Broadcasters’ Push to IP Production Sparks Interest in Bypassing ST 2110
By Fred Dawson
Major advances in cloud virtualization and vendor interoperability are finally unleashing the cost-effective transition to IP-based live production workflows that has become an urgent priority worldwide.
The question is, how far does the industry want to go in upsetting old apple carts?
Standing out among a multitude of approaches to speeding the IP transition is the release of an open-source software development kit (SDK) supporting what’s known as the Media eXchange Layer (MXL). The innovation is part of the Digital Media Framework Reference Architecture (DMF RA) that was formulated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and a handful of vendors and media companies at workshops in late 2024. Continue reading >>>
Broadcasters’ Push to IP Production Sparks Interest in Bypassing ST 2110
By Fred Dawson
Major advances in cloud virtualization and vendor interoperability are finally unleashing the cost-effective transition to IP-based live production workflows that has become an urgent priority worldwide.
The question is, how far does the industry want to go in upsetting old apple carts?
Standing out among a multitude of approaches to speeding the IP transition is the release of an open-source software development kit (SDK) supporting what’s known as the Media eXchange Layer (MXL). The innovation is part of the Digital Media Framework Reference Architecture (DMF RA) that was formulated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and a handful of vendors and media companies at workshops in late 2024. Continue reading >>>
3 Vendors Pin Hopes on 1-Way Real-Time Streaming over HTTP
By Fred Dawson
MOQ may be moving rapidly toward adoption as a real-time streaming standard with growing industry support, but that’s not deterring some suppliers from ramping up efforts to promote new approaches to streaming at sub-second latencies over existing infrastructure.
Ceeblue, nanocosmos and Nakadi are betting ready-to-deploy real-time streaming that works with software tweaks on conventional CDNs will outweigh people’s reluctance to go with proprietary solutions. Afterall, they argue, their approaches are far cheaper to implement than MOQ and WebRTC platforms that require new infrastructure. Continue reading >>>
Transformed Viewing Experiences Energize Disruptive Potential of Live-Streamed Football
By Fred Dawson
Last year’s football season took the venerable sport a quantum leap closer to what fans of all sports worldwide will soon be taking for granted with next-gen viewing experiences that fully exploit the interactive personalized dynamism of IP technology, especially when it’s employed with ultralow-latency streaming.
The transformative implications of what’s taking shape around efforts to drive viewer engagement with on-screen magic have been largely overshadowed by press reports covering new streaming deals as a way to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers. The big news is that pervasive inclusion of live football as part of streamed services’ programming has led to virtually every NFL and top-tier college game becoming available through live-streamed as well as multichannel pay TV and over-the-air distribution.
The every-outlet emphasis on the business side is understandable, given what’s at stake as the big four broadcast and streaming rights holders with billions invested in recent multi-year contracts compete in high-wire acts aimed at balancing monetization agendas across traditional TV and digital outlets. But they’re also going further than ever in the digital domain to deliver the feature personalization and gamification deemed essential to driving engagement with a restless generation of younger consumers. Continue reading >>>
Threats Aside, AI Is Perceived as Life Saver in TV Newscasting
By Fred Dawson
In an ironic turn of events, amid widespread alarm over AI’s role in disinformation through image fakery and hallucinatory fabrications the technology has become what many traditional TV news broadcasters see as a vital linchpin to their survival as bastions of journalistic integrity.
Adding to the irony is the fact that some broadcasters are strengthening their newscasting reach by taking advantage of AI’s ability to distort reality by turning monolinguistic on-air personalities into fluent multilinguists. This is accomplished through real-time audio translation platforms that can generate multilingual news, sports and other live commentary by replicating the voices and reshaping lip movements of presenters speaking in one language for simultaneous output in one or more alternative languages. Continue reading >>>
As Live Content Multiviewing Gets Hot, Four New Approaches Vye to Be Game Changer
By Fred Dawson
Accelerating demand for multiviewing technology supporting single-screen displays of several channel or camera angle options has brought new solutions to market that surpass the capabilities typical of current applications in sports, news and other live TV and streaming productions.
While advancements in multiviewing introduced over the past couple of years by YouTube TV, Fubo, Roku, and major sports leagues like MLB and NBA accord users varying degrees of freedom to choose sports and other live channels they want to watch simultaneously on a single screen, they all limit the mix to no more than four streams. In contrast, at least four suppliers – MediaKind, Tiledmedia, Red5 and Eluvio – are taking highly divergent approaches to blowing out those restrictions. Continue reading >>>
From 2025
MOQ Resonates Amid Surging Demand for Real-Time Streaming
By Fred Dawson
The real-time interactive streaming revolution kicked into high gear at the recent IBC show in Amsterdam, fueled by intensifying activity around the emerging Media-over-QUIC (MOQ) standard and an outpouring of unrelated innovations by multiple suppliers.
With myriad paths now open to a market hungry for real-time connectivity, competing vendor messages mixed with much confusion over who is doing what lent an air of chaos typical of any major sea change in how things are done on the internet. But the momentum behind MOQ suggested that whatever upheaval lies immediately ahead, the International Engineering Task Force’s standards-based approach will become the new norm in video usage before too long. Continue reading >>>
A Year of Surprises in TV & Streamer Fortunes as Clouded Tariff Situation Persists
By Fred Dawson
2025 is proving to be a year full of surprises at the crossroads between legacy TV and streaming, starting with a general business climate that’s turning out to be better than many industry players and analysts expected in the months following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Perhaps the biggest surprise lies in new reasons for optimism in the TV broadcasting sector as station groups report the falloff in ad revenues following a national election year isn’t as bad as expected. Outweighing concerns about tariff policies, station owners are especially upbeat about the outlook in light of the deregulatory agenda promised by new FCC chairman Brendon Carr.
As for streaming services, most of the surprises have to do with how the choppy waters stirred by intense competition are upending various efforts to get beyond the turbulence. But the bigger surprise might be that none of this is doing much to slow the pace of streamers’ spending on new technology. Continue reading >>>
Transformative CDN Edge Strategies Capitalize on Advances in Cloud Computing
By Fred Dawson
New developments combining advances in CDN technology with cloud computing at network edges are creating vastly improved streaming environments for OTT services.
Both Akamai and the less-known CDN technology supplier Varnish Software nearly simultaneously announced radical departures from previous business models ahead of the April NAB Show. These moves, which capitalize on major advances in computer chip processing, follow ongoing successes registered by Qwilt’s next-gen Open Edge CDN platform. While the three companies’ approaches differ significantly, they all have in common the goal of putting edge-based cloud computing to work to accommodate improvements not only in distributed CDN caching but also myriad other processing functionalities video service providers are looking for to drive user engagement at lower costs. Continue reading >>>
Multiple WebRTC Platform Advances Signal Big Gains in Real-Time Streaming
By Fred Dawson
Demand across multiple market sectors for real-time video streaming solutions sparked an outpouring of innovation at the recent NAB Show, making the biggest case yet seen for freeing the world from sole reliance on the prevailing HLS and DASH technologies. New ideas included new approaches to real-time streaming, new ways to streamline activation of supporting infrastructure on an as-needed basis, and applications of AI that enable verbal and visual communications between humans and virtualized counterparts. Continue reading >>>
Emergence of WebRTC Alternatives Expands Real-Time Streaming Horizon
By Fred Dawson
As providers of WebRTC-based streaming platforms respond to surging demand for scalable, reliable real-time video connectivity, that demand is also accelerating progress toward alternative solutions that could eventually achieve equivalent results.
One of the first commercially applied breakthroughs in that direction was brought to light at the 2025 NAB Show by Eluvio, which has been making waves with several major M&E providers now streaming content over its Web3-based Content Fabric platform. Eluvio CEO and co-founder Michelle Munson shared clips of recent European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) competitions which she said Eluvio customer EPCR-TV had streamed live on HLS and DASH feeds using the new Bangkok release of the Content Fabric to achieve sub-second and even sub-half-second latencies at transcontinental distances. Continue reading >>>
Real-Time Streaming Revolutionizes Use of Surveillance in Emergencies
By Fred Dawson
A game-changing transformation in how governments use video surveillance is getting underway as emergency responders discover they can combine AI-fueled analytics with real-time streaming to stay current with events extending to the farthest reaches of their jurisdictions.
The new approach contrasts with traditional reliance on ground- and drone-based camera feeds reaching operations centers over high-latency streaming and routing systems, which prevents responders from getting anything close to a comprehensive real-time understanding of what’s happening. Aided by increased 5G mobile coverage through private and public networks along with other advances pushing visibility into remote areas, surveillance becomes far more useful when responders can put advanced analytics tools to work processing frame-synchronized mixes of multi-camera views delivered to their screens within a few hundred milliseconds of capture from anywhere in the field. Continue reading >>>
Case Builds for Pairing Micro-Betting with Real-Time Streaming
By Fred Dawson
The exploding popularity of micro-betting and other approaches to last-second in-game sports gambling is pushing bookmakers and streaming services toward integrating in-game betting options with the streamed viewing experience.
The only way to do that is to deliver what’s seen on screen as close to real-time synchronicity with what’s happening on field as possible, which can’t be done relying on the one-way, high-latency streaming mode dominating the current OTT market. As things stand now, micro-betting, the in-game wagering format that allows timely betting on imminent outcomes, is a niche for enthusiasts willing to live with the disconnect that comes with tracking real-time text streams describing action for betting purposes on smart phones while trying to watch the out-of-sync rendering of competition on connected TV screens.
Given the infectious social energy attending micro-betting, the incentive for users to participate would be much higher if the activity was part of a real-time viewing experience, which is why industry attention is turning to what can be done to make that possible. Continue reading >>>
Real-Time Connectivity Unleashes Sports Shift to Remote Production
By Fred Dawson
The advent of commercially viable real-time streaming has unleashed a torrent of activity among sports, news and other live programming producers who want to exploit the cost-cutting and other benefits that come with remote production.
Experimentation and in some cases full engagement with real-time streaming platforms, especially in sports productions, points to what could soon be a major shift away from reliance on in-venue production teams and equipment other than the cameras and crews engaged in capturing the action. The real-time streaming component has entered the picture with other factors contributing to the transformation in live production, including in-venue networking conversions to 5G and advanced Wi-Fi and migrations to public cloud-based processing. Continue reading >>>