You’ve probably already seen a bunch of predictions about streaming in 2024. Maybe Evan Shapiro? Maybe Thierry Fautier? And while these are excellent sources for looking at streaming as an industry or a business, I’m not really interested in that. As the Executive Director of the Streaming Video Technology Alliance,
There has been a lot of talk over the years about making the streaming video experience more “personalized.” But what does that really mean? For the most part, personalization has been about content recommendations. When the viewer can come to the streaming platform and see content that might be more relevant to their
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: streaming is an evolutionary step in the television experience. Some of that has to do with how viewers can watch TV content now: from anywhere at any time, across different devices and screen sizes. The same content that was once shackled to
At the SportsPro OTT USA event in March, held at Citi Field in Queens, New York, someone said, “DRM is dead” and dropped the microphone. And although my gut reaction was to immediately dismiss that statement, I’ve taken some time to reflect, and I think it deserves some more consideration.
If you spend any time in the streaming video industry, you’ll soon hear the word “delivery.” In fact, it’s used quite often to describe the technologies, processes, mechanisms, and vendors that are involved in transmitting bits and bytes of data in response to users’ requests for video segments. But the
In late 2020, WarnerMedia made a rather startling, and some would say controversial, decision: It would stream its blockbuster titles, such as Wonder Woman 1984, at the same time they were released theatrically. And to top it off, there would be no extra charge to current subscribers of HBO Max. Evan Shapiro,
CDNs have always been a necessity in the world of streaming video. Although some streaming providers, such as Netflix, Apple, and Amazon, have continued to build their own delivery infrastructures, the majority of streaming providers utilize a combination of CDNs to ensure that their content is delivered in the best
Ask the folks at any web startup or any technology company that offers a cloud-based service, and they will tell you they play the “What happens if?” game all the time. What happens if one of our major data centers goes dark? What happens if network operators throttle bandwidth? What
If broadcast television taught us one thing about video content, it’s this: one size fits all. Whether you are watching from a television set, with a set-top box, or from a mobile phone that has HBBtv or DVB-H (or, now, ATSC 3.0) capabilities, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same signal.
Let’s face it: The OTT landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented. The promise was that consumers could create skinny bundles of content they wanted (from across providers) in order to replace endless channels in a traditional cable operator’s electronic programming guide (EPG). The reality has become a siloed monster, as brands