What's Over-the-Top Services (OTT)?

Over the Top (OTT) services refers to "video, television and other services provided over the internet rather than via a service provider’s own dedicated, managed  Internet-TV network... It's content delivery via the internet that suits providers who are primarily broadcasters rather than ISPs." I'm quoting from the PACE website. They are a "leading technology developer for PayTV and broadband service providers" and as such are in the thick of this period of convergence. Dictionaries can't keep up.

The term first came to my attention last October when HBO their plan for stand-alone over-the-top services (OTT) giving consumers the option to contract with them directly for their content and not have to go through a service provider like Comcast who, to show how confusing things can get is also a broadcaster owning 100% of NBC Universal.  For people like me who may have Comcast as an ISP, but have no TV a.k.a cord cutters, this means I will be able to access HBO without Comcast as a subscription, like Netflix and Amazon, hopefully PBS and Acorn. Acorn?

Acorn TV streams full episodes of the best British mystery, drama, comedy, and documentary TV shows.  They just announced making the three new series of Foyle's War available as part of a $5 a month subscription to their channel. PBS will not carry the program as a network according to a report on PBS Morning Edition, but individual PBS stations may feature the series. I follow FeirceOnlineVideo on twitter to get a feel for the action and am checking out who they follow to watch the action.

Where is all of this going? Where will consumers be taken?  I'll defer to industry folks such as Jim O'Neill, editor of the blog, VideoMind and a principal of the "video solutions" company, OOYALA. He writes about what's going on at the intersection of TV and the Internet. An intersection with no traffic lights nor stop signs, just a whole lot of convergence going on.  As author and USC professor Henry Jenkins pointed out in a blog post (2001) "Media convergence is an ongoing process, occurring at various intersections of media technologies, industries, content and audiences; it’s not an end state."

Ruth Ann Barrett, Digital Savvy, February 2, 2015, Portland, Oregon. Follow DigitalSavvyite on Twitter.

New research shows that nearly one-in-five broadband households say they are “likely” to subscribe to HBO’s over-the-top product that’s due out in April… a whopping 91% of those likely subscribers already purchase a pay-TV service. And, according to research Parks Associates conducted of broadband households in December, about 50% of them said they would shave their pay-TV bundle in order to buy HBO, which Parks “tested” at $15 a month. - See more at: http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/consumers-apt-shave-hbo-pay-tv-bundle-opt-hbo-go-ott?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu6rIeu%2FhmjTEU5z16OkpWaO0h4kz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMSMFnMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7TBK81ly94QWRPn#sthash.uPtoFLi5.KU8W8syH.dpuf

New research shows that nearly one-in-five broadband households say they are “likely” to subscribe to HBO’s over-the-top product that’s due out in April… a whopping 91% of those likely subscribers already purchase a pay-TV service. And, according to research Parks Associates conducted of broadband households in December, about 50% of them said they would shave their pay-TV bundle in order to buy HBO, which Parks “tested” at $15 a month. - See more at: http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/consumers-apt-shave-hbo-pay-tv-bundle-opt-hbo-go-ott?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu6rIeu%2FhmjTEU5z16OkpWaO0h4kz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMSMFnMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7TBK81ly94QWRPn#sthash.uPtoFLi5.KU8W8syH.dpuf

HBO was going to roll out an over-the-top product to attract some of the 10 million homes in the U.S. that had broadband butnopay-TV service? - See more at: http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/consumers-apt-shave-hbo-pay-tv-bundle-opt-hbo-go-ott?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu6rIeu%2FhmjTEU5z16OkpWaO0h4kz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMSMFnMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7TBK81ly94QWRPn#sthash.uPtoFLi5.KU8W8syH.dpuf

HBO was going to roll out an over-the-top product to attract some of the 10 million homes in the U.S. that had broadband butnopay-TV service? - See more at: http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/consumers-apt-shave-hbo-pay-tv-bundle-opt-hbo-go-ott?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu6rIeu%2FhmjTEU5z16OkpWaO0h4kz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMSMFnMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7TBK81ly94QWRPn#sthash.uPtoFLi5.KU8W8syH.dpuf