Content Aggregation on Streaming Media Devices: Assessment of Four Popular Market Solutions

The variety of video content sources is increasing every day, ranging from linear broadcast TV to multiple providers of video streaming over the internet, either over-the-top (OTT) platforms or user-generated content (UGC). However, most of this content is made available to the users in completely disconnected ways, even when provided on the same device, mostly due to the app-based nature of current offerings. A short time ago the research team of the UltraTV project found that users were keen to try more unified ways to access audiovisual content. This paper revisits content unification, a major topic on the UltraTV research agenda, by assessing how major contemporary commercial video platforms, in this case, the four most popular streaming media devices (SMD) in North America, addresses the most noteworthy topics of UltraTV content integration concepts: multi-source content discovery, integration vs multi-app approach, transversal search, embedded player vs deep linking, and multi-profile support.