In February I wrote about the impending battle of the SVOD players. Netflix has finally entered the market so it is time to sit back and watch how it plays out.
Recently a friend has asked me a couple of questions about these services
1) Which one should he choose – try them all as they all have a free trial!
2) How does he set it up – as I mentioned in the original post I think this is going to be a barrier in the short to medium term for take up. Obviously early adopters will work it out but when these services go mass getting distribution (how the customer accesses the content) right is going to be a major hurdle to overcome. It only takes about 30mins to set up and some very basic instructions are below.
The interesting thing was when I looked at which service he should choose the difference in pricing between Sky and the SVOD services became very apparent.
Sky: $69.63: Basic Package $48.70 and Movies $20.93 with a twelve month contract
For that same twelve month contract you could get*
Netflix (HD) $12.99 plus
Neon $20.00 plus
Lightbox $12.99 plus
Quickflix $12.99
Total $59.97
Now it is completely ridiculous that you need that much content, I can see at most people having two services, so there are some large customer savings on offer and a big risk to Sky’s core business. In fact there are a couple more smaller risks to sky, as the SVOD services are on-demand there is no need to have a mySky service and the SVOD providers all provide HD so you don’t need to buy an HD ticket.
However the risk to Sky isn’t a short term risk as there are a few of things in Sky’s favour
- SPORT: Sky still has sport – to get sport you need pay the $48.70 basic package
- The US experience is that total media consumption goes up before SVOD begins to cannibalize live TV
- This is a long game it took many years for the US market to shift their viewing habits from traditional TV If you follow my set up you will need to have an apple TV, iPad and likely unlimited broadband.
If you want more information on the impact and changing consumption patterns in the US this article is a good starting point.
Basic set up of SVOD services
- To connect Lightbox or Neon to your TV and the simplest way is to get an apple TV ($119) http://store.apple.com/nz/appletv and use your iPad to stream the content.
- You then download the Lightbox app on your iPad and airplay it to the apple TV which connected to your wireless network and TV via an HD cable
- Netflix has a native app on the Apple TV, which just requires your login and password.
- Total set up should take about 30mins
Apple TV: Apple TV also gives you the ability rent movies from Itunes directly to your TV
Apple Airplay: lets you play content on one device and watch or listen to it on another. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204289 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRnvvkBl62k
KS.
