Reports from comScore today have shown us that online video content is on the rise – And fast!
Over the past year, 29.6m unique viewers aged 15 and up have watched online video content. It comes as no surprise that YouTube accounted for about 80% of total unique viewers.
The BBC came in a respectable second followed by Microsoft Sites then Facebook and Yahoo! Sites.
Obviously online video content is on the rise and its up to the TV stations to direct some of YouTubes traffic towards them or risk loosing out on a big slice of the pie.
In 2006 Sky launched their mildly successful Sky Player. The player allows viewers to watch selected movie content from the past 30 days and sports from the last week. Sky Player can also be used to watch entertainment shows such as 24 and Desperate Housewives but viewers are on a ‘pay per view’ system.
Virgin Media are yet to offer any form of online player at the moment but with their constant announcements of increasing broadband speed one feels that it isn’t far away.
After initial criticism, the BBC is somewhat of the surprise hit out of all the TV stations with their iPlayer.
It allows viewers to search the last 7 days of TV and Radio content and either view or listen to it online or download it to their personal device (iPod, Playstation Portable or phone). To view content online is as simple as clicking the mouse but to download content you first need to install BBC’s download manager. Its worth doing, as you can then download the content to your personal device and update it whenever you like.
If our opinion, if you’re looking for high quality TV content that you want to download instantly go to the BBC iPlayer site. If however, you’re looking for your mates latest BMX stunt try YouTube.