Video and the way we watch videos are revolutionizing the world, drastically. If it was the television in the 80s, the late 90s witnessed the birth and emergence of the Internet. Thanks to Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the year 2005 witnessed the birth of YouTube. YouTube was a revolution. It changed the way we see videos. It’s the power house of videos with over a million views in a day. But, but, it is not the end.
Since the rise of YouTube, people began to watch and create more video content than ever. The culture of communicating, learning, and entertaining through videos is now popular. Today, there are many online channels hosting a variety of video content from all over the world through which people can view videos without having to move more than a finger. Along with the culture comes trends, and the latest one in videos is what we call Video on Demand (VOD).
VOD is what it says. People or the audience make their choice and demand for content they would like to watch. This is a radical shift from the TV, cable TV to be precise, where you have no choice but to be satisfied with what is offered. We have many types of VOD today. We’ve got SVOD, TVOD and AVOD. So, what are these?
Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) is when you subscribe to a streaming service in a monthly or yearly basis. Based on the service providers package, you watch just what you pay for and can drop off the service anytime it doesn’t suit your needs (depending on the providers’ terms and conditions, watch out for that). Thus, total freedom is provided to watch what you want and when you want to is provided to you. This methodology of easy in and out is visible in the whole industry in general, which means that the services must work hard to retain their customers.
Transactional VOD is the “all you can eat” buffet version of the SVOD. TVOD will not charge for initial sign up for the service but only for the content you watch. It can be movies or television series or any sports events. You can watch only what you want and not all that the service offers. No more bloat content. Think of Game of Thrones. ‘Winter is coming’ (the new season too). Grey’s Anatomy. Quantico. And the like…
Advertisement or Ad based VOD, is a model which is free for the users. You will pay with your sight in terms of ‘views’ and not through dollars. The best example is You Tube. Millions of video content, triple the amount of users, and quadruple the amount of advertisements. This model became highly popular with the advent of YouTube. With more and more people into viewing videos on a daily basis, this model has a bright future and we may see many new things through these online video services. But there is an issue here. A glaring one. In all the other VOD services, people were only allowed to view videos/channels on TV. But with AVOD/YouTube things are different. You are on the web, and the web allows a lot of dangerous things. Downloading being one of the greatest epidemics that Internet content hasn’t yet recovered from. With YouTube, you can watch millions of videos, share videos, and collaborate. A bit of a nuisance is the advertisements. Ah! but that’s okay a tad bit here and there, we anyway have ads on TV too. But security of content? That’s a looming unanswered question. YouTube cannot assure you that your content cannot be downloaded or misused. This is where secure video hosting solutions play an important role. Such solutions allow you to share video/content through the cloud and collaborate with as many of your users.
So before you choose a platform to share your content on the web, beware of the threats and make the right choices.
