Cord Cutting Over The Horizon : 5 Reasons Why OTT VOD Is Going To Rule

A decade back, not owning a TV was because you could not afford it. Today, it’s the ‘in-thing’. Yes, and they call it ‘cord cutting’. Even more, it’s the most reasonable thing to do because you could watch TV anywhere, anytime you wanted without having a huge flat screen take up space on your living room wall.

However, the prime reason for people to give up on TV first and cable later was the disgust they felt with high costs, poor service, and the dismissive behavior from call centers. Some 4 million U.S. cable subscribers have cut the cord in the past few years. At Muvi, we believe it’s about time you did away with the cable.

5 Reasons To Move Over To OTT VoD

1. Binge On Your Favorite Content: Web-only channels Netflix, Hulu and others are increasingly following the HBO model and creating their own can’t-miss shows. And they’re off to a good start – Netflix grabbed 14 Emmy nominations for three of its original series. The streaming channels are able to develop their series informed by incredible amounts of data on what viewers like. Netflix’s “House of Cards” came together as the service was able to find a boatload of viewers who liked the original British series, movies starring actor Kevin Spacey and those made by director David Fincher. Now with storage facilities available, download your shows and binge watch anywhere, anytime.
2. Discover More and More Original and Niche Content Your Cable Didn’t Want You To : Tired of watching what everyone’s watching, a lot of young people are watching what nobody’s watching. Jenna Mourey, known as Jenna Marbles on YouTube, has more than 10 million subscribers to her personal video blog series focusing on beauty and relationship advice. Machinima grew out of a gaming-focused website, and its Youtube channel has almost 9 million subscribers. That’s sending a strong signal to many other content providers. Well, All India Bakchod and The Viral Fever Studios created a rage in the Indian web space with their rib tickling (also ‘mildly’ offensive) humor.
3. Unleash The Power Of OTT Gadgets : Roku Stick, Chromecast or XBOX…it’s a long list of OTT gadgets now available in the market enabling you to stream video over the top and offering you spectacular content discovery features. You could actually use voice recognition to control the XBOX streamer. Bet your cable can’t do that.
4. wWatch Local TV Minus The Cable : Watch local TV channels through services like Sling TV and Apple TV minus your cable connection. The number of local channels is still limited but in the next few years, the bundles with OTT services will beat cable handsomely.

SVODs Pounce On The Opportunity

Subscription based OTT VOD services saw the viewer shift as an amazing opportunity to buck up and push cable TV even farther. Let’s have a glimpse of something very basic for a difference:-

In this instance, the data seems to show that, if you want to catch up on complete seasons of TV shows, your best bet is to pull out your wallet and purchase episodes from an online VOD service like Amazon or iTunes. In a world where hard drive is no longer a limited resources, the availability of any show any time is still limited by licensing rights and it appears that TV rights holders have decided to crown the internet as the place to go to purchase such content.

It seems, the faithful cable is not the same anymore and it’s OTT VOD that’s getting you everything.

This Is How The Big Players Responded:

• CBS quietly rolled out CBSN, a 24-hour news network that streams over the top.
• Eye Network rolled out CBS All Access, a $6 service that streams the local affiliate station to a personal computer or mobile device.
• HBO and Showtime announced plans to create standalone services not tied to cable subscriptions.

The game changer, however, might be Dish TV’s new Sling TV service, which launched in February this year. The $20 service has no startup fees or long-term contracts, and it allows subscribers to watch cable channels and some video-on-demand on their mobile devices, computers and televisions. And unlike other Internet-based TV services, it has packages for live streaming content from ESPN, ESPN2 and CNN.

The sudden presence of Sling TV has put the net neutrality debate back on the top podium. Since broadband Internet is needed to use the service, and most of these ISPs are the same corporations that market cable TV, Sling TV could hit the cable operators hard where it hurts the most. And Sling TV is precisely the type of service the cable companies had feared and why they rail against the very concept of net neutrality.

OTT VOD Is Why You Need To Cut The Cable Today

When it comes to legally streaming a movie or a hit TV show, the internet is the place to go. The catalog there is richer than the catalog you can find on regular cable television. In a world of increasing bandwidth and cheaper storage space, it appears that VOD services like Amazon VOD and iTunes have taken an early lead. Meanwhile, cable companies are still focusing on more recent fares as part of their offering. Which model is best in the long run is a matter for debate but it is clear that if you wanted to bring yourself up to date on what was hot on TV in 2012, the internet is the place to go.

Considering OTT VOD is the new bright kid on the block, it’d be a wise decision today to grab a Zero CapEx DIY VOD Platform with Muvi to stream your video content minus the hassles of having to resort to cable for streaming or having to witness your targeted viewers getting discouraged with cable.

With Muvi, the growth story never halts, never stops.