Hooked on Hooq: Don’t sweat the small screen

MANILA, Philippines - Who doesn’t want to do it in style? Grand narratives on a big screen, sound pounding the walls, a cold darkened room fit to a tee for cozy company and cheese popcorn for sharing – the rituals of movie watching remain big come-ons for every movie fan, but times have changed and paradigms have shifted. We can stream movies now in our smartphones and even on tinier smartwatches, and analysts say it’s definitely going to be a bigger trend in the years to come.

Juniper Research reported in May 2015 that subscribers to over-the-top (OTT) streaming services or services that deliver film and TV content via the Internet – think Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime – will likely increase from 92.1 million in 2014, to 332.2 million globally by 2019.

With Internet penetration in the Philippines steadily rising and now pegged at 39.69 per cent, according to a recent report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – with an estimated 23.22 fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions and 27.97 active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants – it is not surprising that OTT streaming services are getting attention, even if our connections aren’t always up to speed.

Who wouldn’t love the convenience of thousands of movies and TV shows ready for the picking on a smartphone?

Hooq, the  start-up joint venture company set up by Singtel, Sony Pictures Television, and Warner Bros. Entertainment early this year and the first OTT streaming service to launch in the Philippines (in partnership with Globe Telecom), claims to have a subscriber base of over a hundred thousand a mere eight months after the service launched.

In its database are over 3,000 Holywood movies and about 12,500 TV episodes. It also boasts of a large catalog of Filipino content – around 1,200 movies and 4,500 TV episodes from Pinoy studios ABS-CBN, Star Cinema, GMA, Regal, Viva, Captive Media.

Scott Lee. Hooq’s chief strategy and customer insights officer, said Hooq has since launched also in Thailand (in partnership with AIS) and India (in partnership with Airtel) and may be expanding to other countries early next year.

“It’s great to be part of the early movement. As the networks get better and faster, people would start using them more. What would this look like in three to five years? It’s going to be the way people consume media,” he said.

Hooq is available to subscribers on five devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and television – for P149 a month, but according to Ian Sikorsky, head of product, Hooq, smartphones are the preferred device by subscribers.

As tiny as phone screens or tablet screens are – from four to 10 inches – the ubiquity of mobile devices is the single greatest factor for the appeal of OTT video on demand. You can watch movies anywhere, anytime – while waiting at airport lounges or hotel lobbies, during a lull or break at work, at night before going to sleep, on warm, sultry summer afternoons at the porch, the sofa or beachfronts, on long journeys, or in bed on rainy days. Name it, there is a use case for it.

Hooq has even made it possible for users to download the movies on the device so they can watch it for later viewing even without an Internet connection. Sikorsky said it’s a differentiator for emerging markets, but the reality is that most subscribers actually prefer to stream the movies and TV shows.

Lee says the OTT landscape in Asia will get even more exciting in 2016 with the possible entry of Netflix in the region and growing competition from other regional players.

“It’s one of those industries that’s growing and there’s a lot of tension around it. You have a growing competitive set. When Hooq was originally conceived a few years ago, it was an open field,” he said.

 Yet, Hooq is confident it is going to retain its edge. “We definitely have different library sets,” said Sikorsky. “We have the best content that people would be interested in watching. We offer the best of Hollywood and the best of local content and it is being very well-received.”

 The deep catalog that Sikorsky is referring to is more than 30,000 hours of video available for viewing by subscribers. “The  challenge is more for users to find the content that they like and to find it more easily,” he said.

So what have Filipinos been watching on the small screen since the launch of the service this year? Hooq data shows that the most popular movies were: Diary Ng Panget, Green Lantern, One More Chance, Wrath of the Titans, Crazy Stupid Love, The Dark Knight Rises, A Secret Affair, Confessions of a Shopaholic, My Neighbor’s Wife, and 2012.

 For the TV shows, they were: Arrow, Friends, The Flash, Imortal, My Faithful Husband, #Jadine, Gotham, Mad Men, Ash Vs Evil Dead,  and Supergirl.

It’s really a heady mix of local and Hollywood content, but it’s also true that our choice of movies is deeply personal. Within Hooq’s massive database, subscribers can find a lot of different things.

It’s definitely a blast from the past if you want to watch films from the good ‘ol days of Philippine cinema – Sister Stella L, City After Dark, Dekada 70, Relasyon, Broken Marriage, among others.  

Staring out into some deep void that is a traffic jam or a  long journey could be a blessing if you are always pressed for time –that is, if you have a driver or if you rode Uber. Take it from a diehard Mad Men fan, you can never really get enough of Don Draper. A marathon viewing of all the available episodes on Hooq could remind you of the time in your life when you could outdrink the entire cast of this iconic TV show. And because you know that John Hamm will never ever return to television as Don, this is all you’ve got.

Just one more tip: Try watching Lawrence of Arabia on a small screen – great visuals, spectacular sound, Omar Sharif in his sexual peak. If you have seen it before on the wide screen, your visual focus will adjust because these days we love to trade size for ubiquity.

This, however, may not be a permanent thing. In Thailand, Lee said AIS distributes  set-top boxes to customers where they can access all the TV channels and Hooq. In the Philippines, if you want Hooq on television, Chromecast is your best bet (which is also exclusively distributed by Globe).

Chromecast is a thumb-sized media streaming device that plugs into the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port of the television. With Chromecast, customers can cast their smartphone, tablet, or laptop to a bigger screen for a better and more inclusive viewing experience.

“At the end of the day, we want people to use the product to watch more content,” Lee said. “We want Hooq to be available on as many devices as possible, but I think our subscribers are really device-agnostic. It’s really about access.” 

For now, we can just safely say “Honey, they shrunk the home theater.”