Media streaming: it's an OTTortunity
If you're old enough to remember dial-up access to the Internet, you'll recall that even downloading a simple image could seem to take forever. It seems remarkable, then, that the first live sports event to be streamed was back in those 56K days, when ESPN SportsZone streamed a live radio broadcast of a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees to thousands of its subscribers back in 1995.
We've come a long way since then. Just two years after that first ever OTT broadcast, Netflix was founded. Today, it has close to 160 million subscribers worldwide - and is adding around 5 million every three months. Its annual revenues are rapidly approaching $20 billion.
Streaming media, Video on Demand, OTT - call it what you like - is now an established way for us to consume content. From Netflix and Amazon Prime through YouTube to traditional' broadcasters' catch-up services, non-linear rapidly becoming the de facto standard for what we used to call watching TV.
Good news
Which is good news for us at Bridge Technologies. According to research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the OTT monitoring and compliance market will see significant growth - from today's $62.0 million to $149.7 million in 2024. That's a hell of a business opportunity.
It was back in September 2012 that we announced our OTT Engine was shipping for all our probes, giving true end-to-end OTT monitoring capability alongside monitoring of cable, satellite and terrestrial services, without adding unnecessary extra layers of infrastructure. A year later, we updated it to provide support for MPEG-DASH.
The rise of OTT services, and how operators manage the change in the way TV is consumed in a non-linear way, was at the forefront of the creation of the OTT Engine. It was specifically developed to bridge existing understanding of packet- and chunk-based media, distributed over standard http protocols and servers. We knew that enabling broadcasters to readily understand this maturing technology within known and familiar frameworks, event and alarming structures, would be extremely important for successful implementation of any OTT platform.
It's interesting that the first example of streaming media involved sport - because sport in particular, and live events in general, are credited with driving much of the growth in OTT. In the UK, for example, Sky Sports and BT are paying around £5 billion for the rights to show live Premier League matches as a way of attracting subscribers. It's been demonstrated that major sporting events - like the recent Rugby World Cup - create a spike in subscriptions (even if many are cancelled when the tournament has finished )
High bar
But, when it comes to sport especially, the bar - in terms of image quality - is set high. Viewers have become used to the pristine delivery of content by terrestrial broadcasters: no buffering, no jitter, no image break-up. The same is true for all content (although with movies and box sets, for example, it is, perhaps, less critical): viewers have become used to perfect image quality, and they're not prepared to compromise, even for the advantages of programming on demand, multiple camera angles or social media integration. The potential issue is only exacerbated by the multi-screen phenomenon in which the TV set in the corner of the lounge is only one of many devices in play - and, it seems, a device that's diminishing in importance as we turn to the joys of mobile, watch anywhere media.
There is, of course, a further challenge: when it comes to the distribution medium, OTT operators and streaming companies are far from being masters of their own destiny. Neither the Internet nor 4G (and, eventually, 5G) can guarantee perfect connectivity. Given the kind of investment companies are putting in to OTT services, acquiring new subscribers is a hugely expensive undertaking. The last thing those organisations want or need is churn resulting from inadequate image quality.
And that, of course, is where our monitoring tools come in. The OTT Engine is the most complete and sophisticated solution for monitoring OTT services, extending from ingest right through to the viewing device, enabling providers to have real active monitoring of all channels, whether for live or VoD content. It is compatible with all our IP probes for HLS, MPEG-DASH, Smooth Stream, HDS and RTMP assets.
Appropriate
All Bridge Technologies probes have OTT/ABR capabilities that are appropriate for monitoring in adaptive bitrate streaming systems. For example: for the VB120/VB220, the total number of OTT streams that can be monitored is 250 (25 engines). For the VB330, the figure is 500 (50 engines). Each OTT Engine operates autonomously and only requires knowledge of the URL from which the media is being fetched. The OTT Engine then parses the manifest file provided by the origin or edge-server, extracts the different profiles served, validates syntax, checks chunk counters and then does the same for the individual profiles.
Another extremely helpful quality check delivered by the VB288 appliance enables OTT operators to inspect massive amounts of content services and spot any issue that would not be immediately apparent to the human eye. The VB288 supports unreferenced MOS, blocking, blurring, noise, contrast and brightness reporting, for a deep dive into any video analysis.
All consuming content
OTT has enabled whole new ways of consuming content - and even helped create new kinds of content: it's hard to imagine that esports and online gaming would even have been possible without it. In addition, 2018 was the first year that online streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon produced a greater number of original shows than traditional broadcasters. Streaming is now a proven, reli
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
13/11/2026
The UIM E1 Series wraps its third season this week with the Bombay Sapphire E1 Miami GP, Nov. 11-14, on Biscayne Bay at the Miami Seaplane Base on Watson Island...
13/11/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
13/11/2026
Singer-songwriter Benson Boone will headline entertainment for the Discover NHL Winter Classic between the Utah Mammoth and Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles St...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced the Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone, a 7th order ambisonic microphone array that captures spatial audio for immersive video prod...
13/11/2026
SMPTE has announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infrastructure and communications technology for the Solutions Hub at t...
13/11/2026
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has announced the theme and program focus for the 2027 HPA Tech Retreat, which takes place Feb. 14-18, 2027, in La ...
13/11/2026
Football Manager 27 Touch is available on Apple Arcade starting today. The game ...
13/11/2026
MotoGP has announced a two-year media rights agreement with ESPN covering the Un...
13/11/2026
Apple Sports, the free iPhone app, has added the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to its lineup of supported sports, in time for Saturday's UFC 334. The...
13/11/2026
The NBA and Fanatics Studios, the joint venture between Fanatics and entertainme...
13/11/2026
ESPN held its annual EDGE Innovation Conference last night and offered up an ove...
13/11/2026
Regional sports network gives Ithaca College, SUNY Cortland students a platform to thrive
One of the biggest games in Division III college football will be pla...
13/11/2026
Studer-inspired 500-series PWM compressor unveiled
The HLabs range already includes a couple of Studer-inspired offerings in the form of the PRE169 and EQ16...
13/11/2026
Download Now!
To view the white paper, please enter the following details:
--
First Name* First Name
Company*
Country* Please select your countryA...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Blue Lucy, the workflow orchestration and integration platform for broadcasters, rights owners and localisation companies, today announced an integration with c...
13/11/2026
Krotos announces Black Friday offers on Studio Pro and Studio Max
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
First-year annual plans start at US$195.99...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design Announces Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
New 7th order ambisonic microphone with 108 MEMS...
13/11/2026
Meet the Berklee Student Setting Planetary Motion to Music With his compositional platform SoniKosmos, Javier Roqueni aims to make the universe the ultimate i...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Amagi, the media industry cloud company, today announced a partnership with Golden Times Media Technology (stock code 920021.BJ), a Beijing-based media and tech...
13/11/2026
CGI (TSX: GIB.A) (NYSE: GIB), one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, together with its Malaysian partner, Cedar ...
13/11/2026
SMPTE, the home for media professionals, technologists and engineers, today announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infra...
13/11/2026
iWedia, a global leader in connected TV software solutions, will present its software-first approach to DRAM optimization at Android TV APAC Summit 2026 in Bang...
13/11/2026
Beginning today, November 13, Apple HomeView is available for purchase at Apple Store locations, on the Apple Store online, and in the Apple Store app in select...
13/11/2026
From pediatric research to smart hospitals, AI is helping care teams spend less time on routine tasks and more time with patients.
Health systems and startups...
12/11/2026
Industry leaders examine how Dynamic Media Facility, Media eXchange Layer, and c...
12/11/2026
The junior Tar Heel is embracing the technical and creative challenges of live production while emerging as a leader and mentor in the control room...
12/11/2026
Gracenote, Nielsen's content intelligence business, has released its fifth a...
12/11/2026
RTL Deutschland will bring the NHL to free-to-air TV in Germany starting Nov. 30...
12/11/2026
Clear-Com supported On Air 2026, a 24-hour student-led broadcast connecting 45 u...
12/11/2026
uniqFEED has opened a Remote Operations Center (ROC) in Madrid, Spain. It is already operational, delivering virtual advertising for LaLiga matches. The ROC is ...
12/11/2026
Disney, ESPN and the NBA will present Dunk the Halls, the third real-time animated NBA game using Sony's Beyond Sports data visualization technology, on Chr...
12/11/2026
Van Wagner has launched Van Wagner RELAY, a digital platform for official athlet...
12/11/2026
Deal brings together two of the industry's most established graphics brands and significantly expands Vizrt's footprint in U.S. sports and regional broa...
12/11/2026
Euro TV Production GmbH of Austria has upgraded its outside broadcast vehicle with Lawo technology. The mc 36 Classic console in service since 2019 was replaced...
12/11/2026
Tagboard has launched Spark Resize, an AI-assisted tool now in beta that takes an existing graphic and produces a new version for a different aspect ratio or sc...
Media streaming: it's an OTTortunity
