Many companies and institutions, from governments to ISPs and businesses, consider having their own IPTV platform to stream videos for their customers. An IPTV platform can indeed be a great source of additional revenue or an easy way to enter the video streaming business world.
Video streaming services can help businesses and institutions to reach their viewers, build strong relationships with them, and make money. Whether you create your own content or obtain licensed videos, you can launch your platform and find your viewers.
Before creating your platform, you should consider potential challenges you can face at any stage of the launch and operation. Let’s delve into the topic details.
What are the five challenges of building an IPTV platform?
#1 Delivery
After your viewers press a play the video button on the platform, the video will be transmitted from a server to their end devices. Before that, it should be recorded and uploaded to the server. But it is a complicated process to deliver the whole video in one go. That’s why an IPTV encoder was created.
The IPTV encoder will take the recorded video and compress it so that it is transferable via the Internet. To put it simply, the video will be divided into small pieces – chucks – which will make the delivery much simpler and faster.
IPTV platform providers like Setplex also add transcoding functionality. Transcoding is necessary to meet the technical requirements of gadgets your customers use. For example, a smartphone and a Smart TV will have different resolution conditions. While smartphones don’t need high resolution, Smart TVs will demand it. And viewers will be able to watch a quality picture.
#2 On-premise vs. cloud
On-premise vs. cloud is a vital question to consider. The answer will define how much money you will spend on equipment and how you will control it.
On-prem equipment is easier to control but costs more, while in-cloud deployment doesn’t require a lot of investments, although it is more difficult to control. The cloud provider is responsible for that.
#3 Software
Choosing the right software to run your IPTV platform is a crucial question. There are many solutions in the market, and finding the one that matches your goals requires a lot of effort and time.
We would recommend you find an end-to-end solution as it can help you not only launch a video streaming platform but also scale in the future. The end-to-end solution includes everything you need to operate: from an IPTV panel to CDN and applications for various platforms.
#4 Target audience
Many businesses spend little time studying their target audience, and that’s why they usually fail to attract these customers. They didn’t learn how to speak their language, what their life values are, and what problems their product can solve. However, it is important information that can help you a lot.
The information about your target audience can help you optimize the way you create your content plan, videos, website design, and many other small details.
Let’s assume that you are a fitness studio. You want to publish videos with exercises and cover adjacent topics like discipline or nutrition. Let’s say you want to focus on two topics – one of them is physical exercises, and the second one is difficult to decide.
The information about your target audience will help you. Maybe, your customers haven’t done any exercise in their lives. They face trouble when getting up in the morning and going to the gym. If that’s the problem, then you can help them by choosing discipline as the second topic. But if your customers are pros at getting up in the mornings, then they would probably be glad to learn about nutrition or something like that.
#5 Marketing
To attract viewers to your platform, you need to invest money in marketing. Here, the knowledge about your target audience will come in handy. You could be aware of what marketing channels to use to reach them. You will be able to invest in these channels and not waste money on all of them.
If you have your viewers use social media services, create profiles there too. You will have your audience in one place. Social networks give you the opportunity to communicate with people directly. You can ask questions about your content and service and receive feedback. People will be glad to share their thoughts and experiences. And you can use this information to enhance your IPTV platform.
Final Thoughts
We described possible challenges you might face when building your video streaming platform. Some can be easy for you to solve, and some can turn out to be difficult. Anyway, good luck to you on your journey! Having your own platform can be quite beneficial and money-making.
