Limelight: “Disney ups pressure on streaming services”
March 25, 2020
Disney Plus has finally launched in the UK amid avid excitement. However, with an increasingly crowded streaming market, how will Disney Plus stack amongst the bigger incumbents of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video?
Steve Miller-Jones, VP of edge solutions and solution architecture at Limelight Networks, offers his take:
“At a time when consumers require home entertainment more than ever, this presents an opportunity for them to reconsider which service is best for them, and shave off those not up to scratch. With a growing number of high-quality online video offerings, they’re spoilt for choice, and it’s up to streaming services to find ways to deliver vast quantities of top-notch video content quickly and efficiently to compete.”
“Our research found that over 70 per cent of global online viewers are now subscribing to one or more SVoD service. Over half of UK viewers cite video rebuffering as the most frustrating aspect of watching video online, with 60 per cent abandoning a video if it rebuffers as many as two times.”
“With Disney+ launching in the UK and Europe, expectations are high and fans have been waiting with baited breath. From reruns of Hannah Montana to the latest Frozen film, fans will expect the same level of content delivery across the Disney library, with no buffering or audio lag getting in the way of the trademark Disney magic. With a new cool kid on the block, the pressure is on all services to deliver exceptional experiences to maintain subscriber numbers.
“Preserving outstanding video quality and service reliability while reducing latency all comes down to robust delivery strategies. Publishers, CDNs and service providers need to consider built-in contingency and scale. But it also comes down to the content itself. Streaming services will need to offer an all-round quality experience from story to delivery,” he concludes.