How Cox Communications Streams Video Live and On-Demand to Apps
To stay competitive with other offerings and to satisfy consumer demands, pay TV operators need to stream video to mobile devices. In a presentation during the recent Content Delivery Summit in New York City, Muhammad Raza, solutions engineer for Cox Communications, explained how his company began and the limits it had to work with.
"Last year, we took our initiative to deploy live video to iPads, basically to unmanaged devices," said Raza. "It was a national lineup to begin with: 30 to 35 channels nationally. It is not because we couldn't add more channels; it was because those were the only channels we could get rights from content providers. As we get more rights, we are going to expand the channel lineup to a complete lineup. It's pending upon whatever we get license for. It was restricted to in-home delivery of the content. Again, it was not restricted because of technology. It was the only thing we could get agreements for."
Cox chose to begin with Apple iPad support, since that device holds the lion's-share of the tablet market.
"We started with the iPad 1 and iPad 2. We have Android versions and PC and Macs in the works. We launched it December 1st of last year and within the first four months we had a quarter-million downloads. So far, it's been a very successful service," noted Raza. "The only major feedback we get is people want to have more content."
To hear more about Cox's efforts, watch the video below. Also, download Raza's presentation and the presentation of Larry Peterson, chief scientist for Verivue.
How Cox Deployed Live and On-Demand Video For Their TV Connect App
With its TV Connect initiative for delivering live programs and on-demand titles via Apple devices, Cox needed a content delivery platform architected to meet its performance, scalability, manageability, and TCO needs. This presentation will focus on the key attributes Cox looked for in CDN technology to meet their needs for cost, quality and scale.
Larry Peterson, Chief Scientist, Verivue
Muhammad Raza, Solutions Engineer, Cox Communications
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