How VOD works
Each title is uploaded once, encoded into several quality levels and stored. When a viewer presses play, the player requests the video in small segments from a content delivery network and plays them in order. The viewer can pause, rewind, skip ahead and resume on another device.
The business models built on VOD
VOD describes how the video is watched. The acronyms describe how it is paid for.
- SVOD: subscription. A recurring fee for a catalog
- AVOD: advertising. Free to the viewer, paid for by ads
- TVOD: transactional. One payment per title, as a rental or purchase
- PVOD: premium. A higher-priced early rental of a new release
- HVOD: hybrid. Two or more of the above on one service
VOD vs live and linear
Live video is streamed as it happens, and a linear channel plays a fixed schedule; in both, every viewer sees the same thing at the same time. VOD has no schedule. Most services offer both, and recordings of live events commonly become VOD titles afterward.
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