By Shawn Carnahan, CTO, Telestream
Contributor 2 hours ago
By Shawn Carnahan, CTO, Telestream
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin> By Shawn Carnahan, CTO, Telestream
https://www.tvbeurope.com/features/video-streaming-publish-or-be-damned title=Share via Email class=share-email>
When we look back over 2019, we see a year of really significant change. One of the biggest areas is the rise and rise of video streaming across a diversity of viewing platforms. We have been witnessing some basic changes in consumer behaviour for some time. From their perspective, consumers are seeking to transition to more flexible ways to consume content.
The MSO/Aggregator model is steadily being replaced by direct relationships between content creators and their consumers. This is fragmenting the market. This cord cutting' idea that going OTT is cheaper for consumers is a myth. Consumers will replace one major subscription with multiple individual subscriptions, and I don't see any significant cost savings to be made.
However, this will drive the market since now we see content creators standing up their own distribution channels. These can be their own standalone channels or through third-party platforms, such as Brightcove and BAMTech. In this environment content creators are in control of their brands to a far greater extent.
Then there is a large group of linear TV broadcasters that are seeking to replicate their channels in OTT. These factors are definitely driving the technology companies to support these moves. At Telestream, it is driving our roadmap, and in conversations with colleagues at Harmonic and other companies, they say the same thing. Our collective challenge is how to build more cost-effective, flexible and elastic origins.
Is it an OTT-first approach, and if so, how important is a quality consumer experience?
Looking at one of our core markets - owner operated linear multi-channel broadcasters - they are almost exclusively focussed on OTT build out. Currently, virtually everything we are doing with them is in response to the challenge of how to create an OTT network that is on a par with linear television in terms of quality of service and experience.
The transition from OTT being a novelty to having the same consumer expectations as the linear TV experience in your living room is massive.
The bigger operators in this market want to control the viewer experience and build their brands. Today, the technology is not experimental: there has been a shrinking in the options for how they distribute content across all the consumer platforms that they need to cover.
It's not as much of a mystery for them as it once was. So, I believe that many of the bigger players will build their OTT channels out internally, whereas earlier, the strategy was to wholesale outsource the challenge. This internalisation process will include the entire workflow including App development for these platforms. This will enable them to better control consumer behaviour, consumer experience, monetisation and analytics of the process.
From a technology perspective, you can't just throw the QoS responsibility at companies such as Akamai, who really don't want to be in the media business - they want to be in the data business.
As they learned from the IPTV transition, there is a massive difference between IP for data and IP for media. At Telestream, the development of our iQ portfolio is driven by the problems that are unique to the delivery of media over IP. This continues to be true for OTT delivery - it's just a different set of problems. Our customers seek control over this, and also to control costs. When OTT was an experimental novelty, organisations weren't staking revenue on these new channels. But as they transition to OTT becoming the core business then bottom-line profitability is directly related to costs.
For Telestream, this speaks to the level of integration we have within our customers' workflows. As a technology vendor, we can do so much more depending on the amount of the whole process that we're participating in. OTT is not as componentised as television was in the past. We must have a broader portfolio of system solutions. We're not there yet, but strategically it is where we are heading.
In practical OTT applications, the more that you're involved with across the entire workflow, the more value you can add, especially in the absence of standards. Take latency as an example. If you can inject instrumentation into the signals that you're encoding early in the process, this allows you to pick up problems as they travel through the distribution food chain, particularly when you lose sight of the signals.
If you can instrument your signals up front it enables you to measure latency and find problems further out in the network. Our customers won't find this level of integration in a multi-vendor scenario unless the vendors get together and generate standards that they can all interoperate with.
Is latency still an issue in live streaming?
Absolutely, latency is still an enormous issue - for all the reasons that have been explained ad nauseam! If it's sports, or anything that is timely, you need to reduce latency as much as possible. If the consumer is switching between live linear TV and OTT it is essential.
The big question is what are your expectations? The elegance of http-based OTT is that it enables media distribution through content delivery networks that don't treat media any differently than a web page. We're leveraging an infrastructure that is very broad based as long as we can make everything look like chunks of data that can be accessed via http. With this comes a requirement to segment the video into chunks that can be cached on http. This is where the latency is introduced.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
By Shawn Carnahan, CTO, Telestream
