SVG Sit-Down: iStreamPlanet's Tim Davis on His Company's Role in a Fast Evolving Media Space The streaming-services provider supports the Olympics, Super Bowl, NCAA March Madness Live By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, January 22, 2018 - 10:29 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Over-the-top (OTT) distribution is soaking up a lot of the headlines as the media industry braces for what is expected to be a big year in the migration to digital business and consumption models.
iStreamPlanet has been at the forefront of this evolution, providing streaming-support technology and helping create diverse digital user experiences. The company currently provides the backend for streaming some of the biggest sports events, including the Olympics, Super Bowl, and, perhaps most notably, NCAA March Madness Live, which last year reported 98 million live streams over the course of the month-long event. iStreamPlanet is also supporting vMVPDs, which are revolutionizing the way fans watch digital video.
SVG sat down with Tim Davis, VP, products and services, iStreamPlanet, to discuss the past year at the company, its next steps in OTT-user-experience growth, and coming innovations in sports production and beyond.
iStreamPlanet's Tim Davis: We have a lot of sports-centric customers who are looking for immersive content rich with fan metadata that is very integrated with social media. We look at customer needs as core demands on our platform.
What were some of the highlights at iStreamPlanet last year, in your opinion?
From my standpoint, one of the biggest highlights was that we onboarded and delivered NCAA March Madness Live with our partners Turner Sports and CBS Sports. NCAA MML is one of the largest sports OTT experiences in the industry. It's a month-long event, and we have to bring our A game for the better part of 30 days. During the tournament, we delivered 98 million live streams to fans, which is a crazy amount of volume. MML is fun because it's super active on Thursdays and Fridays and college fans are so fanatical that they watch not only at home but also at work and on a ton of different mobile, tablet, and other device types. We built some really ambitious technology for the event, too, focusing on innovating in advertising and immersive content. Our customer was extremely happy, and, more important, so were the fans.
Consumer demand for vMVPD live linear TV channels was also a highlight last year. This is clearly where consumer preference is headed. We experienced tremendous growth in this space. We're now managing over 1,000 live linear channels in North America alone. This is a difficult challenge, and we've worked hard to get all of the channels that our customers are asking for delivered at mass scale. We're also helping customers monetize their channels as well as deliver innovative OTT features.
You also helped support BlizzCon, which is a massive esports event. How did your technology play a critical role there?
We're a technology company, so a lot of our engineers and operations staff are also gamers! BlizzCon was easily one of our favorite events of the year. We provided both onsite staff in Anaheim, CA, and operations staff from our Broadcast Operations Center (BOC) in Las Vegas. Obviously, esports fans demand low-latency, high-quality video, which gives us a chance to show off fantastic HD scenarios from our Aventus encoding stack.
There was also the Playmaker deal with NBC Sports. How does that shape your business going forward?
We've done a ton of great work co-delivering solutions to brands in the sports market with our partner NBC Sports. You'll see some exciting news over the next couple of months with some large customers - especially internationally - coming onto our joint platform. We're excited to bring really great sports video to fans.
What's the latest with your Aventus product? How has that solution continued to evolve for the company?
I'm not even sure I'd call it evolve rather than exploded. We've basically gone from a live-centric TV company to an entire end-to-end media-processing-suite company. Over the past two years, we've added digital-rights management and a full-fledged VOD offering called VOD Flow. We have a new product called SwitchCast that delivers personalized channels. This functionality is key for regional-sports-network customers. We've added Media Origin, extended archiving, and rolled out instant Live2VOD capture. Really, what we've been doing is responding to customer demand. As digital becomes as important as classic broadcast, all of these services are necessary to deliver a complete fan experience. We want to provide everything our customers need to run a complete media-processing stack.
When you look at your client portfolio and the various digital vMVPDs that you work with, what key challenges are they facing?
On the distribution side, our customers need the highest-quality video with no disruption. The broadcast world is a very mature business. It's highly available and highly reliable - several nines strength - and fans expect that. People look at digital-first not as a science project but as the primary place fans are watching television. The experience needs to be comparable to classic cable systems. It's quite a challenge to deliver that in the internet world.
Then there's scale. Managing thousands of signals coming in and out of our facilities is hard to do. There's a phrase: There's no substitution for experience. That's what we bring to the table for our customers. We've been doing this for 18 years. We know how these things work, and we bring that expertise and quality approach to our customers.
The other thing we are focusing on is differentiation and bringing much more interesting and enga
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
16/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: FUJIFILM Execs on GFX ETERNA 55 Camera, Importance of Shallow-Dept...
16/10/2025
Squash's Most Ambitious Broadcast Production To Be Deployed at Comcast Busin...
16/10/2025
Main Street Sports Group Inks Deal With Omaha Productions, Launches Original-Con...
16/10/2025
A Historic Precursor? FIFA, HBS, DAZN Offer an Inside Look at Production of FIFA...
16/10/2025
Prime Video Offers Sneak Peak at New NBA on Prime StudioThe massive 13,000-sq-ft, two-story studio features a LED regulation half court and hoopBy Jason Dachman...
16/10/2025
SVG Remote Production Forum Draws Record Crowd for Visit to PGA TOUR Studios, De...
16/10/2025
BitFire's Ben Grafchik on How Growing Cloud Workflows Are Impacting the Live...
16/10/2025
AI technology is advancing quickly, bringing both new creative possibilities and...
16/10/2025
In 2017, Imani Ellis launched CultureCon, a conference that's become a must-attend event for more than 10,000 diverse creatives and Black professionals to c...
16/10/2025
It might still be a little early to break out the tinsel and mistletoe, but Spotify's already queuing up some holiday magic. This year's Spotify Singles...
16/10/2025
Earlier this year, our in-house publishing imprint, Spotify Audiobooks, put out ...
16/10/2025
VAMPIRE has been integrated onto GM Defenses Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), providing a mobile solution to effectively and affordably counter small drone threat...
16/10/2025
The AgilePod mounted on the host aircraft....
16/10/2025
60% say infotainment systems are a critical purchasing or leasing consideration,...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK The Broadcasters Foundation of America has launched its 2025 Year-End Giving Campaign, which seeks to raise donations from tax-deductible personal and ...
16/10/2025
Roku has added several new features to its user interface and operating system meant to make it easier to discover and personalize content, the company said....
16/10/2025
NEW YORK CNN has announced that its All Access subscription tier will launch in the U.S. on Oct. 28, providing audiences with a centralized destination for CNN&...
16/10/2025
Student Spotlight: Alan Villanueva The graduate student and saxophonist, who performed on Natalia Lafourcades Latin Grammy-nominated Live at Carnegie Hall alb...
16/10/2025
The XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) has announced the third cohort of members. The new members include Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the Vegas Golden Kni...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK The Broadcasters Foundation of America has launched its 2025 Year-End Giving Campaign which seeks to raise donations from tax-deductible personal and c...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK Australia's Nine Network and the NHL today announced a media partnership that will bring the world's premier professional ice hockey league to ...
16/10/2025
Parks Associates has released new data showing that nearly half (45%) of U.S. internet homes watch free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services and 89% of U.S...
16/10/2025
TROY, Mich. -New data from J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. Residential Internet Service Provider Study shows that residential wireless internet providers are growing...
16/10/2025
TV's most charming detective drama * Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investi...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Thailand's Legendary Outlaw Returns: Tee Yai: Born to be ...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Christmas Is Just Around The Corner: Home For Christmas Season...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Trist n Ulloa Stars in El crimen de Pazos, the New Netflix Ser...
16/10/2025
ABS Completes Redomiciliation to Dubai Development Authority as Part of Strategi...
16/10/2025
This Saturday October 18 Katja Mia will burst onto the radio airwaves for the first time as she joins 2FM. Katja will be standing in for Bl thnaid Treacy on Sat...
16/10/2025
This October, RT is delighted to support Wexford Festival Opera, Babor International Arts Festival for Children, Open House Dublin and 36 other arts and cultu...
16/10/2025
GeForce NOW is more than just a platform to stream fresh games every week - it offers celebrations for the gamers who make it epic, with member rewards to sweet...
15/10/2025
Across the world, early-career reporters are interrogating systems that shape daily life, from mortuaries and classrooms to the corridors of legal education and...
15/10/2025
St. Louis Blues Pay Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne in New Pregame Open VideoThe NHL franchise worked with production firms 2WEI and 4th Floor CreativeBy Mark J Burns,...
15/10/2025
Cobalt Digital, G3DVu, Proxima Vision, and Telos Alliance Renew Premier Sponsors...
15/10/2025
By Paige Bethmann
Before my grandmother passed away in 2019, I went to visit her in the hospital where she'd been for a few weeks. When I arrived, the nurs...
15/10/2025
Two years ago, Spotify set out to grow the entire publishing industry by making ...
15/10/2025
People turn to DJ for a listening experience that feels personal, dynamic, and j...
15/10/2025
Las personas recurren a DJ para vivir una experiencia de escucha personal, din m...
15/10/2025
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen and luminary actor Jeremy Allen White came togethe...
15/10/2025
At Spotify, we're all about supporting rising talent and helping them connec...
15/10/2025
New SBS Documentary Series THE CANCER KILLERS Premieres 4 November on SBS & SBS ...
15/10/2025
SBS celebrates the Festivals of Lights with bold, illuminating stories across th...
15/10/2025
One of humanity's most profound questions continues: Is there any place in our galaxy suitable for life beyond Earth? NASA intends to find out, with the hel...
15/10/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
15/10/2025
Scality, a global leader in cyber-resilient storage software for the AI era, today announced the advancement of its comprehensive AI ecosystem certification pro...
15/10/2025
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today unveiled key highlights of the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, scheduled for Feb. 15 19 at the Westin Rancho Mirage Go...
15/10/2025
At NAB Show New York 2025 (Stand 244), Interra Systems will showcase the future of media QC, monitoring, and captioning, highlighting its award-winning, AI- and...
15/10/2025
Grass Valley today announced that RMC BFM, part of the CMA-CGM Group and France's third-largest private media group, has chosen Grass Valley's productio...
SVG Sit-Down: iStreamPlanet's Tim Davis on His Company's Role in a Fast Evolving Media Space The streaming-services provider supports the Olympics, Super Bowl, NCAA March Madness Live By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
