Streaming video is exploding as fast as technology and audiences can keep up. Whether originating as social media-based branded content, destination viewing, simple live streaming, or in-the-moment broadcasting; the "new TV" is live and available across multiple devices and platforms. Roker Media and its analytics division Roker Labs dig deep into how live streaming is finding its audience. From broadcasting on social networks to developing OTT-first content, how are broadcasters leveraging social broadcasting to drive viewers to their programming, brands, and content? Which platforms are making philosophical and technological advances to win at live streaming? How will paid boosting of Live on Facebook affect the industry? And what are Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat doing that will make this area competitive for years? 

As services like Sling TV and Direct TV grow in popularity, viewers are becoming accustomed to being able to replicate the lean-back broadcast experience familiar. But live linear streaming presents a daunting array of challenges, from ingest and encoding to DRM, metadata, and ad insertion. This panel will explore these challenges and discuss a range of solutions.

Streaming to one live streaming service is so 2016. Today, in addition to streaming to your own website or app, you may want to distribute your live stream to multiple other outlets like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Livestream, Twitter, and Twitch. Fortunately, there are a variety of products and services that enable streaming to multiple output locations, from desktop encoders and appliances to cloud services. This session will detail the various options and lay out their pros, cons, and pricing models. 

Live event streaming lets viewers experience the action with unsurpassed immediacy and interactivity—both of which are ruined if they find out about a key play or big award on social media before they see it in the stream. Learn how to cut down latency on both startup times and lag times, and whether the coveted 1-second mark is within reach.

Leaders in live streaming present case studies that take you behind the scenes of some of the industry’s biggest success stories. Details announced soon!

Streaming is undoubtedly the media to showcase UHD with high quality content readily available. It is now widely accepted that HDR is a key addition to differentiate from existing HD services. But there are challenges for supporting UHD with HDR, particularly for live events—namely, which scheme to adopt, how will HDR co-exist with current services, and most importantly, the availability of screens supporting necessary HDMI, signaling and HDR schemes. This session discusses how OTT operators can overcome these challenges when handling various forms of SDR and HDR live content.

Adaptive bitrate (ABR) is a revolutionary technology that has created the ability for over-the-top delivery of video to all screens. But it has one major drawback: The network resources it consumes grow linearly with the audience. This presentation will show how multicast ABR brings true scalability to live multiscreen video distribution; and how it adds some nice extras to the menu: an enhanced Quality of service and a greatly reduced latency.

Leaders in live streaming present case studies that take you behind the scenes of some of the industry’s biggest success stories. Details announced soon!

In just the last year, NeuLion streamed over 12 billion minutes of video, across 63,000 live events to consumers in over 180 countries. Using insight of the aggregate data from its customers and real live OTT success stories in marketplace, learn how to leverage data to attract new subscribers and reduce subscriber churn. As live OTT and TV Everywhere services grow, understanding sharper insights and intelligence to stay competitive in today’s data-driven world are important. Learn how to keep your OTT viewers for life. NeuLion customers include the NFL, NBA, World Surf League, Univision Deportes, Euroleague Basketball and others.

As broadcasters look to extend their brands to new viewers and audiences, live is a user expectation that needs to be met and experience that must be preserved. The ability to seamlessly stream live content, with monetization, on emerging devices and platforms is critical. In this presentation, you will learn about:

• How broadcasters are overcoming the most daunting technical challenges associated with live streaming
• DRM, latency, personalization and more
• Specialized customizations that are key for live video- player features that support multiple camera angles, frame-accurate live clipping for social distribution, etc.

Content will always be king, but user experience is queen. If you don’t give your viewers interactive, easy-to-use players that put them in control and let them become part of the experience and connect on social media, they’ll go elsewhere. Find out how to make sure your user experience complements your content and gives viewers a reason to stick around.

Facebook Live is a year old, YouTube Live has upped its game, and Twitter has partnered with top sports, news, and entertainment outlets to stream on its platform. What sort of ROI can publishers achieve with an effective social streaming strategy? What sorts of production workflows work best? This panel discussion will bring together leading brands, media companies, and influencers to share their social media streaming stories and discuss what they’ve learned and what their plans are for the future.

As big as live streaming is now, that’s nothing compared to the growth we can expect in the next 5 years. Today, viewers expect instant-on, HD quality on every device, but as technologies like VR gain traction, they’ll expect more immersive experiences. This forward-looking panel discussion digs in to predict what the future holds for content, technology, and monetization.