In this special keynote presentation, Streaming Media's Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and Tim Siglin will be joined by our partner Millicast to present the findings of original research into the state of the streaming video market—including live vs. on-demand, scale, monetization, and technology trends, with a special emphasis on ultra-low latency and interactive streaming—followed by a provocative discussion about the results and a question-and-answer session with our audience.

More than 60% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one SVOD service, according to Parks & Associates; Deloitte says that the average subscriber pays for three services. As the total cost of those services approaches the cost of a cable TV bundle, will we see a reduction in subscriptions? Should we expect more bundling of SVOD services, with or without cable subscriptions? How can SVOD services prevent customer churn—or take advantage of it?

As viewers cut the cord, they’re finding that (much to their chagrin) they’ve sometimes lost local news, weather, and sports, as well as scripted and unscripted content from their local country or region. Savvy OTT services are partnering with local stations and content creators to deliver the best of both worlds, to the delight of both viewers and advertisers.

After a strange year for sports, global streaming services are making a renewed push against the traditional sports TV titans of broadcasting and pay TV. The business of sports TV has never been more competitive, even with slumping ratings due to the lingering effects of COVID-19. Live sports is one of the only “appointment TV” staples left, but are that audience’s interest and loyalty ever fully coming back? And can streamers and pay TV find a way to become good teammates for their mutual benefit? Altman Solon analysts discuss the results of their 2021 Global Sports Survey, highlighting trends to watch and how the landscape will continue to change.

The big monetization story of the last 18 months has been advertising, but the average household still has subscriptions to four or more SVOD services. Now, even the subscription services are jumping on the advertising train, using a hybrid approach to lower the cost to consumers while keeping their revenue streams flowing. So how can OTT services decide which models are best for their audience and content?

Industry leaders discuss and present the latest cutting-edge solutions and strategies that will help you maximize efficiencies and minimize costs in your streaming video workflow.

Chances are, if you haven't moved most or all of your streaming and broadcast workflows to the cloud, you're planning on it. Benefits include lower total cost of ownership, faster time to market, quicker response times, and reduced delivery costs. But how do you get there, and what are the essential questions to ask your vendors? If you’ve already made the move to the cloud, this panel can help you find new efficiencies in your workflows. If you haven’t, this panel can help you make the right strategic and purchasing decisions.

As social distancing requirements mandated remote workflows for most streaming productions in 2020, remote production proved not only viable but, in many cases, greatly advantageous. It reduced the number of crew required on-site, cut down on lost travel time, limited in-venue expenses, and enabled outfits running large and concurrent events to work more efficiently. As large-scale in-person events from esports to entertainment return—most likely as hybrid events with co-equal off-site streaming audiences—will we also see hybrid workflows emerging, with master control, technical direction, graphics, or other production elements managed off-site?

Even as social distancing regulations ease in some parts of the world and large-scale live events from sports to concerts return to larger in-venue crowds, streaming audiences remain an essential part of events’ monetization models, so the lessons of the last year, in which event profitability hinged largely on compelling streams, remain critical to future success. So, what did we learn about targeting and engaging streaming audiences, connecting them with brands, measuring engagement, and expanding reach? How will we apply and leverage those lessons going forward?

COVID-19 radically altered the role of video at work, and for most organizations, the changes were considerably more involved than giving work-from-home employees webcams and microphones for meetings. For more involved video communications, cloud production became the norm, and there’s no going back to a time when all meetings and corporate events had to be in-person. We look at leading tools and best practices for business communications in the “new normal.”

Industry leaders discuss and present the latest cutting-edge solutions and strategies that will help you maximize efficiencies and minimize costs in your streaming video workflow.

Content delivery is rapidly changing, and the market is highly fragmented and complex. Multi-CDN has become the norm, and real-time measurements are vital for load balancing and CDN switching. Security, performance, QoS, and scale are top of mind, while edge compute and Open CDN standards are giving media companies more options than ever before to get their content to their customers. Streaming Media contributing editor Dom Robinson interviews leading OTT publishers and services to find out what they're looking for. Be sure to bring your questions, too!

With all due respect to pristine production value, streamlined workflows, heightened interactivity, and killer content, it’s all for naught if you can’t deliver a resilient, reliable, high-quality stream. If your stream starts buffering as the ball sails toward the goal or the emcee announces, “The winner is …,” your audience (and your advertisers) won’t give you credit for trying. Having a robust CDN—or even multiple CDNs—as the backbone of your stream is key. This panel discusses the current state of streaming infrastructure and what you need to know to maintain five-nines streaming reliability when it matters most.

How low can your latency go? From entertainment to esports and online gaming, nearly every live stream can benefit from reducing latency. But how much you need to prioritize low latency to meet your audience’s expectations depends on who your audience is and what type of streaming you’re doing. And how much of it you can control depends on a number of factors. What are the factors you should consider to address streaming latency, and what practical steps can you take to reduce it? Our panel of experts discusses the key latency issues facing live streamers today, and how low you can—or need to—go.

Streaming media has taken a permanent hold on viewers and advertisers. Linear channels like Samsung Plus, PLEX, Pluto TV, and others have been racking up hours of view time monthly. Is it time to open up the technology for true live channels? Besides the obvious sports and news, what other content categories may capture a live audience? This panel of industry experts gives you an insider’s view into the answers.

If you think esports is just for kids, think again. Revenue in 2021 is expected to surpass $1 billion, the Olympics has added an esports event in Tokyo, and Netflix is even rumored to be getting gaming. What part will streaming video play in esports' explosive growth, and how can broadcasters, OTT services, and social video platforms work with esports leagues and players to deliver the best experiences to fans? And what can “traditional sports” broadcasters learn from the cutting-edge world of esports?

Since the completion of the AV1 Codec in 2018, substantial progress has been made to enable market adoption of the royalty free codec. This panel of experts will go through different efforts covering software decoding, hardware decoding, real-time software and hardware encoding, as well as other initiatives in the video ecosystem.

It’s harder than ever to know with confidence what device and operating system your viewers will be watching your content on. The old adage “Assume they’re watching on the biggest screen available” isn’t even true anymore—it’s as much about convenience as it is screen size. You can’t even assume that viewers will finish a movie, show, or game on the same device they start watching it on. And, of course, device usage varies dramatically based on geography and age. How do these factors impact how OTT services conceive and deliver their content?

Nobody likes the cable bundle. But it turns out that lots of people like the ability to access almost all the shows, movies, and events they want to watch in the same place rather than bouncing from one app to another and managing multiple bills and credentials. Is the once-skinny OTT bundle giving way to a fatter bundle? And how can vMVPDs avoid the mistakes the cable companies made that turned viewers away in the first place?

The past 18 months have seen an explosion in free ad-supported TV (FAST) and other advertising-based streaming services. As consumers reach their limit of SVOD services, they’ve become accustomed to paying with their attention rather than their wallets. That’s put an unprecedented amount of pressure on ad tech to deliver a seamless, relevant viewer experience, and content publishers have been forced to scale those ad tech solutions like never before. This panel examines the challenges that still remain for the ad tech industry and offers some solutions.

How reliable is your live-streaming production workflow, and how well is it adapted to today’s fluid production scenarios? Learn how to use and configure the essential components of a live-streaming system, including cameras, H.264 encoders/streamers, video switchers, video signal conversion, recorders, and more. You also learn how to best deploy live-event streams to your audience based on business requirements and adapt your production approach based on on-site safety and health regulations. Do you use free social media outlets, work with a premium third-party streaming service, or build your own live-streaming infrastructure? Learn how to approach different live scenarios with the right gear to fit your budget.

MPEG-2, AVC, HEVC, VVC – video codec technology has evolved dramatically in the past decades, and today we are on the cusp of the next transition. If the past is any indication, the coming evolution is shaping up to be more of a marathon than a sprint. Deacon will delve into where video codecs are heading by taking lessons from the past and sharing how those will shape the future of our industry.

With COVID-19 changing the way organizations approach office space, what does this mean for enterprise streaming? With more users accessing the corporate network remotely, organizations need to ensure their networks are properly configured to support these users. Just as important, organizations need to ensure their networks can support the tremendous increase in video usage that will continue when people return to the office. This presentation considers newer networking capabilities such as VPN split tunneling, software defined networks (SDN), and secure access service edge (SASE), as well as the more familiar multicast, eCDN, and peer-to-peer. Case studies show how several enterprises have overcome issues as their environments changed.

If content is king, then the user experience is the castle. Every touchpoint in the viewer journey—search, recommendation, program guide, thumbnails, previews, and playback—must be designed and built with usability and functionality working hand in hand for an experience that doesn’t merely serve consumers, but delights them. Panelists from leading broadcasters and OTT platform give you the keys to the castle (and talk about what belongs in the dungeon).

Live conferences and trade shows are back! But a funny thing happened during the pandemic: The streaming video industry was forced to “drink our own Kool-Aid” and deliver events virtually, only to find that all the virtual event platform bells and whistles didn’t matter if the video wasn’t reliable. This panel offers a no-holds barred discussion of what works, what doesn’t, and what the future of video-based event technology should look like.

Wayne Gretzky famously said, "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been." Our closing panel brings together disruptors to talk about where we are going to see the next round of innovation, from revolutionary viewing experiences, creative sponsorship and branding models to outside-the-box social media campaigns, to grab fans and keep them coming back for more.

Conventional wisdom is that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated changes that were already afoot in streaming, both within the industry and in consumer behavior. But are those changes really here to stay? This panel of leading industry experts and observers examines what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what we’ve learned since the beginning of 2020.

Join Dolby to learn how companies like Sony Pictures, HBO, and Showtime use Dolby’s Cloud Media Processing to deliver the world’s most compelling content. Learn how you can scale your media workflow — and save money — with the most efficient transcoding engine and automated QC solution available. Don’t miss this chance to see a live demo and ask questions about how you can:

- Accelerate your media processing workflow
- Produce optimized content for every device
- Automate quality control so every file meets your standards
- Save more money

The streaming gear market is exploding! But how do you figure out which tools are right for you? This interactive session, moderator by Anthony Burokas, Head of Streaming, DHD Films, gives attendees an opportunity to see some of the latest and greatest streaming tools, with an emphasis on scalability, flexibility, reliability, and ease of use. We’ll have a hands-on up close look at remote and studio gear for production teams of any size—even if it’s a one-person show. Bring your questions and prepare to be blown away by this free, interactive workshop! As an added bonus, we'll be giving away FREE GEAR; attend for your chance to win!

Looking for the ultimate in media input-output flexibility to address the needs of digital media content producers beyond just broadcast video? The TriCaster 2 Elite is the most complete video production platform available today, and sets a new platinum standard for how much you can achieve with a single system. In this workshop, NewTek's Robert Brown will show you that no other Live Production system is built with the integrated flexibility of software and IP networks - opening a world of opportunities with the tightest integration of NDI available in any product. Attend for your chance to win a NewTek University course package -  NewTek Certified Operator (value $3000)!