In this special session, Dan Rayburn demos the latest connected TV platforms from Samsung, Sony, Sharp, Vizio, LG, and TCL. Attendees get a hands-on overview of what each manufacturer has to offer in terms of the latest content apps, user interfaces, and video quality, and hear how these TV platforms are going to evolve over the coming years. (This will take place at the Device Pavilion, on the show floor.)

While broadcasters have largely been hamstrung by TV Everywhere’s structural challenges, programmers are now looking to break free and offer content away from the traditional MVPD bundle. This session discusses the rise of virtual MVPDs that have reimagined the traditional cable bundle, as well as a growing array of stand-alone, niche, direct-to-consumer video offerings. Hear what these services look like, the content they offer, and the impact they are having on the traditional pay TV business model.

Amazon Fire TV can help content creators and developers find new customers by making it easy to create media-based apps for the best-selling Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. In this presentation, we will dive into the Fire TV platform and show attendees how they can quickly publish their content as media apps using Amazon's open source Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV. Attendees will also hear from Wall Street Journal, a Starter Kit beta partner, about their experience rapidly developing a real-world Fire TV media app that provides a great viewing experience for their customers.

Learn how to simplify the process of deploying unified video experiences across all IP-connected devices to produce more content, seek out global audiences, and diversify distribution and revenue streams beyond YouTube. Attendees will learn how to build an effective multiscreen strategy that maximizes revenue and drives audience engagement anytime, everywhere and on any device.

As OTT grows to become a $15 billion a year business and streaming grows every day, consumers are starting to compare and contrast the services they experience—with results that spell opportunity for some, and disaster for others. This talk explores a recent Conviva Consumer Survey, as well as the conclusions from the 2015 Conviva Viewer Experience Report, to identify the increasing impatience of OTT consumers; the ever-growing expectations they bring to the table; and the tough economic realities of failing to execute an effective iterative publishing process.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Conviva grab bag with Conviva Swag items and an Amazon Gift card

This presentation explores the history of codecs, containers, and protocols and their impact on the present state of streaming. Learn what qt-faststart does, why h264_mp4toannexb is sometimes necessary, and the difference between streaming and pseudo-streaming. The presenter takes a deep dive into the structure of today’s most relevant media formats to discover the advantages and limitations of each and helps you pick and choose the right options.

2015 is poised to be a huge year for OTT, with HBO and Showtime launching their services. These will join full OTT TV offerings like Dish’s Sling TV and potentially new services from Verizon and Vodafone. However, there are still many questions around how the TV ecosystem will evolve in light of these new services and how broadcasters and content owners will add additional revenue streams from new OTT services. This session discusses the best ways to monetize OTT content using the latest technologies, such as time- shifted television, device management, household management, deep personalization, social tools, and video applications for mobile and connected devices.

This session will introduce you to Amazon Fire TV and what you need to do to get your Android apps ready. What does your app’s 10 foot experience look like, how will your touch controls convert to a controller based experience, how will you sync game progress across all of your players devices, and what are the TV-specific gotchas like overscan. This session will get you started with Amazon’s free Fire TV developer SDK and provide plenty of tips for getting your app up and running.  Both Android Studio and Xamarin Studio will also be covered showing how you can target Fire TV using the same familiar developer environment.

This session discusses how broadcasters, advertisers, and OTT providers are using video consumption data to provide the best end- to-end user experience. The discussion centers on identifying which devices are most popular, which ones provide the most engagement, and the impact they have on OTT services. Learn how to gauge the overall success of your content business based on engagement metrics, user segmentation, globalization, and platform partnership.

Time and cost are huge factors when media publishers consider which device platforms they need to support. In this session, a mix of developers and content publishers discuss the strategic view of supporting multiple devices and the realistic cost for deploying across multiple platforms. Learn the logical operations that can easily be repurposed and what must be unique to each platform. Using the context of existing Windows, iOS, and Android applications that the panelists have been involved with, the conversation also covers the most recent Windows 10 announcements and outlines what is required for content owners to deliver their services to connected devices.

The case for H.265, like most new video technologies, is compelling: better compression and faster/cheaper delivery over lower bitrates. For any content distributor seeking to distribute content to mobile devices over congested 3G/4G/LTE networks, these traits are highly desirable. However, the reality of real-world choices can quickly deflate any optimistic plans. In this session, learn if and how H.265 compression and deployment options can be utilized in typical online streaming workflows, and more importantly, if your target audiences can benefit. Examples of x264 and x265 output are compared for bitrate, compression time, and file size.

As HEVC begins to find its stride in the industry, operators are grappling with the challenge of whether and how to begin to swap out MPEG-2 and possibly AVC encoders for HEVC codecs. While HEVC is still many months away from mainstream deployment, it is important for companies to take an ROI-centric look at the technology and evaluate where and when it makes sense to incorporate HEVC into transcoding and content delivery workflows. This presentation discusses factors to keep in mind when evaluating HEVC products and while strategically planning future digital media road maps, updated with findings up to NAB 2015.

This session discusses how traditional and nontraditional media companies are looking at extending YouTube monetization to other platforms and apps that give them greater control and flexibility. Hear how content owners can diversify their content distribution and convert and seek out a new global audience, and find out what kind of revenue can be garnered from various platforms. Learn how to expand your content distribution and audience for new revenue opportunities using syndication technologies and apps that are facilitating these expansions.

Consumers are increasingly using mobile devices to watch professionally produced content, and video distributors are responding with a variety of offers, including TV Everywhere to enhance traditional pay TV, VOD libraries available over the top (OTT), and even live channel packages available OTT. In many cases, these offers are being targeted primarily to mobile device viewing, but may also be complementary to a TV viewing experience. This session discusses these trends and opportunities to monetize multi-screen viewing, including subscriptions, rentals, electronic sell-through, and advertising.

This session educates attendees on how to develop a channel using Roku’s software developer kit and Roku’s proprietary BrightScript language, from basic VOD channels to full subscription-based services. Attendees learn about the resources and services available to developers to best manage their channel, including integrated billing, and best practices for creating a great streaming channel. The session also looks at the different ways to monetize content through advertising, on-device promotion, and other marketing opportunities.

As video continues to proliferate on connected devices, programmatic advertising on this marketing channel is maturing well beyond its real-time bidding roots. Increasingly, automated technologies are empowering buyers and sellers alike to tap into the gold mine of data available to more precisely segment and target audiences, and to optimize spend and revenue across video content. This session explores how advertisers, agencies, and publishers are engaging programmatic platforms to take their video ad strategies to the next level. Learn about the rise of private marketplaces, automation, and premium video content colliding, as well as the economics behind it all.

When streaming is mentioned with regard to education, distance learning is often the only use case that comes to mind. However, there are numerous other uses for live and on-demand video streaming in educational institutions, including sporting events, commencements, concerts, debates, and flipped classrooms. This session dives into detailed educational streaming workflows and gives examples of how streaming can be used to engage students, athletes, fans, alumni, and donors. Top professionals from high school and college-level institutions share their experiences, including successes and pitfalls.

In this special session, Dan Rayburn presents a hands-on comparison showcasing the leading streaming devices and content platforms. Devices from Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Roku, and Sony are compared, along with content services from Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, MLB, YouTube, NFL, and many others. Attendees also get to see a demo of some of the newest content offerings in the market from Sling TV and HBO, and learn how to stream content from phones and tablets and display it on their TVs. (This will take place at the Device Pavilion, on the show floor.)

With so many devices, browsers, and operating systems in the market, companies are often left with confusing choices when it comes to their video players. Should you build a player yourself or use an openly available one like JWPlayer or Video.js? What technologies should be used? How do you build a streaming video application without any plugins? Are Flash, Silverlight, and other plugin solutions still a viable answer today? This session explores these questions and digs into the code necessary to build a modern streaming application.

With the announcement of Windows 10, Microsoft enables the ability to Deploy applications to multiple Windows platforms from a single code base. This technical presentation shows developers how to set up their Visual Studio projects for development and deployment to Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone.

The Media Source Extensions and Encrypted Media Extensions are the standardized toolsets that enable browsers to deliver adaptive streaming and digital rights management without plug-ins. This session details what these extensions are, how they’re being supported by the different browser and tools vendors, and how soon those delivering premium content will switch over from plug-in-based technologies to these standards. If you are considering replacing Flash with HTML5 standards-based technologies, this session details how and when you can do it.

Existing social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are making substantial investments to bring more video to their users. This panel discusses how these new video platforms differ from established online video providers and how measurement and monetization work for both the content creator and the platform provider. As these platforms become the real-time feeds more consumers use, learn how they are integrating video into their platforms, the role of programmatic algorithms, social discovery, and the competition they are giving traditional broadcast outlets.

This presentation helps attendees identify their unique requirements for an effective video management solution. It identifies the mistakes that many video management technology buyers make and provides best- practice advice on how to avoid these mistakes. It looks at the options facing buyers looking for new technology for video review, approval, and delivery. Attendees get advice on how to get to a vendor short list, submitting brief and useful RFPs, what questions need to be asked, and other tips to ensure the right solution is chosen.

The 'brand as publisher' model is increasingly becoming the expectation for marketers and brand teams - forcing many of them to create more content than ever before. Meanwhile the vendor options to generate content are growing exponentially, with more and more brands taking on the responsibility of taking content creation in house. This session will address the challenges and opportunities associated with these options. Learn how brands grow an audience and keep up with the virtually demand for content. How do they choose what platforms and partnerships to strike up to ensure the content is seen? We'll explore all of these questions with our panelists of fortune 500 brand managers, agencies, and publishers.

This session explores the current status of HEVC, identifying options for encoding live and on-demand video using HEVC and discussing player options in the streaming and OTT markets. Topics include the comparative quality and usability of HEVC encoders—including encoders from x265 and MainConcept and techniques for maximizing output quality using both codecs.

Traditionally in enterprises, video streaming and video conferencing have been deployed as two completely separate solutions. However, companies are figuring out that integrating these solutions provides tremendous value to their organization. This session discusses trends across unified communications, video conferencing infrastructure, production studios and how these trends allow for streaming technology to be budgeted as part of a larger video communications platform.

It goes without saying that consumption of video is changing as new platforms, formats, and industry dynamics evolve. From the dawn of 4K to Snapchat Discover, the quality, quantity, and sheer variety of video experiences are growing every day. This panel looks at the future of broadcast and video services in a multi-screen world, attempting to peer in to the near future to explore issues both at the fore, such as 4K, and still on the fringe, such as virtual reality.