At this week’s OTT Question Time, Thursday 28 October, we went to Germany! Not literally, alas, but we discussed the country’s flourishing OTT landscape with a panel of resident experts: Ralph Wagner, CEO of Axinom, the independent media consultant, Anette Schaefer, and Stefan Blickensdörfer, CTO of 3SS.

Together we explored:

• Germany’s TV …
  

Netflix’s technology and development budget has gone from $163m in 2010 to a whopping $1.83bn ten years later – an increase of over 1,000%. Certainly, large chunks of this increase can be apportioned to storage, content delivery and staff costs but what are they spending the rest of the money …

Designing OTT user interfaces and experiences for Smart TVs presents some unique challenges. Compared to smartphones and tablets, which can be deeply personal devices, television sets were – and increasingly are again – where families watch together. TV on a TV is watched from a distance rather than up close. Navigation and …

At this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 30^th Sept, 4pm UK) we talked about the supercharged growth of the children’s OTT market over the past few years. Absolutely, some of that expansion can be accounted for by more kids having been at home, for longer, during the pandemic but what’s …

It’s sounds like the start of a riddle: what part of OTT UIs do you most use but hardly ever notice? Answer: online video players!

Online video players have a gossamer quality about them in that they’re both visible and not. They’re the main way – the only way – that …

A CMS – a content management system – does exactly what it says on the tin, right? It’s a system for managing content. But when it comes to streaming services, and looking at how content interfaces with both their back and front-ends, what is the scope of an OTT CMS? …

One of the best things about linear TV is the sense of a shared experience – of watching, for example, an international football tournament with family or friends and then celebrating (or in England’s case, commiserating!) together. Of tuning in to a worldwide event like the finale of Game of …

Despite the resilience and stability of the infrastructure, the defined quality of the output, the guaranteed geographical coverage for audiences, and the decades of client and supply chain experience built up in the process, there was always going to come a time when it became cheaper to deliver content via …

If you’ve ever found yourself confused about content rights, you’re not alone. I’ve been working in OTT since 2005 and I still don’t really understand why, for example, the Tom Holland Spiderman movies aren’t on Disney+ (Disney owns Marvel, right?), why I can’t find the 2019 season of Masterchef UK, …

“Content is king” – the idea that OTT services need to consistently replenish their catalogues to attract (and retain) customers – is a phrase repeated so often that it’s almost become hackneyed. And yet, for broadcasters, film studios and service-providers, it’s never felt truer. Over the past sixteen months, while …