Level 3: Dive into Analytics to Discover Video Quality Problems
Keeping subscribers happy is crucial for broadcasters offering OTT (over-the-top) distribution, but sometimes the issues that bedevil viewers aren't all that obvious. Taking both a macro and micro view of what can go wrong with OTT distribution, Mark Taylor, Level 3 Communications' vice president for media and IP services, spoke at the recent Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles.
"At the macro level, probably one of the biggest things that goes wrong is an overbuild or an underbuild, because it's really, really hard to predict demand here," Taylor said. "You don't want to overspend, necessarily, but you also don't want to underspend. That's relatively easy to fix after the event, though."
What's harder are issues that impact viewer quality. Even big issues might not stand out. To uncover them, broadcasters need to take a deep dive into their analytics.
"The bigger issue is back to the analytics of the workflow. If you're looking at the quality of streams at the top level, it can look all right and you can be saying that you're getting a decent throughput the majority of the time, and the number of skipped sessions or abandoned or buffered sessions are relatively low," Taylor said. "But when you start to dig into the fact that, actually when you look at stuff that was delivered to a Wii that was encoded in this format, but went through that ISP, you might find a very, very different story. You might find a subset of your customer base that have a very, very different experience than the average. Therefore, being able to dive down to that level of detail and then figure out what's going on, and then fix it is important."
For more on issues that impact OTT delivery, watch the full panel discussion below.
Monetization and Distribution Design Across Broadcast and OTT Environments
OTT environments formulating the availability of content to consumers is complex when traditional television distribution agreements effect the access rights to content across tablets, mobile phones, and other internet-connected devices. This session discusses how some content owners are navigating a new age of distribution, security, and conditional access in a multiscreen world.
Moderator: Tim Napoleon, Co-Founder, Chief Strategist, AllDigital
Speaker: Mark Taylor, VP, Media and IP Services, Level 3
Speaker: Barry Hartman, Senior Product Manager, Adobe
Speaker: John Oliverius, VP, Distribution Counsel, A&E Networks
Related Articles
In a Content Delivery Summit 2016 opening keynote, Level 3's CTO said that 90 percent of all IP traffic will be video in only a few years.
09 May 2016
An infographic created from Level 3 and Unisphere Research data shows a change in OTT business practices, as well as the top 10 OTT challenges.
03 Aug 2015