ITV

Tag: Content Delivery

  • MX Player & Akamai partner to deliver seamless viewing experience

    MX Player & Akamai partner to deliver seamless viewing experience

    KOLKATA: MX Player has partnered with Akamai Technologies to provide its increasing user base in India with a seamless digital experience.

    In 2020, MX Player was ranked by App Annie as the no.1 streaming app in India and the onset of the pandemic saw the platform witness not just a massive boost in viewership, but also new subscribers, and a newer audience. This accelerated growth heightened MX Player’s need for infrastructure that could support the scale and availability of the app across different networks and locations.

    MX Player found Akamai’s world class media delivery solution to be the right choice in order to deliver a high-quality viewing experience to their customers across different cities. The enhancement in performance and user experience was particularly pronounced in the case of MX TakaTak, a popular short video platform, that has seen a rapid surge of users, with a large portion of them coming from tier-2 and tier-3 towns.

    According to Redseer, online content consumption in India grew by 35 per cent in April 2020 compared to January 2020. It further stated that short-form video content consumption recorded the most significant jump during the lockdown.

    MX Player COO Vivek Jain said, “In the last couple of months, our user base has increased exponentially. The demand to consume content on the go and the need for virtual entertainment amongst the middle, mass, mobile, millennial audience in India is growing faster than ever before. MX Player has seen more than 7X jump in time spent on the app. “

    “Even MX TakaTak, which we recently launched, crossed one billion video views per day within a month from launch and has quickly become the market leading app in the short video category. We have always obsessed about best-in-class video load times. Akamai is a pioneer in Edge distribution and its presence particularly in tier-2 and tier-3 towns has helped us deliver an unmatched viewing experience for our customers across India’s mega cities as well as the hinterlands,” Jain added.

    Akamai media and carrier section India sales head Mitesh Jain noted that unprecedented demand for content coupled with rapidly evolving user behaviour poses a challenge for apps trying to ensure high-quality viewing experience across a complex network topology.

    “We are glad to have partnered with MX Player to help them scale the user base and step up to conform with user expectations of evolving Indian consumers. Given MX player’s ambition, I am sure that this is just a start and we will be accomplishing many more milestones together,” Jain said.

  • OTT players eye CDNs for optimised video delivery on mobile devices

    OTT players eye CDNs for optimised video delivery on mobile devices

    MUMBAI: There's no doubt that content is the most important component for over-the-top (OTT) platforms and publishers. But what has been put on the backburner is how platforms deliver content to our devices; i.e, the role of content delivery network (CDN) in the online ecosystem. During the Covid2019 lockdown, all OTT platforms and news websites have seen 2X-3X growth on average and CDNs have ensured uninterrupted consumer experience. As smartphone usage shoots up with more interactive content, CDNs need to innovate as well.

    Snapdeal CTO Prashant Parashar said during a virtual roundtable organised by Indiantelevision.com that CDNs have not focused highly on mobile devices while Indian consumers mostly consume content on smartphones. According to him, it is the right time for CDN players to innovate on the mobile side of videos and images and optimise for the newer economy in the post-Covid2019 world.

     “A lot of time we experience that video delivery is not as optimised as you would expect for mobile platforms. As new content is not being created, content consumption has spread out quite a bit. As a result, it is putting pressure on CDNs in terms of efficiency. Hence, it has become tough managing traffic,” Viacom18 Digital Ventures technology and engineering head Mohit Srivastava added.

    Limelight Networks product management senior director Michael Milligan also acknowledged that serving video to mobile devices have certain challenges. If a user is on fixed broadband, the bandwidth can be anticipated. But in terms of mobile connection, bandwidth as well as the latency may change unpredictably.

    “So from a Limelight point of view, we have done a lot to optimise how we can sustain network condition changes in real-time. We have done a lot of work in CDN and HTTP streaming capabilities to be aware of bandwidth changes quickly and to work with our customers to make it easier as things like buffer rate have a huge impact in countries where people are watching mostly on mobile. We have optimised a lot of our CDN to do that,” he added.

    “It has to do with TCP optimisation and understanding a client’s bandwidth. There are various algorithms which you can use to understand real-time bandwidth. It's a very interesting technical challenge because as you are trying to measure the bandwidth, you are actually impacting how you do that. There are some algorithms that have been developed lately by companies like Google and Netflix to help do that in a way that’s more efficient. We look at the connection real-time and understand the bandwidth and latency simultaneously,” he elaborated.

    Asked as an OTT player what he expects from a CDN, Srivastava said that cost is very important because the amount of video OTT players deliver can really change the economics of the business. But beyond cost, everyone who delivers video is looking at the quality of service that they can expect of a CDN along with the kind of configurabilty and customisability that it provides because the video has multiple use cases. He mentioned that broadcast is an easier case to serve but as soon as it comes to peer-to-peer communication, it starts becoming a challenge. According to him, CDNs have not played that important role so far in the case of such communication.

     “For customers, we are looking to have specific types of applications they want to build for something specific. We have edge computing capabilities around the world. They can use it to deploy their application. When we specifically talk about low-latency types of communication, we do have a real-time screening application that we have rolled out. We provide the ability to share video with viewers anywhere around the world in less than a second,” Milligan responded.

    EPIC ON COO Sourjya Mohanty highlighted that the challenge of compression continues to exist. Milligan added that consumer appetite for quality goes up but at the same time they need to have a compression standard. He also stated that several compression tools have come into the market. Srivastava added that it’s not only about newer compression technologies being available but also be adaptable on client devices as well. Hence, CDNs still need to evolve and invest despite being an essential requirement for the online content ecosystem. 

  • B4U partners Amagi for content delivery, playout operations

    B4U partners Amagi for content delivery, playout operations

    MUMBAI: B4U Television Network India has signed on Amagi, the cloud-based broadcast infrastructure and targeted TV advertising company, for a range of end-to-end cloud-based playout services.

     

    Through its flagship channel playout platform, Cloudport 2.0, Amagi’s services will include playout, 24/7 monitoring, conditional access and measurement systems leveraging satellite distribution from satellite operator AsiaSat.

     

    The development marks a step in the adoption of cloud-based managed playout services by TV networks in India and Amagi’s growing expertise in this area. It also demonstrates increasing adoption of the Amagi’s next-generation channel playout management services by TV networks worldwide to monetise their content delivery and distribution.

     

    Amagi is known in the Indian market for geo-targeted advertising. It has served over 30 million ad seconds for more than 2,500 clients including names like HUL, Reckitt & Benckiser, Britannia, and Wipro.

     

    “Amagi’s playout services offer us improved flexibility, transparency, and channel control at very cost-effective rates. We are also delighted with the excellent technical support delivered by Amagi in transitioning from our earlier playout infrastructure in just under two months,” said B4U Network chief financial officer Sandeep Gupta.

     

    “With all our content assets on the cloud, we are in a position to efficiently expand to new geographies and target specific markets as the business demands. It also makes us future-ready, as Amagi’s platforms are extendable for content regionalization, ad monetization, and OTT platform integration,” he added.

     

    The content and playlist is contributed by B4U in Mumbai, India, and the United Kingdom, while playout is uplinked in Hong Kong via AsiaSat. The entire workflow is stitched through Amagi’s cloud infrastructure and monitored by Amagi at its headquarters in Bengaluru.

     

    “Cloudport is rapidly becoming the preferred platform of choice for channel playout and management as TV networks look to leverage new efficiencies available through virtualized playout models,” said Amagi co-founder Srividhya Srinivasan.

     

    “By supporting multisite workflows and collaboration, our Cloudport platform dramatically enhances playout and distribution efficiencies for B4U Television Network India while enabling them to deliver a world-class entertainment experience to customers,” he added.

     

    “We are pleased to continue to support our client, B4U, with high availability ground and space integrated monitoring/control and up-linking service from our Tai Po Earth Station in Hong Kong, along with Amagi who provides end-to-end playout services, enabling B4U to enjoy a total transmission solution for access to Asia-Pacific-wide audiences via AsiaSat,” said AsiaSat VP sales and business development Philip Balaam.

  • Prime Focus bags iTunes certification for content delivery

    Prime Focus bags iTunes certification for content delivery

    MUMBAI: Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the technology arm of Prime Focus, has received certification from Apple to deliver movie content and associated assets directly to iTunes.

     

    This recognition comes just after PFT launched ‘Digital Next’ offerings at the 2015 NAB Show, providing cloud-based solutions to help with the immediate challenges faced by the media and entertainment industry to meet the demands of the digital consumer. With this qualification, PFT will assist Apple and its content partners in delivering content on the Apple Store.

     

    “Today’s consumers demand more content, quicker and at their fingertips – a challenge we welcome and combat daily,” said Prime Focus Technologies founder and CEO Ramki Sankaranarayanan.

     

    “Apple is an absolute leader in meeting the demands of digital consumers and providing innovative ways of content delivery. We are honoured to have Apple recognise our commitment to this space and to have earned their trust as a long term partner,” he added.

  • Research cites Akamai as a leader in rich media content delivery

    Bangalore, India – June 14, 2006 – Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online, announced today its position as a strong leader in rich media content delivery as evaluated by Forrester Research. Akamai was among six companies that Forrester invited to participate in its June 9th Forrester WaveTM analysis entitled Rich Media Content Delivery, Q2 2006, by Brian Haven (available for Forrester subscribers at www.forrester.com). Akamai leads in Forrester’s services evaluation, and is the only reviewed company listed as a leader.

    Forrester’s analysis states, “Akamai leads with experience” referring to the Company’s “impressive client base in terms of size and stature.”

     

    “Its unmatched global network, media and entertainment expertise and financial resources make it the clear Leader in rich media delivery,” continues the report.

     

    Forrester’s evaluation criteria included measuring each company participating in the analysis based on 70 individual metrics within three high-level categories: current offerings, strategy and market presence. Akamai led in all three high-level categories.

     

    In addition, the Forrester Wave analysis also recognized Akamai with top marks (5.0 out of 5.0) in the following sub-categories: network presence and service (related to current offering), and revenue, services, and employees (related to market presence).

     

    “The continued adoption of broadband and the increased consumer demand for rich online content is helping to fuel Akamai’s success,” said Robert Hughes, executive vice president, Global Sales, Services and Marketing, Akamai. “We’re very pleased to be recognized by Forrester as a leader in this booming market. Akamai is enabling many of the largest online companies to monetize, deliver, control and analyze their media assets, while providing a dramatically better digital media experience for their audiences anywhere in the world.”