When it comes to choosing TV services, there is a lot of competition. Are companies prepared to keep up with the changing industry?

Dan Helfrick, Vice President of Z-Band Technologies, sat down with MarketScale to discuss the new direction for video distribution systems in an ever-progressing, consistently evolving technological society.

Z-Band offers video distributions systems to a wide variety of corporate groups, including hospitality, healthcare, and education, and what Helfrick has seen is a stark change in how companies approach implementing those systems. Companies will now often have their IT directors in the room when Z-Band comes to speak about its systems, a direct indicator of how much TV distribution has changed over the years.

One of the biggest trends that Helfrick explains, as TV moves onto the network, is digital rights management. Companies want to make sure that their content is going to be protected when they join with different providers. Another is system-on-chip technology, where people are now doing everything on the TV interface.

For example, in the hotel industry, a person goes into his or her hotel room and turns on the TV. Rather than defaulting to the TV Guide channel, there's instead a customized welcome message or potentially some marketing that the hotel wants to push. It's another indication of the power of content marketing for businesses and how technology can elevate that content.

On some of the more advanced system-on-chip services, guests can even order room service. In the correct environment it is very user-friendly; however, Helfrick points out, "one of the struggles [is] chipsets are designed to be multi-use so video will pause and buffer a lot because it is not designed to be playing back video 24/7.” Give the a podcast a listen to hear us break down the strengths, challenges and varied applications of video distribution systems.