This week Cellular One and Vennetics launched a truly clever new mobile app that gives consumers the ability to easily find the best price and platform for watching their favorite streaming movies and TV shows. The app, appropriately named CHILL, is essentially the Expedia or KAYAK of streaming entertainment, allowing users to search all the web-based video services from one place.
“More consumers are cutting the cord and utilizing web-based video streaming services to watch their favorite shows and movies on demand. The problem is—now there are so many platforms,” said Judd Hinkle, CEO of Cellular One. “You have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and the list of video streaming competitors continues to grow. The CHILL app brings them all together.”
CHILL is free and available for both iOS and Android. Users can search by actor/actress, director, title, price or year. With direct billing and wish list queues, CHILL is a simple, personalized streaming entertainment portal.
CHILL is a joint venture between Arizona-based technology company Cellular One and Vennetics, a mobile app developer based in Belfast, Ireland and it is very timely.
According to research firm eMarketer in 2017, a total of 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service — up 33% from 16.7 million in 2016. “Younger audiences continue to switch to either exclusively watching [over-the-top] video or watching them in combination with free-TV options,” said Chris Bendtsen, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer.
Seeing the writing on this wall, the leading TV programmers such as Disney, NBC Universal, and Time Warner have launched or are prepping direct-to-consumer streaming services themselves. The one thing that can’t be overlooked in this new world of direct-to-consumer streaming services is the need to make it easy for consumers to search and queue up what they want to watch— on the most affordable service.