Writing for the Boston Globe, Ty Burr confirms that accessing video on demand (VOD) is now the way most people watch movies.
“[They are viewing films] at home with a flick of the remote, on laptops or smartphones with the tap of a finger, renting or buying films through their cable on-demand menus, through subscription services like Netflix, or via iTunes or Amazon Instant Video,” Burr explained. “By 2018, VOD is expected to be a $45 billion market.”
Indeed, Matt Strauss, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Video Services for Comcast Cable, recently told Lost Remote that networks are beginning to understand the power of video on demand to capture new audiences.
“More and more, networks are saying, ‘Catch up with [network name] on demand’ rather than ‘set your DVR to record the show,’” writes LostRemote’s Adam Flomenbaum.
“If networks can drive audience to VOD, not only can they monetize that audience better than a DVR, but also that audience has a higher propensity to then consume the content live or live within three days.”
According to David Bank at RBC Capital Markets, the biggest subscription VOD companies — Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime — will spend a collective $6.8 billion to license content for their services, up from $5.2 billion this year, with double-digit growth expected for the foreseeable future.
Eliott Jones, VP of User Experience at Rambus, notes the above-mentioned industry shift towards a VOD-centric paradigm is being driven by the wide availability of 4K/UHD displays and the recent slew of popular, early release films such as Snowpiercer.
“Perhaps most importantly, today’s connected TV user experience has clearly reached a critical milestone that is defined by convenience, reliability and the delivery of high quality content,” he told Rambus Press.
“More specifically, cinema quality content on legitimate VOD sites can be easily, streamed (or downloaded) and watched without having to worry about poor-quality, badly transcoded video from questionable or less than reliable sources.”
As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press, access to uninterrupted and high-quality content on set-top boxes and connected televisions is contingent upon a strong level of hardware-based security against unauthorized access.
For example, MovieLabs published its Enhanced Content Protection specification in September 2013 for access to 4k/UHD content, which specifically requires a hardware-based root-of-trust.
“It is in the content provider and distributors’ best interest to provide consumers with the highest quality programming,” added Cynthia Yu, a director at Rambus’ Cryptography Research division. “By utilizing the hardware security built directly into the consumer’s viewing device, you are future-proofing access to premium content for years to come.”
Interested in learning more? You can check out our CryptoFirewall™ product page here and read a number of related blog posts on the subject, including “Snowpiercer success highlights growing VOD market” here, “204 million connected TV devices by 2017” here and “MSTAR Semiconductor and Rambus secure connected TVs” here.
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