In a previous blog entry, we covered the numerous benefits of cloud PVR compared with local PVR. After several years of successful Transport Stream and the adaptive bitrate deployments with more than 20 operators, now is the perfect time to analyze how cloud PVR services are consumed by end users.
The popularity of PVR
The uptake of a cloud PVR service once it is launched is always very fast. Our data gathered from customers shows that after a month of availability, between 50-70% of subscribers use the service at least once. The most popular content for recording are children’s shows, series’ and major sports events.
Recording habits
When comparing live viewing and recording requests, you can see that the peaks happen at the same time.
On average, for a population of 50,000 users, when you take into account 100 recorded programs, 30 are recorded only once, and 20 are recorded more than five times.
The recording time per end user varies a lot:
- 50% of users record less than 2500 minutes of video in a year.
- 2% of users record more than 15,000 minutes of video in a year.
Also, 50% of end users record more than one type of content at a time.
Playback habits
Recorded content is usually watched rapidly after it’s been recorded.
- An average of 70% of recordings are actually watched within a year.
- 80% of the viewings happen within the week. These account for 25% of the recorded content.
Packaged offerings for Operators
From a business model perspective, there are a few ways that operators can package their offerings:
- All of our customers are selling their cloud PVR services based on hours instead of GB/TB for the service storage capacity, so that the notion is understood by everyone.
- Most providers bundle a few cloud DVR hours (i.e., 10 to 30 hours) within their TV packages to encourage end-users to try the service “for free.”
- Most content providers also offer upgrades to increase the cloud DVR storage capacity (price and number of hours depend on the market).
