Essential Guide: OTT (or is it ABR?)

May 26th 2020 - 09:00 AM
Tony Orme, Editor at The Broadcast Bridge

Program delivery to mobile devices and smart televisions has fueled the growth for internet delivery. But one of the challenges broadcasters and media content providers face is that the internet was never originally designed to stream large amounts of video and audio with virtually no dropout or latency.

Consequently, engineers have developed solutions to make the best of an imperfect system and have succeeded in delivering high-quality streamed media over the internet. This in turn has led to some incredibly innovative and technological advances to provide resilient streamed media for a whole plethora of mobile and static viewing devices, from mobile phones to smart TVs.

This Essential Guide, written by guest author Tony Jones, Principal Technologist at MediaKind, describes the challenges OTT has to solve, and how. Digging deep into both the viewer requirements and technology that provides the solutions, Jones uncovers the inner workings of OTT and explains them in easy to understand and plain English.

Adaptive bit rate (ABR) is at the center of OTT delivery and Jones uncovers the detail of its operation and the implications this has for latency, as well as resilient and accurate delivery. CMAF, HLS, and chunk size optimization are all discussed to help engineers, technologists, and anybody looking to expand their knowledge of OTT and streaming media over the internet.

Download this Essential Guide today if you are an engineer, technologist, their manager, or somebody who needs to understand how we use OTT and why.

Supported by

You might also like...

The Resolution Revolution

We can now capture video in much higher resolutions than we can transmit, distribute and display. But should we?

Microphones: Part 3 - Human Auditory System

To get the best out of a microphone it is important to understand how it differs from the human ear.

HDR Picture Fundamentals: Camera Technology

Understanding the terminology and technical theory of camera sensors & lenses is a key element of specifying systems to meet the consumer desire for High Dynamic Range.

IP Security For Broadcasters: Part 2 - The Problem To Be Solved

By assuming that IP must be made secure, we run the risk of missing a more fundamental question that is often overlooked: why is IP so insecure?

Standards: Part 22 - Inside AIFF Files

Compared with other popular standards in use, AIFF is ancient. The core functionality was stabilized over 30 years ago and remains unchanged.