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quality. I personally
don’t think there is any
winning solution for
truly unmanaged
devices in the home.
The only way would be
to take control of the
endpoint – for
example, by a
customised app. But,
of course, consumers
want more flexibility
and to not be cornered
into one provider’s
app. So then either the
consumers lower their
expectations (which
have been traditionally low for online
media), or operators figure out how to
squeeze better service quality solely at the
content source – for example, by offering
better encoding or providing caching closer
to the point of consumption.
are significantly lower. In fact, consumers
readily accept some degradation of quality
while watching 4K video content re-encoded
to a lower resolution to make it more suitable
for a smartphone or tablet device. However,
over time, these expectations will surely
“4K distribution in the home will put increasing
pressure on home gateway bandwidth.”
Triveni: In the terrestrial broadcast
environment, consumers expect high QoS.
Likewise, there is a strong customer demand
for superior QoS in a cable operator
environment where the service is managed.
In the OTT realm, video quality expectations
change.
VeEX: This is something that is really hard
to do, because monitoring and ensuring
proper delivery of any service encounters
cost. Whether it is monitoring tools, with or
without the cloud, virtual or not, with or
without additional
HW, there is a cost
involved. Also, if you
are trying to
maintain a network
with traffic that does
not generate
revenues with the
same QoE as one
that does, it will not
work. I think we are
currently in a
transition phase,
where in a year or so
we may see different
types of services with
additional costs.
Service Providers will be able to generate
money from these unmanaged devices and at
the end of the day, someone has to foot the
bill.
Euromedia: With bandwidths under
increasing pressure and no prospect of
streaming standards, how will 4K pressurise
the system further and how can T&M de-risk
the challenge?
Bridge: When you are dealing with higher
bandwidth, you will be getting much closer to
the point where you saturate your capacity
and problems occur. With the right kind of
monitoring you can sail closer to the wind to
get more data through by knowing exactly
where the boundaries of the delivery systems
are, and not stepping over them. You would
Analytics help monetise online video
The increasing use of
Internet protocol (IP)
enabled devices has fuelled
massive video consumption
and, in turn, driven the
need for online video
analytics (OVA) solutions
globally. Publishers,
advertisers and service
providers have come to the
realisation that OVA
solutions are essential to
device effective strategies
to monetise from targeted
video services. Analysis
from Frost & Sullivan finds
that the market earned
revenues of $189.4 million
in 2014 and estimates this
to reach $472 million by
2020.
Due to a rapid adoption of
OTT services, supported by
the proliferation of mobile
22 EUROMEDIA
devices, user-generated
online video has grown
substantially. As a result,
advertisers and publishers
have begun to divert their
resources to online channels,
boosting the prospects of
OVA solution providers.
“The demand for premium
TV content on online
channels has also increased
due to the popularity of live
global sporting events,” said
Frost & Sullivan digital media
industry manager Hiral
Jasani. “This has highlighted
the need to identify real-time
consumption behaviour and
measure the effectiveness of
online video and online video
advertising by adopting
sophisticated OVA solutions.”
However, the lack of
standardisation of
measurement metrics offered
by OVA platforms, coupled
with the diversity of devices
and video formats, has led to
confusion in the market and
prevented these solutions
from going mainstream.
Instead of taking the risk of
investing in third-party OVA
solutions, the market has
been using home-grown or
bespoke solutions.
With no standardisation in
terms of measuring audience
engagement, viewership or
quality of online video, the
market has become
fragmented. As a result,
there are only a handful of
pure-play OVA solution
providers globally.
“The OVA market will
remain fragmented, as
publishers, advertisers and
service providers each try to
control their ends of video
delivery and cl Z[H