VOD Summit: Key Concerns for HD and VoD

(by Dorian Benkoil) It became clear watching the panel about high-definition (HD) TV provided via video-on-demand that we’re not there yet. Panelists said there are about 12 million HDTVs in homes, but only about 3 million of them actually have HD services provided to them through the right satellite or cable set top box. There aren’t high-def DVDs yet, and it may be a year before a Sony or Microsoft comes out with them.

And in addition, the panelists all hit on some key concerns for providing high-def video programming on demand:

Security/copyright: How can you keep very high quality copies of what you put out from being copied and distributed? (Glen Hardin of Showtime Networks said that HBO sold some $400 million worth of DVDs for “Sex and the City” and “Sopranos” in the aftermarket. Would you risk putting that at risk?)
Monetizing it: HD takes about four times as much storage and bandwidth to distribute vs. standard def TV. How do you pay for that? How do you pay to bring that – via, say, fiber optic cable – all the way to consumers? How much extra will consumers pay for HD? Can you get advertisers to pay?
Demand for it. The corollary to the monetizing question: Is HD a sea change, akin to color television vs. black-and-white? “Once you use HD it’s pretty hard to go back,” said Tom Rosenstein of, yes, SeaChange, a company that stores and distributes video for a lot of the cable companies and others. Or is it just an incremental step, a convenience that people don’t feel they necessarily need? Rob Jacobson, President and CEO of pay-per-view company iN DEMAND, predicted that when HD DVDs come out that will drive the market and force more HDTV services, including on-demand.

– “Education:” Consumers don’t have right port hooked up, or right service for their HD TVs, for example. Typical concerns for new technology.

The Kagan VOD Summit coverage is sponsored by Maven Networks’ IP VOD Delivery Platform

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