"Digital Content" articles

Having seen a fair few products and services at CES 2018, one technology stood out to me as being particularly interesting from a consumer standpoint: cloud computing services for the consumer. Two companies in particular were showing off this technology on the show floor, NVIDIA and a smaller company called Shadow. These companies charge consumers a monthly fee to stream the processing power of a high-end PC to any broadband-connected computer, the selling point being that once you...

Speaking from an entertainment focus at CES, nearly everyone I met with talked about being able to provide a single, unified interface for all the video products and services that consumers are using. And when you think about it, it makes complete sense why that is such a big deal. We have reached the point where using two or more video services is becoming the norm rather than the exception to a rule, and because users have to sort through the several different services they use to...

“Hey, did you watch that popular show last night where the thing happened?” “No. I haven’t watched it yet. Thanks a lot.” “Oh… Sorry…” The penultimate season of HBO’s global hit series Game of Thrones is in the books. While many of the show’s die-hard fans are sure to have watched it through the season finale, coverage in the media suggests otherwise. Media outlets have been careful to mask key plot developments in their headlines and...

Ever since the release of  Jaws  in June of 1975, summer has been the realm of the multiplex blockbuster. Tentpole action film franchises like  Star Wars, Batman, Spider-man, Jurassic Park,  and  Indiana Jones  often find themselves in theaters during the summer movie season from May through July. Summer generally brought a lull in television, the demands of weekly programming schedules relegated to low-cost or specialty programming while the cast and crews...

Crunchyroll is partnering with Twitch.tv to offer a 6-day Crunchyroll marathon on the gaming-focused live streaming platform. The marathon started today on July 27, and it will run back-to-back episodes of entire series 24 hours a day for nearly 20 different anime hits. The episodes are free to watch on Twitch.tv, containing ads unless viewers are Twitch Prime subscribers (either purchased separately or as an added benefit of being an Amazon Prime subscriber). Viewers...

Amazon and Netflix went head-to-head at the 2017 Golden Globes Sunday night, as the OTT video services’ original content was up for several awards. Original content has become an increased focus for OTT video services. Original content provides streaming services with a less expensive option to accumulate new content compared to acquiring licenses from outside sources. In addition, with over 190 OTT video services in North America, original content can create differentiation among...

The holidays are here, and the winter season has typically served as premium real estate for blockbuster films (secondary only to the summer) and holiday television favorites. Netflix, however, is positioning itself as a stay-in alternative to the box office crowds despite a slate of winter tentpole films. At the box office, films like Harry Potter franchise continuation Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Warner Bros.), Doctor Strange (Disney/Marvel Studios), Rogue One: A...

New Parks Associates research cited by The Washington Post today reveals the competitive landscape among top OTT video service providers. The IoT research firm recently released an updated Top 10 list of OTT video services, which showed the majority of OTT video consumption is now on Internet-connected TV. The list, which has Netflix maintaining the top spot ahead of Amazon Video, Hulu, MLB.TV, and WWE Network, is ranked by number of paid subscribers, excluding transactional or...