The Digital Production Partnership has released a new report looking at the challenges posed by the media and entertainment industry’s move to full IP distribution of content to consumers.
Home Truths: Preparing for an IP future outlines 16 business, technology and user experience challenges that a group of experts believe could constrain the delivery of IP-based content distribution. It then undertakes a risk analysis to determine which of those challenges require the most urgent intervention.
“The transition to IP may be the single most discussed topic in the media industry over the last few years,” said DPP managing director and report author, Mark Harrison. “And yet somehow we haven’t managed as an industry to identify exactly what we need to ensure delivery of that IP future goes smoothly. This report is the first step in gaining that understanding.”
The DPP found four challenges posed the highest level of risk:
- Infrastructure investment: infrastructure investment requirements sit with intermediary parties, rather than with content providers or consumers.
- Cyber security and cyber terrorism: a world in which all content is delivered over IP is also one that is constantly vulnerable to cybercrime and cyber terrorism.
- Peak load scaling: large, intermittent and unpredictable peaks in load on the internet – both from major live programming events and from other internet users – are hugely challenging to both infrastructure and business models.
- Monetisation of content: changes in distribution models are threatening established funding models for content.
The DPP’s team of experts found a common theme among possible solutions to the challenges: industry collaboration.
