ATLANTA – Although early consumer demand for TV Everywhere services seems promising, the lack of technical standards and the difficulties of encoding programs for multiple video platforms may trip up the multi-screen video drive, according to a group of industry experts.
Speaking on a multi-platform TV panel at a Light Reading conference in Atlanta late last month, the experts said they worry that the explosive growth of different video platforms, devices, and formats could make it nearly impossible for content and service providers to keep up. They also worry that, without common tech standards and specs, programmers will have to customize their content for each platform, including cable video-on-demand (VOD), Internet video, and mobile devices.
“We’re very concerned that if this gets out of control, the world as we know it may end,” said Malcolm Stanley, director of advertising product management for SeaChange International. He noted that some programmers must create 15 “copy variants” for each piece of content, ranging from 720p and 1080i HDTV formats to versions crafted uniquely for different Apple devices. He said adding metadata to each piece of content further complicates the process, requiring “massive systems from a data flow perspective.”
In fact, Stanley said, SeaChange has identified a new trend called “nfurication." Drawing laughs from the crowd, he defined this trend as “the process of creating multiple copies of an arbitrary object, each of which varies slightly from the original product.
Marty Roberts, vice president of sales and marketing for thePlatform, agreed with Stanley. “Every time I think we’re getting close to standardization, something like the iPad is created,” he complained.
Picking up where Stanley left off, Roberts said some online video sites use meta-data to stand out from rivals. Unfortunately, he said, that produces challenges for firms like thePlatform that encode online video.
“Why is [Comcast Corp.’s] Fancast better than Hulu?" he asked. “What we find is that every site we push content to has a different meta-data solution we need to match.”
Panelists also debated how the shift of viewers from TV to the Web and mobile devices would affect the bottom line of programmers. “At the end of the day, the real problem isn’t that viewership is migrating between these platforms,” Roberts said. “The real problem is that the monetization of video on these platforms is lower than it is on TV.”
As a result, he said, some programmers are boosting the number of ads they place in online videos to generate more revenue. He noted that ABC recently doubled its ad time on ABC.com to six minutes per hour.
Although such TV Everywhere pioneers as Rogers Communications and Comcast are not charging cable subscribers extra fees for their multi-screen offerings, Colin Dixon, a senior partner at The Diffusion Group (TDG) , said programmers and distributors may be able to charge a premium for using multiple platforms.
“The average person spends $62 or $63 [monthly] for a pay TV subscription. A substantial number will pay $75 for a three-screen service,” Dixon said, highlighting research conducted by his firm. “They’re paying for mobility — they’re paying for access.”
Alan Breznick is a Toronto-based senior analyst at Heavy Reading, part of the Light Reading Communications Network, and a Cartt.ca contributor.
