Archives

HBO, Sky, Fox & Others To Discuss Parity Between Online Video and Broadcast Television

We are starting to see momentum gather for online video: cable subscribers are declining and online video consumption is increasing. But the two experiences, watching TV and watching online video, aren’t the same yet. At the Streaming Media East show in NYC, taking place May 16-17, we have a panel that will talk about what it might take to get parity between the traditional television experience and streaming video. Broadcast television generally has better quality, more consistent delivery, and improved customer service. Yet the allure of anytime, anywhere access from any device is driving consumer behavior towards OTT services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and more. Confirmed speakers include:

  • Moderator: Jason Thibeault, Executive Director, Streaming Video Alliance
  • Clark Pierce, SVP, TV Everywhere, FOX Sports Go
  • Andreas Engde, Project Manager, Viaplay
  • John Narus, Director, Digital Products, HBO Latin America
  • Mourad Kioumgi, Solutions Architect, Sky

You can register online using code 200DR17 and get $200 off your registration ticket. #smeast

Sponsored by

    DRM alone is not Enough.

Inside Hulu’s Live Streaming TV Workflow: Bitrates, CDNs and Playback

With Hulu’s new live TV service now in public beta, I’m getting a lot of questions on how the service works from a video workflow standpoint and what Hulu’s done on the backend to make it all happen. I had the chance to spend some time with Hulu’s CTO and was also in the private beta the week before the service launched and have compiled some technical details I can now share.

From ingestion through distribution, Hulu’s using multiple third-party vendors in their video stack, but has also build some of the pieces of the platform in-house. For ingestion, Hulu is taking all of the live signals via third-party vendors including MLBAM and iStreamPlanet. Since many broadcasters have a preference on which vendors they already use for live signal ingestion, Hulu’s been working with many of the vendors that dominate the market when it comes to pulling in signals.

For encoding, Hulu’s doing everything using H.264 and is maxing out their bitrate at 3,500Kbps [Updated May 4: Hulu says they are now doing 6.5Mbps as max] While Hulu’s launched the beta service doing 30fps, in a “couple of weeks”, Hulu will expand to offer 60fps with max bitrate of 5,500Kbps. On the backend delivery side, Hulu is using both Akamai and Amazon Web Services to deliver the streams, and is using other third-party CDNs for the VOD portion of their service. This is pretty common with what we have seen from other companies in the market like Hulu, where they are using 3-4 different content delivery networks for video delivery. Hulu is also utilizing an in-house technology to determine which CDNs perform best and how much traffic they push to them, based on those performance metrics.

On the player side, Hulu has built all of that in-house and is not using any third-party company. The company is also using DASH and in iOS devices is using Apple native player. Hulu’s CTO will be the keynote at our Streaming Media East conference taking place Tuesday, May 16th in NYC, so if you want to hear more about how the service works and see it in action, sign up for a free pass.

From the time I have spent testing Hulu’s new service on the Xbox One before launch, and now having seen it on other devices, Hulu has done a great job to get the experience right. They still have some more features to add as well as support for other devices like the Roku which will come shortly, but for a beta service, they really executed on it well. Adding 60fps, higher bitrates and more content partners, and their service is only going to get better down the line. Of course, it’s missing a lot of live sports, as all of the live streaming TV service are, but that’s to be expected.

Hulu’s service is not going to force a large percentage of consumers to cut the cord and I while can’t discuss what Hulu’s internal projections are on the number of subscribers they hope to have by the end of the year, they are very realistic. Between the five live services in the market, Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube, DirecTV Now and PlayStation Vue, we’ll have 3M or fewer subs combined, at the end of this year. It’s really next year where we have to wait and see what kind of growth the services will have, once they have been in the market longer and are available on more devices.

The Business Of Skinny Bundles and Consumer Choice

In recent months, Pay TV carriers and streaming providers like Hulu and YouTube have introduced “skinny bundles” in an effort to prevent cord-cutters and/or attract younger, price conscious consumers. But many of these offerings don’t provide much real choice or only leave providers with slim margins due to high carriage fees. At the Streaming Media East show in NYC, taking place May 16-17, we have a panel of video industry experts that will discuss the latest research on consumer channel priorities and pricing analysis and provide perspectives on what types of bundles consumers want to watch. Confirmed speakers include:

  • Moderator: Jonathan Hurd, Director, Altman Vilandrie & Company
  • Xavier Kochhar, Founder, CEO, The Video Genome Project
  • Magnus Svensson, Media Solution Consultant, Eyevinn Technology
  • Bill Rusitzky, CRO, THX
  • Helge Hoibraaten, CEO, Vimond

You can register online using code 200DR17 and get $200 off your registration ticket. #smeast

Hulu’s CTO To Keynote Streaming Media Show, Discuss Hulu’s New Live TV Service

I’m excited to announce that Tian Lim, Chief Technology Officer at Hulu will kick off the first day of the Streaming Media East show, with a keynote on May 16th at 9am. With the launch of Hulu’s new live TV service, attendees will be able to hear all about Hulu’s workflow, the video trends taking place in the market and will be able to get hands-on with Hulu’s new live TV service on the exhibit floor, at the device pavilion. The keynote is free to attend if you register online using code 200DR17 and select a discovery pass. #smeast

Learn The Best Practices For Broadcasting On Facebook Live At #smeast Show

Facebook Live is currently one of the hottest platforms for broadcasting live on the Internet. At the Streaming Media East show in NYC, taking place May 16-17, hear real-world results from Chad Sisneros, Managing Director at The Humane Society of the United States, who has been live-streaming (via Facebook and YouTube) for years. Hear how they have gone live from various corners of the globe, with varying levels of success — and learn from their failures, and borrow from their successes. Along with the analytics, learn what they have found are the best practices for broadcasting on Facebook including content choice, engagement rates, securing donations and other best practices.

You can register online using code 200DR17 and get $200 off your registration ticket. #smeast

The Future of TV is Now: Time To Deliver on the Promise

At the Streaming Media East show in NYC, taking place May 16-17, we have a panel with Plex, NBC Universal, Roku, Vimeo and Vice that will discuss the future of TV. As 2017 continues to see big disruption in the TV space, the problem that exists with Internet TV and OTT is that the “consumer experience is terrible.” Many believe that hardware platforms and content providers must come together to address the problem of “how do I easily find what I’m looking for?” While some device manufacturers are developing better universal search, there are still huge unresolved problems for viewers, including inconsistent access to content across platforms, a wide variety of user experiences, and getting unbiased recommendations. This panel of hardware companies, software companies, and publishers will talk about how consumers want to watch video and what the future of TV will look like. Confirmed speakers include:

  • Moderator: Keith Valory, CEO, Plex
  • Moritz Gimbel, VP, Product, NBC Universal
  • Bernarda Duarte, Director, Content Acquisition, Roku
  • Will True, Senior Product Manager, TV Apps, Vimeo
  • Drake Martinet, VP, Product, Vice

You can register online using code 200DR17 and get $200 off your registration ticket. #smeast

Secure OTT: The Do’s And Don’t Of Multi-DRM In An HTML5 World

The industry has made big strides forward in bridging the divides between HLS and DASH, Fragmented MP4s and Transport Streams, CBC and CRT, and the myriad little details that continue to cause fragmentation and chaos in delivery and rendering of DRM-secured content to devices. At the Streaming Media East show in NYC, taking place May 16-17,  Avni Rambhia, Industry Principal, at Frost & Sullivan, will present how achieving cost-effective, cross-platform secure playback remains a critical yet mostly unsolved challenge. While the unified vision of HTML5 and seamless playback across browsers is still several years from potential fruition, there are methods to conquer the madness and implement delightful, yet secure, OTT services. Her presentation will provide an update on the state of DRM including insight into the apps vs browsers debate, customer needs, and best practices recommendations.

You can register online using code 200DR17 and get $200 off your registration ticket. #smeast