Category Archives: Media Delivery

Keeping Emissions in Check During Unprecedented Internet Use

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As I reflect on 2020 and the way in which the pandemic affected the business world, what stands out to me is the incredible increase in streaming content consumed on the internet. We’ve seen launches of some of the highest-profile streaming services to date between late 2019 and 2020. People are continuously streaming content and we need to consider the impact that increased viewership is having on the world. When you sit down to catch a movie or binge watch that latest series, do you consider the effect that streamed content has on the rest of the world? We will continue to see an uptick in carbon emissions from the power required to serve online content: servers, network hardware, and the energy needed to keep it all cool. Continue reading Keeping Emissions in Check During Unprecedented Internet Use→

How DevOps Tools Can Help Publishers Thrive

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Agility has proven to be a key weapon in the publisher arsenal during the pandemic. Agile firms — particularly news publishers — that switched directions or added digital services quickly reaped the rewards of new readers and viewers, even if the aud… Continue reading How DevOps Tools Can Help Publishers Thrive→

How DevOps Tools Can Help Publishers Thrive

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Agility has proven to be a key weapon in the publisher arsenal during the pandemic. Agile firms — particularly news publishers — that switched directions or added digital services quickly reaped the rewards of new readers and viewers, even if the audience boost didn’t result in a similar increase in revenues for ad-based services in the short term. Continue reading How DevOps Tools Can Help Publishers Thrive→

Going Beyond Advertising: Revenue Diversification in Publishing

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The pandemic has had a profound short-term effect on publishers around the world — a jump in readership somewhat dampened by disappearing advertising revenue. In many media firms, the digital channel has become most important, accelerating the move to digital while also highlighting the fragility of the display advertising market. Continue reading Going Beyond Advertising: Revenue Diversification in Publishing→

Using LL-HLS with byte-range addressing to achieve interoperability in low latency streaming

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HTTP Adaptive Segmented (HAS) streaming began to be used at scale from 2008 to 2012, with the advent of Move Networks, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Apple HLS, Adobe HDS, and MPEG DASH. With the typical 10s segment durations of the day, livestream latencies (measuring latency as the time from an action being filmed to that same action being displayed on a device’s screen) remained in the 30s to 60s range, trailing broadcast by a significant degree. Over the next decade, segment durations were reduced down to 2s, bringing with them a concomitant reduction in latency to the 8s to 16s range. That range remains the typical latency for many live events today. The year 2020 then brought the industry a pleasant surprise — not one, but two HAS standards were released that target latency in the 2s range: Low Latency DASH (LL-DASH) and Low Latency HLS (LL-HLS). Both these standards were developed independently, and while they can be deployed as separate streams in a content delivery system, there are performance and cost gains to be had for packagers, origins, CDNs, and players if both streaming formats can be served by a single-set of media objects. Continue reading Using LL-HLS with byte-range addressing to achieve interoperability in low latency streaming→

Why Our Furniture Will Face the TV for Years to Come

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Before the invention of the television, the focal point of any room was the fireplace. In fact, the word "focus" derives from the Latin word for "hearth." However, the invention of the television, coupled with the arrival of central heating, means that, from the mid-20th century onwards, most of us have pointed our sofas at the TV. Continue reading Why Our Furniture Will Face the TV for Years to Come→

Optimize Video Streaming Performance to Reduce Viewer Churn

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Why Improve Viewer Experience? Why Now?
As online video viewership continues its march to digital mediums and platforms, viewer expectation around the quality of experience is also maturing. Increased video streaming choices and the low cost of switching providers are leading viewers to churn if the viewing experience is poor.

There is a definite association between the viewer’s quality of experience and the video quality, which is directly impacted by the video delivery performance of the CDN involved. Delivering an optimal video delivery performance is one of the important success criteria for CDN vendor selection across the globe. Continue reading Optimize Video Streaming Performance to Reduce Viewer Churn→