The tipping point for OTT broadcast services was surely passed when on successive days HBO and CBS announced they were cutting their own cords with announcements of online-only subscription services. Analysts such as UK based Rethink Technologies are right to assert that these moves will start the dominoes falling not just in North America but around the world, as almost all commercial broadcasters and also pay TV operators will be under mounting pressure to come out with their own OTT-only offerings. It is no longer enough to have a TV Everywhere play so that existing customers can access their subscribed content from connected devices around the home and increasingly while on the road from smartphones, laptops and especially tablets. Now they need a separate online package to combat the brigade of pure play OTT service providers led by Netflix and Amazon, even at the risk of cannibalising their own premium services delivered by cable, satellite or IPTV.
The usage of mobile devices has exploded over the past ten years. At the same time TV remains incredibly popular and powers the largest content industry in the world. The holy grail of next generation connected devices is, quite naturally, to connect the first screen, the TV, with the second screen, the mobile. This paper from Accedo explores the prospect of integrated first and second screen experiences and the likely development over the coming years.
You are sitting there quietly watching your favorite show on TV when all of a sudden the commercial comes on – BAM, WAM, BUY, BUY… screams at you. The purpose of the commercial is to grab your attention in the few seconds of the spot. The recording engineers in the commercials production agency will turn up the sound levels into the red for maximum impact and effect to shake you out of your slumbers. However the effect can be to intensely annoy the viewer who reaches for the channel change, or worse calls the TV company to complain.
There is a rapid and profound technology shift in ENG. Wireless broadband service providers have become viable low-cost alternatives to conventional microwave in a large number of cases. BT Sport has launched what is claimed to be Europe’s first cellular newsgathering fleet with LiveU LU500 units and Xtender remote antennas even giving the service a new acronym of CNG. Meanwhile U.S. Spanish language broadcaster Noticias MundoFOX has based its entire ENG operation on LIVE+ 20/20 cellular-bonded transmitters from Dejero. “Budget is always a large consideration for a start-up news network,” explained Armando Acevedo, the network’s director of operations. “The ability to cover live, breaking news from the source is a critical differentiator but can also be a major expense area, especially if the station has to maintain costly satellite vehicles.”
The business of selling television and radio transmission antennas in the United States is at a standstill, though the global business is stronger. Antenna tower builders, however, remain busy — switching from broadcasting to the booming cellular telephone business.
Television viewing habits throughout the world are undergoing major change. A new report from Ericsson finds that streaming video is closing in on linear TV with a gap of just two percentage points in terms of weekly consumption.
The future of digital video is expanding in all directions; from the size of the living room TV, the depth of content selection, and to the different types of devices which serve content. A culmination of technologies is brewing that is bringing an IMAX1-esque experience into the living room.
In this whitepaper you’ll learn: results of an industry-wide content acceleration technology “bake-off”; the benefits of middle-mile optimization on content acceleration technologies; the testing methodologies and approach we used when comparing providers; and independent third-party corroboration of the test results. This whitepaper is a detailed look into the methods and results of a performance comparison test carried out during a 38-hour period and covered in the published whitepaper by the Enterprise Strategy Group, “Limelight Orchestrate Performance: Accelerating the Delivery of Dynamic Content Across the Middle-Mile.” Throughout this paper, we will explain the testing purpose, methodologies, and results in an effort to expose how middle-mile optimization within content delivery networks leads to better overall content delivery performance. For a third-party validation of these tests and a business understanding of the importance of performance, please read the published whitepaper referenced above. You can also visit Appendix A of this paper to see independent, third party corroboration of our conclusions.
