streaming Archives – Page 3 of 32 – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Broadcasters OTT D2C strategies

Posted on 10th May 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

New streaming services are still coming online in Europe and elsewhere some with ads, some subscription based. But this isn’t just a story of new players trying to disrupt the market, broadcasters are continuing to enter, renter and innovate in this same space. So what are they up to and how are they holding their own against the international names?

Jörn Krieger moderates this panel from Nextv Series Europe first asking Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR’s Pierre-Adrian Irlé about the public broadcaster’s new offering, Play Suisse. Pierre explains that Switzerland is surrounded by big markets providing content in three out of Switzerland’s four languages. So it’s actually local content which is the core asset that SRG SSR has since the Netflixes of the world have yet to invest in any Swiss content. This led the Play Suisse team to build a digital platform from the ground up, separate from their linear workflows and tools so that they adapt their service to being online and deliver the service and quality customers expect based on their experience with the international services.

Ricardo Tomé from Portugal’s Media Capital Digital says that Portugal has good cable penetration and most customers are already used to being able to rewatch the last 7 days’ content. Their proposition is split between the national Portuguese market and the international market made of Portuguese speakers abroad. Ricardo agrees that it doesn’t matter if you are public or private, having your own content is very important. International Portuguese are happy to pay, but nationally telcos are giving away subscriptions to Amazon Prime etc. which reduces their appetite to pay for streaming services.

Jörn turns the conversation to strategies to attract viewers and whether priority is given to the younger demographic. Pierre explains they very much want to reach their existing audience but know that there is a share of the audience that have lost, or who never had, a relationship with a broadcaster. With the launch of Play Suisse, they are getting emails from young licence-fee payers who say they are finally able to get something for their money. For Arturo Garijo from Spanish commercial broadcaster Atresmedia, the question is less about demographics themselves, but more about the appetite for paying for content in the Spanish market. There are a lot of people who are not used to paying meaning their business model had to be about the volume of people watching adverts. However, with streaming, they are now able to attract viewers who are interested in pay to avoid adverts. They have a lot of traditional viewers, so they have a big funnel of potential customers against whom they are developing differently priced ways of accessing their services to maximise take up.

Ricardo points out that having a subscription service that captures people with big productions is all very well, but there is also a lot of work to do to market differently via social media and word of mouth. Another difference in being online, particularly for public broadcasters are rules dictating what you can and can’t do. Play Suisse, for example, is not allowed to run advertising online and can’t bring things online more than 24 hours before linear. So the business model adapts around these rules, for instance by offering binge watching of a new series in the 24 hours before the linear release which as a more traditional two-a-week airing schedule.

Jörn moves to discussing content and viewer retention as the panel comes to a close. Ricardo says that you need to carefully consider how much you spend on original content. You can’t predict the upside of new content, but it needs to be good, long-lived content so it can be reused for broadcast after being online. This means being willing to pay for good writers and directors. Arturo points out that you can’t simply rely on exclusive content because your churn will be high and so will the cost. You can retain people if you have a deep catalogue for them to continue to explore after they’ve seen the content that attracted them in the first place. Pierre agrees that curating the content is a good way to retain customers which they do by finding different ways to curate and unearth older content. A great example of curating older content, and showing that it’s not simply a question of putting old episodes online, is that Media Capital Digital has been re-editing novellas/soap operas from 300 episodes down to 80. This gives them the opportunity to freshen up the feel of the show and make the episode lengths and formats more conducive to binge watching.

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Speakers

	Pierre-Adrian Irlé Project Lead, Play Suisse, SRG SSR – Swiss Radio and Television
	Arturo Larrainzar Garijo Strategy Director, Atresmedia
	Ricardo Tomé Head of Digital, Media Capital Digital
	Moderator: Jörn Krieger Freelance Journalist

Video: How is Technology Shaping the Future of Streaming Services?

Posted on 5th May 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The streaming market is defined by technology, but as tech advances, it becomes more and more transparent to the user as it not only better facilitates delivery of media, but also makes the user experience better. This article looks at the current streaming market from the perspective of Disney, MediaKind, Dolby and Twitch to discover how far technology has brought us and the current challenges.

Sardjono Insani from Disney says that’s it’s very easy, now, to launch an OTT service with the technical barrier being much lower than before with many decent platforms which have good features. This allows new entrants a quick route to market. The challenges he sees are now more in the business domain such as having the right content, retaining customers and meeting their expectations. Customers have exposure to the big streaming platforms which have good device integration and can invest heavily in the technology behind their services. Whilst off-the-shelf platforms can be very good and offer similar device integration, depending on your audience, you may have a few notable gaps between the service you can provide and the competition. Without a “smooth tech offering”, Sardjono suggests it will be harder to pick up and keep customers.

Sunita Kaur from Twitch sees customer engagement at the heart of the Twitch experience and one reason why it keeps customers and continues to grow. “What if TV could talk back to me?” is the question she uses to explain Twitch to those unfamiliar with the service highlighting the fact each video comes with a live chat feature allowing the viewers to interact directly with the hosts giving them an immediate connection with the audience. The future of her services will be around customer experience. Will the viewers still tolerate a 5-second delay? What if a feature is more than a click away? Answering questions like this help build the future Twitch. Sunita also touches on ‘partnerships’ which are an important monetisation strategy for streamers whether individuals or media giants. Partnerships, for example, allow microtransactions between viewers and streamers in the form of paid ‘super chats’. This voluntary donation route works well for the younger audiences who are no stranger to ad-blockers. Burkhard Leimbrock, Commercial Director for Twitch EMEA phrases it like this: “In the era of ad blocking, content that is voluntarily engaged with and actively created by an audience – the majority of whom is aged 13 to 34 – in real-time creates a powerful and rare new opportunity for brands.”

Raul Aldrey from MediaKind talks about using technology to transform live events as we know them now into immersive experiences such as allowing fans to choose camera angles and even clip up their version and share on social media. However, having 25 live cameras able to be delivered to the viewer with frame accuracy is still a difficult challenge. Once you’ve worked out how to do that, the next question is how ad insertion works. Raul feels there is a lot of space for innovation in the user experience including creating hyper-personalised experiences using AI to follow specific players and also, linking in with Sunita’s points, using microtransactions much more during the event.

Pankaj Kedia from Dolby is focused on the world of mobile devices. In his region, he says between 48 and 94% of consumers have upgraded or will upgrade in the coming year or so. This, he feels, means there is a lot of technical capability in the mobile device market leaving a gap between the technology that available content can exploit what the devices can do. He sympathises with the need to maintain a consistent user experience where locally-generated content (such as Bollywood) sits next to international content which may look or sound better. But his point is that content creation has become democratised and tools are more accessible than before. Money is absolutely still a factor, but HDR has arrived in low-end devices such as iPhones so it’s not out of the question to have high-end technology in all levels of content.

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Speakers

	Pankaj Kedia Managing Director, Emerging Markets, Dolby Laboratories
	Sardjono Insani Director, Media & Entertainment Distribution, Walt Disney Company
	Sunita Kaur Senior Vice President APAC, Twitch
	Raul Aldrey Chief Product Officer, MediaKind
	Moderator: James Miner CEO, MinerLabs Group

Video: Live-Streaming Best Practices

Posted on 29th April 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Live streaming of events can be just as critical as broadcast events in that failure is seldom an option. Whether a sports game, public meeting or cattle auction, the kit needed to put on a good stream shares many of the hallmarks of anything with high production values: multiple cameras, redundant design, ISO recording, separate audio and video mixing and much more. Yet live streaming is often done by one person or just a handful of people. How do you make all this work? How do you guide the client to the best event for their budget? What pitfalls can be avoided if only you’d known ahead of time?

Robert Reinhardt from videoRx took to the stage with Streaming Media to go through his approach to live streaming events of all different types. He covers the soft skills as well as the tech leaving you with a rounded view of what’s necessary. He starts by covering the kit that he will typically use discussing the cameras, encoders, recorders, audio mixer and video mixer. He talks about the importance of getting direct mic feeds so you retain control of the gain structure. Each of these items is brought on-site with a spare which is either held as a backup or, like the recorders, is used as an active backup to get two copies of the event and media.

For Robert, Wowza in AWS is at the centre of most of the work he does. His encoders, such as Videon deliver into the cloud using RTMP where Wowza can convert to HLS in multiple bitrates. Robert calls out the Videon encoders as well priced with a friendly and helpful company behind them. We see a short demo of how Wowza can be customised with custom-made add-ins.

Robert says that every live stream needs a source, an encoder, a publishing endpoint, a player, archive recording and reliable internet. A publishing endpoint could be YouTube or Facebook, a CDN or your own streaming server such as in Robert’s case. The reliable internet connection issue is dealt with as a follow up to the initial Discovery process. This discovery process is to help you work out who matters such as the stakeholders and product owners, which other vendors are involved and their responsibilities. You should also confirm who will be delivering content such as slides and graphics to you and find out how static their budget is.

Budget is a tricky topic as Robert has found that the customer isn’t always willing to tell you their budget, but you have to quickly link their expectations in terms of resilience and production values to their budget expectations. Robert shares his advice on detailing the labour and equipment costs for the customer.

A pre-even reccy is of vital importance for assessing how suitable the internet connectivity is and making sure that physical access and placement is suitable for your crew and equipment. This would be a good time to test the agreed encoder parameters. Ahead of the visit, Robert suggests sharing samples of bitrates and resolutions with the customer and agreeing on the maximum quality to expect for the bandwidth available.

Robert rounds off the talk by walking us through all of the pre-event checks both several days ahead and on the day of the event.

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Speakers

Robert Reinhardt
CTO,
videoRx

Video: Debugging Streaming Errors with Video Analytics

Posted on 21st April 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Errors in streaming often require deep knowledge that system specialsts and developers have, but getting them the data they need is often an uphill struggle. This video shows ways in which we can short circuit this problem showing some approaches that Bitmovin is taking to get the data to the right people. Bitmovin announced, yesterday, €25M of further investment in the company. We’ve featured Bitmovin many times here on The Broadcast Knowledge talking about codecs, low-latency live streaming or super-resolution. Reading through this full list makes it clear that Bitmovin’s interested in the whole chain from encode to delivery.

Christoph Prager sets the scene looking at an analysis of errors showing that only 15% have a clear reason with 65% being ambiguous. If an error’s ambiguous, you need data to drill into it and disambiguate the situation. This is exacerbated by the standard aggregate metrics which make getting to the root cause very difficult. Definitions of ‘buffering percentage’ and ‘startup time’ are very useful to gauge the scale of an issue or to find there’s even a problem to begin with. But for developers, they are like the foreword to the book they need to read to find the problem. This has led Bitmovin to think from the angle that errors are a lot more obvious when you have the data.

Daniel Hölbling-Inzko takes us through Bitmovin’s new features to expose data surrounding errors. Whilst these will be coming to Bitmovin products, they show what a useful set of tools for debugging would be and can inspire the same in your platform if you are able to customise those aspects of it. Daniel points out that the right detailed information can be useful to customer support, but it’s the deeper information that he’s interested it. Bitmovin can collate all the stack traces from problem places but also track segments from the time there was an error.

Segment tracking shows the status, type, download speed, time to first byte and the size of each of 10 segments from around the time the error was collected. Viewing these can help see trends such as diminishing bandwidth or just simply show that a problem happened abruptly. Daniel talks through three errors where segment tracking can help you pinpoint problems: ‘NETWORK_SEGMENT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT’, ‘ANALYTICS_BUFFERING_TIMEOUT’ and ‘DRM: license request failed’. Because the requests are now split out individually it makes it easy to see where the 403 error is that is stopping the DRM or how the internet speed is dropping resulting in an analytics timeout. Daniel highlights that it’s the trends that are usually the most important part.

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Speakers