5 Best OTT Platforms

Digital content is becoming hot and growing crazy, which has undoubtedly been a source of disruption in premium cable channels. There is a steady transition from cable box to the over-the-top internet connection. You get to see all on-demand videos and series on these OTT platforms. The best part is, you get to access any online content without having to worry about cable, satellite, or TV subscriptions. They are online streaming applications. People spend more time watching OTT content rather than talking to friends or family members. OTT platforms have occupied a much more significant part of our lives today than they ever were before. 

OTT is an over-the-top streaming service. It is a medium of broadcasting any type of video content through a high-speed internet connection to devices like mobiles, smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, and personal computers. Thus our digital users here have total control of what to watch or cast streams according to their own demand preferences. OTT audiences can also have the freedom of accessing ad-free content. According to Forbes, it is said that 46% of OTT customers are willing to pay $10 a month for streaming online without ads. 

More than just video streaming and video hosting OTT platforms also include monetization features that allow you to sell your video content as ad-enabled content, subscriptions, rentals, or bundled packages. The OTT market can be divided into three types of services:

• SVOD- Subscription Video on Demand
• TVOD- Transactional Video on Demand
• AVOD- Advertising Video on Demand

The evolving platforms are bringing in new tools that are revolutionizing the successful videos and streaming businesses.

Here are a few examples of top media and entertainment companies making use of the OTT streaming technology.

Uscreen is one of the best OTT streaming providers out there. It’s one of the top 10 OTT platforms in the world. This platform helps your business grow by expanding the audiences and increasing the subscribers. You can create independent OTT websites and applications here. 

Features of Uscreen:

• Deliver video content to audiences with your streaming website and OTT apps, both on-demand and live.
• Monetization options for your videos include subscriptions, rentals, pay-per-view, bundles, and free trials.
• Fast encoding and multi-nitrate streaming enable a 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) display resolution (3480 by 2160 pixels) quality viewing experience.
• Video management is made easy using a video content management solution to categorize, add, and remove videos.
• Fully white-labeled platform equipped with an HTML5 video player that is easy-to-use and responsive.
• Community building tools like live chat, options to personalize profiles with custom avatars are included.
• In-built marketing tools for lead generation, landing page building, email marketing, and subscription upselling.
• Privacy is ensured, and all the information shared within your channel is encrypted.
• It is powered by global CDN including Fastly, Mix, and Cloud Flare giving users to stream tons of video content.

The paid plans for Uscreen users per month

1. Basic: $ 49/mo + $ 0.5/ subscriber
2. Amplify: $ 399/mo +$ 0.5/ subscriber
3. Enterprise- Customized based on your customers need

Brightcove has been a consistent player since the year 2004, empowering 70 countries all over the world. Brightcove has top-notch features for both live and on-demand streams and allows you to monetize through ads, subscriptions, one-time purchases, or bundled packages. It is also called the Beacon, designed for medium-sized as well as large brands. 

Features of Brightcove:

• Brightcove delivers curated playlists and thematic carousels using an advanced content management system.
• Provides consistent viewer experience across all devices.
• Marketing automation campaigns here activate conversion rates.
• Customized packages for different types of users. You can also secure content and limit the number of devices per account using Device management control.
• Brightcove integrates with Google Analytics for viewership reports from all devices.
• SVOD, AVOD, AuthVOD, and Freemium are video monetization options here.

Pricing:

Anyone interested in using Brightcove’s services should try contacting them as pricing plans are not available on their website. It’s worth getting associated with Brightcove as they deliver the best video viewing experience.

Our third streaming medium is IBM Watson Media. You get to build a scalable, cloud-based OTT platform that can be made available across multiple domains or devices. The functionalities and features are for large-scale operations, and API access can be customized for advanced users. The streaming services here can be used for OTT video monetization or AVOD. It has over 10 million viewers. 

Features of IBM Watson:

• IBM Watson offers Al-driven solutions for all its features.
• You have options for white-labeling and monetization of content on OTT streaming.
• Create large-scale live streams, webinars, virtual events, and corporate events using the live streaming service.
• Content accessibility over OTT streaming with automated Al-driven closed captioning for live stream and VOD.
• Provides real-time video analytics
• The content management system here comes with a video editor to trim unwanted video segments.
• Integration with Google’s Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP) and Interactive Media Ads for ad tags and holders management.
• Offers a multi CDN (content delivery network) setup for reliability.

Thus IBM offers seamless video hosting, real-time streaming, cloud transcoding, storage capacity, multi-platform layout, and analytics.

Pricing:

1. You can request a 30-day trial to access advanced broadcasting features for 30 days. 
2. Silver- Starts at $99/ month. It is great for small business
3. Gold- Starts at $499/ month. Great for medium-sized companies.
4. Platinum- Starts at $999/ month.Good for those who stream frequently.
5. Custom- This can be customized based on your high volume needs and additional features.

Let us take a close look at the Kaltura OTT media service. Its online video platform is used globally across thousands of ventures, media companies, service providers, and educational institutions. It’s the best for corporations, allowing you to host everything from meetings, webinars, LMS videos, virtual classrooms, plus OTT streaming of live content for town halls and podcasts. It also provides live TV solutions for service providers and broadcasters.

Features of Kaltura:

• Kaltura allows users to create interactive and customizable viewing experiences.
• Advanced, real-time analytics for high-iterated VODs to live streaming, which improves marketing, track share frequency, and content engagement.
• Keeps viewers engaging with a branded player, captions, translations, auto- transcriptions, and other interactive tools.
• The video content management system allows users to choose from their many player options or design and configure their own.
• All-in-one powerful and intuitive media CMS. Create transcoding, manage metadata, edit videos, configure ad campaigns, manage your account and users, and much more.
• Seamless integration of videos into systems like LMS, Teams, Webex, Zoom, data systems, or any other technology partners.
• Virtual event platform is fully customizable which offers advanced branding options like logos, watermarks, features, templates, and plugins.
• Kaltura offers on-the-fly video packaging, which ensures optimized storage of all your video assets. 
• When the users are offline, the multi DRM allows video playback.

In short, Kaltura is the best all-in-one platform for video creators and their viewers. 

Pricing:

Kaltura offers three different packages according to

1. Learning & Development
2. Communication & Collaboration
3. Marketing & Sales

All the above-mentioned packages offer a 30 days trial pack. For enterprises, customized plans are offered. For more details regarding the plan, contact Kaltura’s team. 

Would you like to build your own structure and configure your own server for live streaming? You need to pick Wowza right away. It is most effective for small and medium-sized brands looking for dedicated servers. Wowza delivers high definition, low-latency videos and audio streams to any device at any scale. It powers live and video-on-demand streaming across multiple destinations and broadcasts them globally. You can call this next-generation broadcast journalism.

Features of Wowza:

• It is the most powerful tool for live video monitoring and surveillance, live broadcast, interactive live streaming, low-latency streaming, and video on demand.
• Offers live encoding solution where a hardware device helps you manage and monitor your video production remotely.
• Provides live streaming expertise from anything you start to app development to see a faster success rate.
• Text-to-speech and closed captioning are integrated for live and on-demand streams.
• Gives real-time analytics for video consumption.
• Offers robust video transcoding, nDVR to record a live stream while simultaneously allowing users to play, pause, or rewind the stream, and DRM technology to integrate with third-party Digital Right Management (DRM) tools.

Pricing:

Wowza streaming cloud packages.

1. One-time- $ 149 per month
2. Starter

• Pay as you go- Less than $ 25 per month, prepaid annually
• Basic- less than $85 per month, prepaid annually

1. Professional

• Plus- $ 425 per month, prepaid annually
• Enterprise- customized plans