Over a short period of time and with the emergence of time with coronavirus breakdown, waves and lockdowns the OTT platforms like Amazon prime, Netflix, Youtube, SonyLIV, Hotstar etc have increasingly gained lot of popularity in the digital world and home-locked youths. There is a trend of binge watching amongst youngsters.
What is OTT and VOD?
The full-form of OTT is ‘Over The Top’. It refers to television and film content can be viewed easily on mobile or screens only with use of internet connection without relying on a dedicated satellite or a cable connection.
OTT gives you an advantage of watching the content of your choice whenever you want to instead of the traditional way where you could watch the content only when the content is telecasted. Also in these platforms the content does not get downloaded to device, it gets streamed from start to the end. So it is also called as watching VOD, ‘Video on Demand’
Types of VODs
- SVOD : Subscription Video on Demand
In this mode, the user have to pay some fixed amount of price for the content they want access to and made available till a fixed end date. Just like mobile telecom service the packs are available in different price ranges. As long as users pay subscription fee, they will have access to the content. Once they stop paying, the access will be lost. SVOD can also allow users to download content and watch it but will take away access once their subscription runs out. eg. Netflix, Amazon, Disney’s hotstar etc. - TVOD : Transactional Video on Demand
In this mode, the users don’t have to pay for access to all the content a service provider has to offer. Rather they only pay for that which they wish to watch. If you want to have access to the video only for a day or a week, you can simply rent it. TVOD service providers provide packages on each film accordingly. You can either buy the video content to keep or rent it for a little while, after which you lose access to it. eg. YouTube, Google Play Movies, Amazon Rent etc. - AVOD : Ad-supported Video on Demand
In this mode, users don’t have to pay any price amount. The content is free. The revenue earned by service providers here is through ads. Whenever a user accesses a new video, they will be shown an ad or two of a brand that pays the service provider to show users their advertisements. Through this method, you get access to all content available without worrying about paying for it. Since the users don’t pay for the content they don’t get a choice in choosing the ads they watch. eg. YouTube
Vivishine 