The massive pervasiveness of the Internet and the ease of piracy has not made it any easier for companies to deliver data hungry OTT TV services. This is because of the complexity (and cost) associated with licensing content. InstantTV fixes this - not just with technology, but with content as well.
InstantTV enables any company to become a TV Network with a 100+ channels across any country, any genre and targeted at any audience. How do we do this? The principle is that the vast amount of content on the public web - Youtube etc. are of limited appeal in the premium context. But that is not to say that all of it is not valuable. What we do is we painstakingly curate thousands of videos and deliver them as linear channels from the millions of videos that are out there. This thin sliver of highly filtered and curated (~1%) content helps any company deliver a TV network targeted at engagement with its customers.
A short video of our interface with linearized Indian content (showing popular YouTube channels from India in a "linear format" as opposed to VOD) is here:http://youtu.be/U3meJrI9Hy0 We support content from virtually any country, though.
3. The Problem: Launching an OTT TV Service* is hard,
expensive & painful
• License Content – both expensive & painful: You need to deal with
signi$icant content costs and complex license terms such as:
• Large Minimum Guarantees: Millions of $ you pay regardless of usage.
• Device Support: Licenses may cover iPhones, but not iPads!
• Business Model: Licenses may allow ads, but not subscriptions.
• Build / Purchase Technology: Licensing content is one thing; you still
have to build a system for delivery that considers:
• Encoding: Bit rates, encoding formats etc.
• Streaming: Geographies, CDNs, Negotiated Bandwidth Agreements.
• Servers: Load balancing, caching etc.
• Curate Content & Channels: Ensure the right mix of content targeted at
your customers. Iteration and experimenting with content is in$lexible &
expensive because of upfront minimum guarantee commitments.
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*An OTT TV Service is a CableTV-like TV Service run over the Internet. Users generally experience them through connected TVs, iPhones & iPads.
They do not require a traditional set-top box. OTT Services may be on-demand (e.g. NetHlix) or "Live" (e.g. As extensions of Cable TV services)