The tech world at large believes that we’re ready for a Flash-less world, and that HTML5 has had plenty of time to play catch up and surpass Flash capabilities. In this session, learn which transport technologies from HTTP, WebRTC, RTSP, and even RTMP work best, when to use them, and where to put your development dollars for maximum return.

Content distributors and aggregators adding HEVC to their delivery pipeline will have plenty of codec options, but who has the time to evaluate their features, output quality, and performance? No worries—codec specialist Jan Ozer has done the work for you. He’s evaluated leading contenders like x265, MainConcept, Beamr, Intel, and NTT and he’ll share his results. You'll walk away from this session with a much clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of your HEVC encoding options for VOD streaming.

The industry has made big strides forward in bridging the divides between HLS and DASH, Fragmented MP4s and Transport Streams, CBC and CRT, and the myriad little details that continue to cause fragmentation and chaos in delivery and rendering of DRM-secured content to devices. Achieving cost-effective, cross-platform secure playback remains a critical yet mostly unsolved challenge. While the unified vision of HTML5 and seamless playback across browsers is still several years from potential fruition, there are methods to conquer the madness and implement delightful, yet secure, OTT services. This presentation will provide an update on the state of DRM including insight into the apps vs browsers debate, customer needs, and best practices recommendations.

Roku is the creator of a popular way to stream entertainment to the TV and offers a unique platform for developers to distribute content. In this session, Roku will provide an overview its tools available to publishers, how to make the most of them and what monetization strategy is right for your content. Some topics covered will be new enhancements to Roku Direct Publisher, advertising tools and capabilities and some updated features and content discovery tools available to publishers.

The business of TV is continuously shifting toward the internet and viewers are demanding that OTT content be at their fingertips. In this multi-CDN case study, Ed will discuss how one major publisher has been working with Conviva to deliver one of the best streaming experiences available, leveraging the publisher's proprietary technology stack in concert with Conviva’s data. This solution automatically selects the best CDN based on real-time CDN throughput, cost-efficiency, and bandwidth.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Roku Premiere ($80 value)

Starting from scratch, we’ll show how to do 4K live streaming in minutes. Using technologies from Wowza and others, we'll deliver live adaptive bitrate streaming, record the video for on-demand playback, and deliver the live feed with global any-screen streaming. In the remaining time, you’ll see how to leverage 4K to create an immersive VR/360 experience.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Insta360 Nano ($199 value)

As 360-degree video proves itself as one of today’s most immersive video technologies, transporting viewers into the middle of the action, this presentation will provide you with all the insights you need to get started with 360 video content creation. Join The Associated Press to learn about 360 video creation basics, from story boarding to post production. Hear about the resources you need to start a 360 video team, and the necessary editorial workflows that need to be incorporated as you get started with 360 video. The presentation will also look at the technologies you can use to get the most out of 360, including sharing their experiences from the field where they have put a lot of the kit through its paces. The AP will also provide insight into the challenges that lie ahead, from the technological (such as 360 sound) to crossing the divide between 360 and true VR.

Delivering content that is adapted to a multitude of content, devices and network conditions is a challenge. While adaptive bitrate is often explored from a compression standpoint, the ABR logic within your video player makes important decisions that can make or break QoS. Striking a balance between the achieving the highest resolution without causing stalls is a complex task, and the optimal solution can vary greatly depending on audience, bitrates and stream types. This how-to examines the ins and outs of ABR logic. We review the basics of how web and mobile players handle ABR before diving in to the different ways these algorithms are built. Lastly, we offer practical advice on how to optimize QoS with just a few tweaks of your player.

Learn how to develop a cost-efficient, practical and scalable viewership growth strategy through new streaming television platforms (OTT/ConnectedTV) across all leading platforms such as Roku, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, AppleTV, SmartTVs, Gaming Consoles and Social Networks. Receive insights from the fastest OTT/ConnectedTV developers, explore best practices, learn how to avoid costly detours and delays, and secret tricks on how to boost viewership growth without spending money.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Amazon FireTV Box ($90 value) plus a $5,000 OTT/Connected TV ad campaign

Delivering OTT video is a complex process involving many challenges such as new standards, varied end-user devices, and changing video production and delivery formats. To deliver high quality OTT content, Broadcasters and Video Service Providers need enterprise class, end-to-end QC and monitoring tools. Using the right tools for live and VOD workflows at ingest and origin server will help assure superior QoS and QoE in the most efficient manner. In this session, we will discuss how this can be achieved.

Giveaway at the this session: Car mobile device holder

The worst way to find out that viewers aren't having a good experience is via angry support emails or Twitter. If you have the right data at hand, getting out in front of problems your viewers might be seeing is crucial to keeping viewers happy and watching. This discussion will dig into real world examples and approaches to collecting, utilizing, and making QoE data actionable in order to improve the viewer experience.

Should you buy or build the video player of your video service? It's a key question every video service should answer when planning for a future full of video content, interaction and consumer engagement. As the video player is a critical part of the viewer experience, it is often seen as a key asset of the video service, resulting in a decision to build it in-house. But what is the true cost of building an in-house video player solution? And why do some video publishers, telco’s and broadcasters opt for buying a video solution in the interests of development and maintenance cost, scalability and quality of experience? During this session Pieter-Jan Speelmans will explore pros and cons of both options and will discuss with you how you can maximize your strategic investment.

Attend this session for your chance to win: A bag of Chokotoff Cote d'Or ($15 value)

Today very little Premium Video traffic is viewed primarily using IP delivery technologies. Primarily because users aren’t as satisfied with the quality of the delivery when compared to traditional Broadcast delivery. In this session we will discuss how close this “Quality” gap and even have IP delivery surpass the quality levels associated with Broadcast.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Deluxe 9 Piece Wine Tool Set ($20 value)

It doesn’t matter if you are a global media powerhouse brand or a startup content producer looking to find your niche, everyone needs the right strategy to reach consumers. Often times, managed services is the most efficient way to enable content owners to focus on creating the best programming and growing the business while leaving the infrastructure and technical operations to someone else. OTT best practices, use cases and lessons learned will be shared during this informative session.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Apple EarPods ($159 value)

The principle beneficiary of cloud deployments to date has been OTT distribution, but many are seeing an equally rapid and widespread transformation occurring in production provision. Ian Trow, Sr. Director Emerging Technology and Strategy, will spotlight deployments where cloud provision is most effective, areas where development will be concentrated, and functionality that will be beyond the reach of cloud.

Attend this session for your chance to win: A $200 Amazon gift card

Explore how Globecast, a subsidiary of Orange, S.A. and leading global provider of media management services to broadcasters, programmers, platform providers, and distributors is tackling the opportunities and challenges presented by the virtualization of content and cloud-based services across its global facilities.

Attend this session for your chance to win: A Globecast goodie bag worth $150, including Globecast merchandise and a $100 gift certificate to the Apple store