The 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! We've counted all of the votes in the 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards, and—drumroll, please—it is now my pleasure and sworn duty to present winners and runners-up in each of our 17 categories.

Removing the Friction of Content Discovery On CTV

Today's streaming providers deliver endless amounts of content, which can overwhelm viewers who are simply looking for something to watch. This article will explore how a range of content, media, and tech companies are addressing the challenges of content discovery and the strategies and emerging tech they're deploying in the ongoing efforts to reduce and eliminate the pain points that continue to plague the content discovery experience for CTV and OTT consumers.

SiriusXM EVP and CPO Joe Inzerillo Talks Satellite and Streaming Delivery and Personalization

SiriusXM EVP and chief product and technology officer Joe Inzerillo is probably the first streaming pro I've interviewed who also has building satellites in his job description. Inzerillo spent 16 years as a streaming CTO with MLB Advanced Media, BAMTECH Media, and Disney Streaming before crossing over to satellite radio with SiriusXM in 2022. If you're not a SiriusXM listener, you might know the company through its other audio service, Pandora. Either way, its media business gets 80% of its revenue from subscriptions on top of an extremely low churn rate, and we're here to talk tech.

Media Over QUIC and the Future of High-Quality, Low-Latency Streaming

Media Over QUIC aspires to streamline the entire streaming process by bringing both contribution and distribution into a single protocol again, reducing the need for intermediary transformations. Since MoQ is still in the early stages of development, it will take some time to see it deliver on this promise.

Review: Magewell Director Mini 3.0

All-in-One (AIO) live production devices leverage the latest mobile CPU and GPU power and integrated capability, with real hardware connections for multiple HDMI ports, ethernet, headphones, audio input, and more—all from one manufacturer so there's just one update cycle to track. Magewell recently came out with the 3.0 update to their Director Mini AIO production tablet (Figure 1), and they are pushing the envelope with what these little powerhouses can do.

Presenting the 2024 Streaming Media 100

Here we reveal the 2024 Streaming Media 100, our list of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the Streaming Media Europe 51, which recognizes Europe's key streaming innovators, exemplars, and disruptors.

The Generative AI Industrial Revolution

Generative AI may prove even more divisive to society than the Indus­trial Revolution. There are many questions well worth examining re­garding gen AI's impact on the streaming in­dustry, the media and entertainment world, and more. In this article, I'm going to focus on a few streaming use cases in the hope of pro­viding a broader perspective on the changes happening in our world now and those we can expect going forward.

Review: DVEO Brutus V

This review will highlight Brutus V, DVEO's IP-to-IP multichannel AV1, H.264, and H.265 transcoder for IPTV or OTT. I will touch on Brutus V's options for delivering streams over H.264 and cover streaming delivery over various streaming protocols such as HLS, LL-HLS, Smooth Streaming, and MPEG-DASH. I will also dive into transcoding using H.264 and HEVC.

Q&A: Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft’s Worldwide Media and Entertainment Strategy Director, Talks Gen AI

In this expansive interview with Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft's worldwide media and entertainment strategy director, we discuss how Microsoft customers are leveraging generative AI in all stages of the streaming workflow and how they're using it in content delivery and to enhance user experiences in a range of use cases. Crownshaw also digs deep into how Microsoft is building asset management architecture and the critical role metadata plays in effective large-language models (LLMs), maximizing the value of available data.

How AI Is Transforming the Video Production Landscape

The evolution of AI extends from prepro­duction planning to postproduction enhance­ments, offering tools that augment creativity, efficiency, and precision. It is difficult to ignore all of the buzz about AI these days, but here is what streaming pros can expect from this ear­ly stage of AI technology.

Managing Teleprompter Scrolling Speed with Elgato Stream Deck and Pedal

One of the most challenging aspects of reading from a teleprompter has always been speed control. Unless you get the speed just right, you either have to rush or slow down your narration, and either adjustment adds stress to your delivery that can force a glitch and another retake. Fortunately, Elgato has two hardware options you can use to control scrolling speed; the Stream Deck+ ($199.99) and Stream Deck Pedal ($89.99). Elgato was kind enough to send both options for me to try, and I'll briefly recount my experience here.

Review: Elgato Prompter

The $279 Elgato Prompter is a unique product that performs well in its namesake role but offers a range of functionality that extends far beyond script reading. You'll find Prompter highly useful if you're a frequent video conference participant, if you create screencams or recorded product demonstrations, and even if you produce webinars.

Tutorial: Quick Export with Adobe Premiere Pro

In this quick overview of Adobe Premiere Pro's Quick Export feature, Stjepan Alaupovic of Clear Online Video explains how producers can improve postproduction efficiency for quickturn projects by exporting a video in just a few clicks.

Review: Blackmagic Design Micro Studio Camera 4K G2

The Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 has nice upgrades, great capability with the USB-C, and high-quality recording to external SSDs. The HDMI out is a welcome feature as well in terms of monitoring and being able to change settings wherever the camera might be used.

Review: AirenSoft OvenMediaEngine

This review will highlight OvenMedia­Engine, the open source streaming ser­ver from AirenSoft, and explore its fea­tures for providing sub-­second latency for live streaming. The article will also touch on OvenMediaEngine's options for LL-­HLS and WebRTC. Finally, we'll dive into testing SRT and RTMP ingest options.

AI and Streaming Media

This article explores the current state of AI in the streaming encoding, delivery, playback, and monetization ecosystems. By understanding the developments and considering key questions when evaluating AI-powered solutions, streaming professionals can make informed decisions about incorporating AI into their video processing pipelines and prepare for the future of AI-driven video technologies.

Multicurrency, Personalization, and Consumer Privacy in the CTV Ecosystem

As CTV is pulling in more advertising dollars and viewers than ever before, it's crucial for advertisers to ensure that they are optimizing their reach with the best-targeted data to represent audiences and outcomes, all while respecting data privacy laws and individual rights. What are the most significant challenges surrounding data identity and the privacy economy in today's CTV advertising ecosystem? How can content owners and platform providers supply advertisers with the user data that will maximize growth without violating personal privacy or privacy laws? And how might the idea of "TV" itself be redefined in an era when multiscreen use beyond the living room is so prevalent?

Q&A: NBCUniversal SVP Monica Williams Talks Streaming the Olympics, Cross-Platform CX, and the Power of Metadata

In this wide-ranging interview with Monica Williams, NBCUniversal's SVP of digital products and operations for the company's content distribution business, we discuss how the proliferation of digital platforms across the OTT, CTV, and online ecosystems has brought new content distribution challenges, the boon of metadata for improving customer experiences, and the 17-day everything-must-go-perfectly marathon of distributing the Olympics.

Q&A: Wurl’s Ria Madrid Discusses BrandDiscovery's Groundbreaking Generative AI for CTV Ads

A Q&A with Ria Madrid of Wurl - she discusses BrandDiscovery, their new tech that makes it possible for marketers to precisely match CTV ads with the emotion and context of what viewers are watching to create positive attention, using Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. Partners like Media.Monks are already driving impressive results for their clients through Wurl's solution, which uses scene-level contextual targeting to help advertisers align the emotional sentiment of their campaign creatives with content closest to the ad break.

Pay TV Gets Serious About Free Streaming

When it comes to free streaming, U.S. growth has been fueled by pure players like Pluto TV and Tubi and connected TV platforms like Roku and Samsung looking to feed cord-shavers and cord-cutters in need of a linear viewing experience. These companies have had a head start and a clear path to test and learn for years. However, in the past 18 months, pay TV players have decided that they too have a role to play in free streaming.