About The Big Guide to OTT

The Big Guide To OTT is an eleven part series of Themed Content Collections that will publish during 2023. Each part tackles a different aspect of OTT. There are multiple articles per part delivered in a free PDF download.

As OTT delivery grows, driven by both consumer demand and content provider strategy, there are many adjustments to manage. They include new production approaches, scaling content distribution, personalising, protecting, and monetising content, and assuring audience QoE.

Content providers are delivering a mix of live, linear, and on-demand content. Business models are blending - subscription with advertising and direct-to-consumer with service aggregation. The internet-enabled OTT delivery model is driving the media industry through a giant transformation.

There are many broadcast disciplines to leverage in OTT – the concept of “broadcast-grade streaming” means streaming should match broadcast’s capacity for highly consistent, highly scalable delivery of high-resolution content at low latency. There are also new disciplines for content providers to embrace, like delivering highly personalized content and building new relationships with consumers and ISPs.

The OTT technology domain builds on core broadcast distribution disciplines and adapts them to internet-based delivery. New contribution methods, ultra-low latency encoding, and high speed broadband streaming, could mean that ‘streaming-grade’ will become a new gold standard for content delivery. But the fixed and mobile broadband networks we rely on, and the myriad of devices we use, mean that we need to work differently to manage content accessibility and quality. So while the content may be largely the same, there are significant differences to manage between the worlds of OTT and OTA.

The Broadcast Bridge has been covering OTT since it began. The Big Guide To OTT re-visits and updates our extensive coverage of the subject.

Details of all eleven parts of The Big Guide To OTT can be found HERE.  

About Part 1 - Back To The Beginning

Part 1 is a free PDF download which contains three original articles:

Article 1 : The Principles & Terminology Of The OTT Ecosystem
A description of the OTT Ecosystem from transmission to consumption, with discussion of the differences between push and pull systems, video distribution methods and the terminology of Live, Linear and Video On Demand TV.

Article 2 : The Main Components Of The OTT Ecosystem

We describe the various elements of OTT systems including; intelligent ingest, ABR conversion, DRM & DAI, Packagers, Edge Processing, ISP’s & Internet Exchange Providers, QoE monitoring and client applications.

Article 3 : The OTT Lexicon
The world of streaming is defined by acronyms like SVOD, AVOD, FAST, OTT and more. But this leaves gaps and confusion in what is included in our OTT services... so here we review how we describe ourselves in the streaming industry.