watched across all regions is movies, followed by TV programs. The other most-watched content types include comedies, series, sports, documentaries, and short-form video content. VoD service providers are continuing to expand their offerings to include a diverse set of content programs. For much better experience users deal with a single video streaming provider rather than managing multiple accounts can be easier.
The Video on Demand Market globally is estimated to USD 56.26 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach a value of USD 93.99 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 8.93% by the research done by Mordor Intelligence. The research says that video on demand industry has a wide range of scope and for both cable operators and content providers to generate revenue.
With the increasing popularity of online videos, the CDN (content delivery Network) and MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) are being pressurized.
The overall improved customer viewing experience and cost of the service are the two potential drivers for boosting the video on demand to the peak. The world of video streaming is now crowded by the many dominant players in the industry. If you are looking for cutting the cord, then the infographics below would help you choose the best streaming service by price, usability, and content to try.
Those are days are obsolete when you had to physically visit a store to buy CD’s of movies or tune into your television just to watch your favorite show at the point where it gets telecasted.
Here in this article, we will talk about top streaming services which have actually made the use of television primitive. With a fast broadband connection, you can now lever your favorite shows on platforms like Netflix and Amazon.
Netflix
With an incredible UI and proposal framework, Netflix takes the step ahead to leave its opponents behind. You would now be able to watch shows like House of Cards; Orange is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and Stranger Things.
The fundamental plan remains at $7.99/month except it’s constrained to ordinary video quality and single streaming. You can move up to different bundles to get at least two simultaneous HD streams for an extra cost. It functions admirably with an extensive variety of gadgets and a perfect stage that conveys the best elements.
Hulu
With this administration, you can get a portion of the significant network shows separated from CBS’ programs and an assortment of TV shows each day. It is one of the top streaming services accessible in the US and not yet launched in different nations.
Right now, you may not get the free, promotion aided level that was there previously; however, you can subscribe with $7.99 every month for complete seasons and episodes of TV shows.
Amazon Video
The Standalone Amazon Video quotes $8.99 for a monthly membership. With a $99/year membership, you can get to Amazon’s exclusive administrations and a large number of famous shows and films globally. They even honor you with a free Kindle book each month and free two-day shipping upon purchase.
YouTube TV
YouTube TV offers boundless cloud DVR stock to store distinctive shows for you on YouTube servers. It has united with other huge TV systems including Disney, BBC, NBC, and so forth. With YouTube TV, you get the opportunity to keep your content for nine months and stream it from anyplace in the US, till you’re online.
Sling TV
For $20 every month, Sling TV gives you Sling Orange arrangement with live access to channels like TBS, AMC, CNN, The Food Network, and that’s just the beginning. There is the fundamental Sling Blue arrangement that backings three streams for $25 and you can have both supporting four concurrent streams for $40.
HBO Now
HBO was the primary real premium channel to go live without anyone else. For a few years, HBO avoided collaborating with other cable providers, yet it at long last confirmed to its fan’s order and launched an online streaming service named HBO Now, for just $14.99 every month.
The first HBO premium content station offers two methods of streaming: HBO GO from cable or satellite bundle and HBO NOW intended for the cord-cutters
CBS All Access
For $5.99 every month, you can enjoy 8,500 episodes; remain fully informed regarding latest shows reporting in real time or make up for lost time with old top choices like The Twilight Zone, Taxi, and each Star Trek you could seek after. New episodes are accessible the following day, and it aids live TV streams in 185 markets.
Crackle
With more than 200 review choices, Crackle is among the free streaming platforms, in spite of the fact that you need to watch through a reasonable list of advertisements for this option. The writing computer programs are about the content you’ve known about from Pitch Black, Total Recall, All in the Family, and others.
PlayStation Vue
This is for those PlayStation fans that are searching for a genuine digital TV programming bundle; PlayStation TV is an awesome alternative. Their bundles run from the essential arrangement for $40 every month to an extensive bundle that accompanies 90 channels including some top-notch channels, for example, the Ultra version at $75 every month.
Stated above are ten of the top streaming services which have actually brought a huge turnaround in the online sector. However, the best online video streaming service for you will be the one which meets all your necessities.
