Talk:Over-the-top media service

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 10 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lionwolf53.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Please don’t teach crap like “OTT” to students, this is neither an academic theory nor a practice term, you are doing the students a disservice. RSR, DBA (talk) 13:50, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Origin of name
Name Etology?

Is this an industry accepted term? Where did it come from? --24.249.59.89 (talk) 14:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Not sure about that, but as for etymology: So far a neologism I would say. Not sure it will stick around longer than others. Probably comes from the obvious pun: "over the top" supposedly comes from "going over the top", a World War I expression essentially meaning something really crazy. When something on television for example is really bad taste, it is called "over the top". At least this is popular in the USA. The box rented from a cable TV company or phone company to get pay television from something besides an antenna is called the set top box since it often sat on top of the television set (in the days before flat screens - now of course goes below!). But would need a source to say that. W Nowicki (talk) 23:42, 2 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Surely this is nothing to do with WWI trenches ('going over the top') or excess ('that's really over the top'), but something to do with the top of a vertical hierarchy of creation and distribution, where at the bottom are the creators of content and at the top are the broadcast networks & channels. So 'over the top' means reaching the audience while by-passing the top of this hierarchy. 82.35.56.23 (talk) 09:29, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Agreed, is more likely that the term relates to the diamond-shaped economic model proposed in [CREANER, Martin. Delivering the Digital Economy: How the Telco Will Survive] where service retailers are in top of the economic model hierarchy providing voice, video and chat services while in the bottom of the hierarchy stands cloud and infrastructure providers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jairo.rojas.delgado (talk • contribs) 16:05, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This incessant invention of terms without a source needs to end. It makes Wikipedia unreadable and just looks just plain foolish.
 * No, just because someone in some corner of the internet makes up a term they think sounds catchy doesn’t mean you should start publishing it. Please remove the “OTT” nonsense. RSR, DBA (talk) 13:48, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Ebrima D Mballow 41.223.215.69 (talk) 22:27, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

"most synonymous"
Really?