WATCH THIS
Using video as a focus for geographically dispersed groups is becoming a practical part of education and business, as well as entertainment – and this applies as much to VOD as live content. The ‘watch party’ was already gaining steam before the pandemic, but now, the ability to simultaneously view and comment on VOD content is an important means of distinguishing your platform. Wyplay provides full technical services to major content outlets in Europe and the Americas. Giving the end viewer flexibility to
interact with videos how they want is becoming a priority for its customers. Wyplay recently added a feature called Community, which uses blockchain and peer-to-peer technology to deliver video in new ways. Sceenic has been a leader in allowing media companies to incorporate co-watching into their services. Its Watch Together solution is a white- label platform that integrates with a customer’s existing OTT, IPTV or STB channel. This latest addition will allow heavy-hitter customers to offer watch parties to home audiences.
Video solutions provider VisualOn also contributes a watch party solution of its own. The most recent iteration, which has been branded WatchParty ShowTime, allows viewers to interact live with on-screen personalities via a chat interface. The watch party has been a considerable attention-grabber for sports broadcasters looking to engage fans. Being able to give your audiences – or employees – the option to view and discuss content remotely is very likely to become non-negotiable.
CEO Viktor Underwood. “This could be for external use, like press conferences, meetings and giving information to the community; or internal
accessibility through captioning. This also makes the content easily dialogue-searchable. “On the corporate side, webinars have accelerated in the past couple of years,” says Underwood. “Webinars today aren’t just seminars online – they’re a format that can be used for knowledge sharing and teaching your audience. And the on-demand part of that is central.” BRING VIEWERS HOME Underwood notes the increasing value people are putting on their own platforms, with ‘publish everywhere’ not as attractive as it once was. Delivering things through your own corporate channel, while keeping users within the brand, is now key. “Even just a few years ago, it was thought that you should publish all your content on every platform
communication, like company training.”
DELIVERING THINGS THROUGH YOUR OWN CORPORATE CHANNEL AND KEEPING USERS WITHIN THE BRAND IS NOWKEY
Quickchannel allows users to give easy access to both live and on-demand content. In addition to uploaded content, live material can be automatically turned into VOD and delivered through a company- branded, Netflix-like experience – made available to the public, subscribers or internally. New features are added all the time, most
recently AI-powered speech-to-text capabilities, which enable greater
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