My Free Vod

VOD II: The Empire Strikes Back

The smart guys at The Diffusion Group published a stat the other day that I found interesting: 37% of cord cutters watch half or more of their TV on Netfli x .

I suppose there are a lot of interesting things about that, but what struck me was the extent to which people are using OTT platforms like Netflix to basically just watch TV. Old TV shows. Movies that have been through their windows. "Gunsmoke" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Really?

The question is: Can that really last?  

While tossing that around in my head, I spent last week at The Cable Show in Chicago. Based upon the trends I'm seeing, I think the Rebellion is in for a much tougher fight than they suspect. Two major trends look to me like very serious problems for Silicon Valley rebels that want to poach media distribution from traditional service providers.  

First, the supply of content on traditional video-on-demand (VOD) platforms is likely to expand dramatically in the coming years. Right now, it's pretty bad. My wife and I decided to check an AMC series called "The Killing" a couple weeks ago. It was week 8 of the series. After some digging, we found the series on our FiOS VOD service, but they only had weeks 6 and 7. We wanted to start at week 1, of course, so I changed to HDMI 2 on my TV, warmed up my Apple TV, and paid $23 for the whole season commercial-free.    

If you discuss this with your TV programming pals, you find out that the limited supply of episodes on the VOD server is the direct result of a simple fact: content providers don't get paid for content on VOD. No license fees for free VOD (or FOD, as most call it). So, they provide a few token episodes but they really hope consumers will find their content on a platform where they can monetize.   

So, what might cause that to change? Why, new ways to make money, of course. 

The first major trend I see is the rise of profitability on VOD. The cable industry is finally getting dynamic ad insertion to work. It's scaling now for local TV ad insertion, and over the course of the next year I think the technical details for monetization of ads by TV programmers will finally come together. As that matures and ad revenues start to lift, programmers will finally be motivated to build more fulsome offerings on the VOD platforms.

Another way to make money with VOD, is paradoxically, on the Internet. TV Everywhere is, essentially, VOD offered by TV programmers and cable operators using Internet technology. It is the means by which cable programming networks will make their content available on a time-shifted basis directly to consumers. Quixotically, it probably will not be extended to smart TV's, where it would be really useful.

Quarantine 2, Quarantine, 2, The, Terminal, 2011, VODRiP, XviD ...

Here is the latest full length Scooby Doo original animated movie nice and early before it comes out on DVD & BD on September 6! For some reason Warner posted this streaming via youtube in some new division of youtube offering VOD. It had much more hefty protection on the stream than the average youtube video. Therefore the only way to get this done was to screencap the film. The video quality is quite exceptional for a screen cap if i do say so myself. Audio is not the best ever, but its definately not horrible. I simply reencoded the audio & video to a more standard format, though please note that without the hard work and effort of my Scooby'riffic friend Shaggy this would never even be here at all until it hits stores in september most likely! Sample included so u know what the quality is like before grabbing the whole film. Enjoy scooby fans!

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The business of media distribution, monetizing film, TV, and video content