Video Breakthroughs

Service providers deploying IPTV have tended to use constant bit rate (CBR) as opposed to variable bit rate (VBR) encoding. Several emerging use cases, however, could bring VBR back into play. It also is playing a surreptitious role in making adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming even more efficient.

OTT is increasingly being deployed in Europe for subscription services rather than just as part of TV Everywhere strategies for cable or satellite operators.

As well as providing a platform for new entrants, OTT is giving new life to IPTV operators that had previously not made much headway, or had been unable to afford the network upgrade required, involving building out of fiber closer to the premise.

The BBC Olympics sports broadcast service is one of the largest media events of 2012. It has brought the video service industry to a totally new level, earning for the 2012 Olympics the popularity of "truly digital games". In this context, it is critical to acknowledge the importance of expertise gained and leverage it in further growth. In this post, we are going to dwell into the project, its implementation, and valuable experience that you can apply to your own projects.

There is a growing effort by broadcasters to make regular TV content available online. For example, the BBC has developed the BBC iPlayer and the bbc.co.uk website to support replication of most BBC broadcast material. The service has been outstandingly successful: 79.3 million requests were serviced in October 2009. NBC coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics included live and recently recorded content, complete with commercials.

Whenever there is the possibility of a large or dynamic viewer audience, a reliable CDN is required. CDNs once only used to replicate website content around the world. Now, they have expanded dramatically to handle streaming media. Research and markets estimated the value of CDN services for 2008 at $1.25 billion, up 32 percent from 2007. Top CDNs include Akamai, Mirror Image Internet, Limelight Networks, CDNetworks and Level 3. Streaming media services must deal with content collected from disparate sources and distributed to a growing number of devices.