Skip to main content

The Evolution of Video Content Distribution Strategies

The video entertainment industry status-quo has been disrupted by emerging service providers -- such as Netflix and Amazon -- that don't play by the old rules.

The new market realities are forcing a much needed transformation in the distribution chain dynamics. The self-inflicted constraints of a bygone era are being swept aside.

Content owners -- including HBO, Disney, and Fox -- are rapidly growing in importance as customers for video encoder and transcoders, which are used in online service delivery.

Previously, content owners have always purchased some video encoders for primary distribution -- which feed into existing pay-TV systems.

However, now their investment is increasingly in multi-format transcoders -- that support direct-to-consumer distribution. HBO Go is just one example of this phenomenon in action.

"Content owners will grow from 11 percent of the total encoder and transcoder market in 2012 to 17 percent in 2017, having already passed the importance of Telco operators for use in traditional IPTV platforms," said Sam Rosen, practice director at ABI Research.

Their role in distribution stems from both authenticated access offered as part of a retransmission agreement with a classical pay-TV operator, but will also increasingly include advertising supported free-to-wire services and some standalone content-owner bundles.

The total encoder and transcoder markets grow to become over a $1.5 billion dollar market in 2017, a market led by the combined Arris/Motorola, with Cisco, Ericsson, Harmonic, and Thomson Video Networks all playing a strong role.

Envivio leads the file-based multi-screen market while Elemental Technologies leads the live multi-screen market.

This segment is a rapidly evolving part of the video entertainment market that is a key indicator of ongoing transformation. These findings are part of the ABI Research cloud video and video hardware research service.

Popular posts from this blog

The $150B Race for AI Dominance

Two years after ChatGPT captured the world's imagination, there's a dichotomy in the enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) market. On one side, technology vendors are making unprecedented investments in AI infrastructure and new feature capabilities. On the other, there's measured adoption from customers who carefully weigh the AI costs and proven use case benefits. Artificial Intelligence Market Development The scale of new investment is significant. Cloud vendors alone were expected to invest over $150 billion in capital expenditures in 2024, with AI infrastructure being the primary driver. This massive bet on AI's future is reflected in the rapid growth of AI server revenue. Looking at just two major players - Dell Technologies and HPE - their combined AI server revenue surged from $1.2 billion in Q4 2023 to $4.4 billion in Q3 2024, highlighting the dramatic expansion. Yet despite these investments, the revenue returns remain relatively modest. The latest TBR resea...