Survey of Catch-up TV and other time-shift services: a comprehensive analysis and taxonomy of linear and nonlinear television

Abstract

This study analyzes recent changes on the television (TV) market, and the transformation of TV consumption habits, motivated by new transmission and recording technologies. Through an international survey spanning 62 countries and 4 continents, a growing presence of nonlinear TV services and over-the-top (OTT) content offerings is found. A detailed taxonomy of ways of watching TV content on the TV set is proposed to clarify the existing Pay-TV and OTT services, including time-shift and video-on-demand (VoD) terms such as Pause TV, Start-over TV, personal video recorder, Catch-up TV, transaction VoD, and subscription VoD, to name a few. An in-depth literature review is conducted, focusing not only on the technological aspects of nonlinear TV, but also on its business and consumer behavior impacts. The existing research works clearly demonstrate a lack of global reach by mostly concentrating their analyses on specific regions or countries. In addition to the literature review, the survey and taxonomy definition, the impact of nonlinear TV on the complete supply chain is also extensively discussed, indicating structural changes not yet addressed in the current literature.