The Rise of Video Streaming Websites. Its Benefits, Challenges, and Disruptions

Video streaming is already a massive industry. Technology is changing the way we consume online content and entertainment. More and more viewers are ditching Cable TV subscriptions and choosing streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, which costs as little as $10 per month.

People are also shifting to mobile platforms and exploring alternatives to TV networks, which means there are truly exciting horizons ahead for content creators to explore. As the global demand for online videos continues to boom, businesses must find new streaming solutions to provide the services to growing online audience’s demands. However, video streaming solutions come with their own challenges and disruptions.

Let’s explore this in a detailed way.

1. Benefits of video streaming websites

Video streaming has changed the way to watch videos from online sources. We no longer need to wait for the complete video file to download. Considering the irrefutable popularity of video content nowadays, every business must consider video streaming in one or the other form. The following are some of the major benefits of video streaming.

2. Ease and convenience

What can be more convenient than watching videos when you are on the go? Video streaming is simple and convenient as long as you have a mobile device and an internet connection. For streamers, video and audio equipment, an internet connection, an encoder, and a reliable streaming platform are all that it takes to start streaming to their audience.

3. Reach a wide audience

Video streaming can connect your audience with your content regardless of where they are. It makes your content available and accessible to the audience who are interested in your content but aren’t available to attend your live events physically due to geographical constraints or other reasons. Since video streaming is no longer limited in size and geographical constraints, it is easy to reach your audience across the globe remotely.

4. Use of rich content

Not just the videos, but streaming sites also offer the flexibility to include different forms of content and multimedia. For example, popular streaming sites allow the use of live chat, texts, videos, pictures, and different forms of content so that streamers can utilize different presentation formats and make their streams even appealing to viewers.

5. Mobile Viewing

Video streams are accessible through iOS, Android mobile phones, and tablets to ensure that you watch videos while on the go. There are mobile apps that allow viewers to watch videos offline, regardless of the availability of an internet connection. Almost half of the video content online is watched on mobile devices.

6. Affordable

Video streaming services aren’t as expensive as you might think. There is no extra fee included no matter the number of movies and shows you watch. Moreover, it is easier to download and store your favorite shows and movies, too.

7. Monetization scheme included

If you are a content creator who wants to make money out of your videos, video streaming services offer a broad range of opportunities for the same. You can charge your audience to watch your live stream just like how they would pay for a movie ticket or a show. Your audience can pay you via a pay-per-view model or through a monthly subscription. Streaming websites like Twitch offers several other monetization methods like sponsorship, donations, etc.

8. Challenges and disruptions of Video streaming services

Despite the advancements in streaming technology over the last few years, there are hurdles the industry continues to face. In particular, latency issues, bandwidth limitations, and playback challenges prevent the audience from enjoying a seamless streaming experience. The good news is that today’s technology has solutions to overcome these issues and deliver great quality streaming to users anytime, anywhere.

9. Bandwidth limitations

While there are significant advancements in video resolutions and broadband capabilities, the HD resolution and better bandwidth capabilities come with new challenges like bandwidth crunches. For instance, the best internet speed  to stream a 720p video is 2.5-5 Mbps and a 1080p is 5-10Mbps. However, with 4k videos and beyond, this ratio doesn’t scale. The video providers who use H.264 AVC, at least need the capability to stream 40Mbps (Click here to see What is your Internet Speed?).

Therefore, new AVI, VP9, and HEC codecs are essential in today’s streaming landscape as they can compress video to H.264 AVC. Audiences these days are highly demanding and expect high-quality video streams. To provide the best video quality available to your audience, video providers have a tight lossless compression, preferably a multi-pass compression.

10. Unstable streaming flow

The main goal in video streaming is offering an uninterrupted data flow, regardless of network conditions. Besides the internet interruptions, there are several other reasons for an unstable stream. It includes camera issues, software problems, and hardware breakdowns. You can deal with some of these issues by troubleshooting and rebooting to an extent, but it will again result in minor interruptions of the streaming flow.

The best idea will be to get a backup for all key components of your streaming solutions. Additionally, if you want to create your own video streaming website, use a video sharing script, that facilitates playing video without any buffer so that you can offer an uninterruptible viewing experience.

Additionally, you can prevent issues with streamflow using adaptive bitrate streaming solutions and the workflow enabling a quick reconnect. For the adaptive bit rate technique, you can choose HLS, MPEG DASH, Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming, etc. to adjust the video quality and size according to the available bandwidth.

11. Device compatibility challenge

One major challenge during video streaming is delivering the best viewing experience to the audience, regardless of the devices they use for watching videos. To solve this, ensure multiplatform playback and check if your video CMS allows sharing different streams. Supporting both landscape and portrait videos will allow global audiences to explore your videos from any device.

These days fully adaptive streams can adapt to any bitrate and resolution, making it easy to provide the right stream accordingly to devices. However, you still have to choose whether to allocate multiple video streams to a provider or to send a single stream and transcode it. To deliver the best quality video to multiple devices, the recommended solution is sending one stream and transcoding it for other devices.

12. Conclusion

As a video content provider, video streaming services can help you stand out from the competition. Video streaming services allow you to connect with a broader audience and to customize their viewing experience to meet the needs of diverse audiences. The shift towards video streaming and live programming presents both opportunities and challenges for video producers.

By adapting to these challenges and riding on the trends will strengthen your position in the existing market and help you establish the reach far beyond the present capabilities. Now that you know the benefits of video streaming, why not try it out today to grow your business or to monetize your video content?