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Many seats may have been empty for some of the events at the Rio Olympic Games but online audiences as expected scaled new heights. Streaming traffic for the games has obliterated records set by previous events, according to CDN giant Akamai, which delivered more video data in the first eight days of Rio than it did for all 34 days of the 2012 London and the Sochi winter games combined.
As OTT consumption continues to rise, broadcasters and content distributors see the cloud as a way to respond to an insatiable demand for new channels. Likewise, the cloud seems to be a good solution to disaster recovery (DR). Cynics, however, are quick to note that the cloud, especially a public cloud, is unproven and unprepared both in terms of security and the QoS required by broadcasters.
_460_306_70.jpg "A key requirement to supporting new transmission formats is additional bandwidth. Image: Morten N. Almeland © Bridge Technologies 2016")
The Duchess of Windsor, the American wife of the man who was previously England’s King Edward VIII, famously said: “You can never be too rich or too thin”. If she’d lived in the 21st century, she might have added: “… or have too much bandwidth”.
You don’t have to look very far to see yet another industry story on ‘cord cutting’. With more viewers seeking less costly ways to watch TV, broadcasters must be concerned about their potential for dwindling audiences.
The summer of 2016 has long been expected to be a breakthrough moment in the evolution of live streaming. Many experts believe the 2016 Summer Olympics is where that will happen.
Over The Air broadcasters are no longer the only game in town when it comes to delivering content to viewers. A whole new range of competitors and technologies are lining up to bring content to viewers.
Migration from linear to on-demand viewing is in full swing across Europe with the one big exception of premium live sports, which is booming across all video outlets. This has been confirmed by various surveys, with a report from UK media regulator Ofcom finding that overall TV viewing in the UK has dropped dramatically among all viewers.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has weighed into the continent’s debate over net neutrality by calling for stronger guidelines with no fast lanes. The EBU has responded to a call for consultation from the Bureau of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) by insisting that net neutrality should be a pillar of media diversity in the digital age.
