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20 Jun 2009
A recent study has found that eight per cent of consumers have watched an illegally downloaded video file.
Research firm Futuresource Consulting surveyed consumers in the US, UK, France and Germany, and found that viewers are still largely unwilling to pay additional costs for online video, and gravitate towards ad-supported services or illegal downloads.
"There is a huge appetite for free on-demand TV, but levels of paid-for activity are still low," said Alison Casey, head of global content at Futuresource.
"In many cases, the propagation of new business models is key to the industry, and site location, navigation and unsuitable meta tagging are still causing major problems for consumers. In many cases, the people we surveyed said they would watch more online content if the user interface and search facilities were improved."
The interest in on-demand television packages is especially high in the UK, where the BBC iPlayer has been a huge success. As many as 80 per cent of pay TV subscribers are taking advantage of additional online content from their service providers.
Users in the UK were also found to be the largest consumers of online video, and two-thirds admitted to having viewed a movie or television programme online.
Researchers suggested that ad-supported models could be the way forward for content providers. While few users are willing to pay for television or movie content, 99 per cent said that they would watch ad-supported online content.
"The next five years will be a period of major transition for the entertainment industry and there will be a significant shift in who receives a share of the profits, with a raft of digital platforms and the rise of on-demand content vying for rights and advertising revenues," said Casey.
"The national boundaries which used to govern broadcasting are now being challenged by the global nature of the internet, as was the case with e-commerce 15 years ago."
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Do you agree?
Simple solution
Here we go again "Treasury Losing Millions" for goodness sake there are very simple solutions to all of this. Just make media easier and cheaper to access the more people will use the services and obviously this in turn will generate more long term income for the producing companies. The main problem is the producing companies want to maximise their profits too quickly which means less people can access the content because they simply cannot afford it. I am lucky enough to be able to have SKY HD and Blueray and enjoy the results but this costs £60 a month for the sky package alone (without the sports) but if it was £40 a month SKY would have 6 extra HD customers in my street alone. Multiply that by every street in the UK or even half of them and sky would nearly double their customer base but are they interested? Sadly no and they wont say why. Could you imagine if this theory was applied to all the media businesses in just the UK, It is mind boggling but I am just me.
Posted by: Michael Todd 22 Jun 2009
Hardcore pirate or just tight
I don't know who these 8% are but they must be hardcore piracy fans or very tight with their money. I have a 2 meg connection and cannot be bothered to download gigs of a film, it takes hours/days. If I did I would then only watch it on a 22 inch wide monitor screen, likely in either a window or grainy full screen. I can rent a DVD for £1.99 and watch it on a 42 inch screen, why would I go to all that trouble just to get something for free? If it comes to it, wait long enough and you can see it for free on television. I currently have 30 things I have recorded since December and still haven't got around to watching them. Once I have I delete them. I think these people just want something for nothing, even if it isn't worth having.
Posted by: Halo572 21 Jun 2009