Broadcast Beat Magazine 2017 NAB Show NY/SMPTE Special Edition | Page 50

STAYING ON TOP OF QUALITY CONTROL
IN AN OTT VIDEO STREAMING WORLD
By DAN MURRAY, VIDEO PRODUCT LINE MANAGER, TEKTRONIX
The need to deliver content from multiple sources
to any screen as anytime has made life increas-
ingly complex for broadcasters. Dealing with
complexity of OTT/multiscreen workflows while
still meeting customers expectations for an excel-
lent, highly personalized experience is a major
challenge.
For many broadcasters, the move to OTT services
also means making the move into cloud-based
video streaming. For broadcasters who have
done testing on the cloud to confirm it works
well enough to migrate workflows and bring up
new services, one critical question often remains:
“How do I make sure everything’s working fine?
And if there is an issue along the workflow, do I
have instruments in place to diagnose and isolate
problems and proactively resolve issues before
customers see them?”
With the addition of streaming in the cloud,
there’s no question that staying on top of QC
challenges is becoming exponentially more diffi-
cult, as shown in Figure 1. If you look at the video
workflow from a few years back, it was com-
paratively easy. For the end-user, they got a set
top box from the cable operator, and they could
just plug the set top box to the TV and that was
it. It was single experience, all controlled by the
cable operator who could push out new features
whenever they wanted. Today’s world, of course,
is much more complex with consumers expecting
Figure 1. The move to multiscreen distribution makes content monitoring much more complex.
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