Over-the-top television (or OTT TV for short) is a technology that’s been heralded as a game-changer for home entertainment media. OTT TV is a television which, by using its own built-in wireless router, can plug into an already extant wireless network to deliver online content to your big-screen home theater. The marriage of television with broadband wireless technology allows for possibilities that make today’s HD cable television systems (systems that were only rolled out in the early 00’s) already seem outdated. By delivering video over the Internet not affiliated with the name-brand carrier, OTT TV has the potential of allowing for an infinite number of broadcast options. Imagine a high-definition satellite television network with the nearly limitless number of channels as YouTube, and you can get a better sense of the scale of entertainment possibilities.
Over-the-top television is set to outpace the old cable networks; it’s a question not of if, but of when. Nevertheless, OTT TV is a young, upstart industry, with Apple and Google acting as some of the principal powers. There’s an overall need for OTT TV developers to educate the greater broadcast media on the new technology’s works and ways.
To that end, the third annual Over-the-Top TV Conference will be held in Santa Clara this year. Questions that will be addressed include identifying the major players in the industry, as well as the opportunities and hurdles presented for others in dealing with these major players. Other items on the agenda will be helping determine which OTT TV operators and aggregators are poised to become the first major content providers for the technology, in addition to discussing new means of advertising and addressing one’s customer base.
We at Telairity are proud to be among the sponsors of OTT CON 2012. With our encoding technology already being used in many different OTT TV systems worldwide, we are keen on ushering in this new era of limitless entertainment and variety.
