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Consolidation is a sure sign of a maturing market and this was in evidence for OTT delivery at IBC 2016. Many of the companies that first emerged as OTT specialists have been acquired, as well as those associated with cloud based delivery, software encoding and virtualization. Envivio is now part of Ericsson for example while Elemental has been acquired by Amazon Web Services, both primarily involved in software transcoding.
This year’s IBC in Amsterdam witnessed a spate of discussions and partnership announcements between providers of various components across the OTT ecosystem in a bid to assemble complete end-to-end packages. While a few players can offer all components, most of the rest cover just part of the spectrum, splitting loosely between the front end and back end. The front end embraces the UI (User Interface), playout, content curation and navigation, while the back end covers billing, subscriber management, monetization, content management, aggregation, encoding and encryption. Analytics spans both since it requires data from, and generates actions across, both domains, which is one reason why there is so much activity joining the two together.
LeaseWeb has launched a cloud-based video transcoding service for customers of its CDN.
At IBC 2wcom will be focusing their attention on new technology that takes transport one step further by letting broadcasters easily integrate AoIP and satellite technologies and switch from one stream to another, depending on their immediate needs.
tv2u has announced they will launch new content aggregation, real-time analytics, and connected smart homes services at IBC 2016. They also plan to highlight their Intelligent Video Accessible Network (IVAN) OTT platform.
In their effort to reduce bandwidth consumption, particularly for adaptive bit rate services over the internet, compression and transcoding vendors supplying the broadcast industry are incrementally making the move to software-centric solutions as the best option. Most say it provides the most flexible and efficient way to distribute video to the variety of Internet-connected consumer display devices.
Spanish TV analytics software firm NPAW (Nice People At Work) hopes to exploit the online live sports boom with its YOUBORA business intelligence package for broadcasters. The platform, aimed at broadcasters, OTT providers and content owners, is being highlighted at IBC 2016 in Amsterdam, with a promise to provide an end to end view based on real time data. Such data will embrace both the video experience and end user behavior, which the company argues service providers can combine to improve the overall quality of experience (QoE).
Elber will present new products at IBC 2016. These will include the TwinWave Dual Link FODU 17/24/26 GHz, the XPM Portable HD Microwave Link, the WAYBER Audio STL, the CLEBER3 Flexible Platform, and the ESSPx-Ku200 SSPA/SSPB Ku-Band 200W GaN.
GatesAir’s new UAXTE UHF transmitter integrates GatesAir’s new centralized control interface, native dual TSoIP inputs, and enhanced real-time adaptive correction software for superior system performance.