Interesting to see what the popular streaming protocols are today, in spite of
the hype 2 years ago about MPEG-DASH. Also RTSP has been on the decline for
many years, it seems.
Looks like Apple's HLS is the most popular, and then Adobe's HDS, which runs in
Flash and Adobe Air players (PCs and Macs).
Bert
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http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/OTT-and-the-Challenge-of-Live-Linear-Channels-103865.aspx
OTT and the Challenge of Live-Linear Channels
A new survey from Unisphere Research, Streaming Media, and Transitions, Inc. -
sponsored by Level 3 Communications - shows that live events and live linear
channels are becoming as important as VOD, and outlines shifts in both
acquisition and delivery.
By Streaming Media Editorial Staff
Posted on May 12, 2015
The growth of over-the-top (OTT) video delivery has been nothing short of
spectacular. In the last 12 months alone, OTT has grown to $9-12 billion in
global revenues, with $1.9 billion of those revenues coming from emerging
markets, according to a report from PWC. In fact, international viewership is
now estimated at 19.4 million viewer households.
A new report on the growth of OTT - and the challenges faced by OTT service
providers - was released today. Titled "Over-the-top Video Delivery: Challenges
and Opportunities for Global OTT Service Providers," it was produced by
Unisphere Research and Streaming Media magazine, sponsored by Level 3
Communications, and crafted by Transitions, Inc.
"OTT video delivery is making a marked impact on both the broadcast and
streaming industries," the report states, "driving consumer and technologies
shifts in media consumption. These shifts have fueled a myriad of solutions to
the technical and security challenges - and even some monetization barriers -
that often prevented premium content owners from entering the OTT-video market."
Several key issues that have been addressed, though, are clearing the way for a
new wave of OTT service providers.
"With global CDNs, more affordable mass storage, adaptive bitrate video
compression technologies, and the widespread adoption of high speed internet
and 4G LTE wireless data, the OTT opportunity is growing faster than ever,"
said Tim Siglin, co-founder and principal analyst of Transitions, Inc.
Siglin noted that a large number of respondents see OTT as a viable revenue
opportunity today. Even for those survey takers who indicated they've not yet
moved to offer OTT services, there was a strong understanding that it's not
longer just a video-on-demand (VOD) play.
"Additional responses indicate that offering both video-on-demand (VOD) and
live-linear channels will be critical for OTT providers to entice new prospects
and gain market share," the report states. "This trend is a critical one. For
existing OTT providers, offering a VOD service may not be enough to maintain,
much less grow, market share."
The trend towards adding live-linear channel content has the potential to
become "table stakes" in the OTT game over the next several years, with both
breaking news and live sports content leading the way in terms of interest for
OTT service providers adding live-linear channels.
Survey respondents highlighted the delivery protocols they currently support,
and Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) was the clear winner at double the
support of any other protocol.
For those respondents working for companies which offer OTT services today, the
use of HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) from Adobe outranked Smooth Streaming and
Adobe's RTMP protocol.
At the low-end of the supported delivery protocols, MPEG-DASH received
approximately 29% support from those offering OTT services today.
Live-linear content requires significant security infrastructure, given the
timeliness of the content and the propensity for smartphone app streaming at
live sporting events such as the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, as
called out in a recent ESPN story.
"We are going to seek whatever remedy we have to go after people who
essentially stole our product," said Todd DeBoef, president of Top Rank, which
promotes Pacquiao. DeBoef very specifically noted concern "about the amount of
people who were streaming and watching the fight through Twitter's
live-streaming app, Periscope".
In addition, the OTT Services report notes that authentication tools need to be
at the top of their game. For the Mayweather-Pacquio fight, authentication
issues caused almost an hour delay in the "Fight of the Century" as technicians
scrambled to resolve the issue for this $100-per-view event.
The good news, according to the survey, is that there's another parallel trend:
growth in the number of live-linear channels being acquired over fiber, versus
the recent past, in which satellite downlink live content acquisition was the
preferred method.
"This shift in how broadcast quality channels are received, from satellite to
fiber backbone, is critical in all types of live-linear content, including
sports content," the report states.
In other words, broadcast quality acquisition is equally important for OTT
delivery as it has been for traditional broadcast delivery.
Click here to access the report, and here for more Streaming Media/Unisphere
research.
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