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
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive rightsholder of MLB.TV, see regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
By Shawn Carnahan, CTO, Telestream
