No Signs of Slowing Fragmentation in Mobile and TV Markets
While consumer use of mobile devices and connected TVs is exploding, that popularity is creating headaches for online video broadcasters due to the increasing fragmentation of the market. A panel of experts convened at the recent Streaming Media Europe conference in London to examine the current state of the mobile and TV markets.
After hearing about the complexity of the mobile market the moderator turned to Einar Kristian Vågmo, product manager for Telenor Comoyo, to ask if the set-top box and connected TV area was simpler, due to the more static devices. Definitely not, was the answer.
"To be honest, I think it's quite complex," said Vågmo. "We do encoding for ten different profiles. It should have been unnecessary to do that. We are using Smooth Streaming adaptive streaming. We want to deliver a good user experience for our customers. But then there are boxes and devices, connected TVs, and handsets not supporting that smooth streaming, and then we have to reencode and transmux everything. So, to be honest, I think it's quite complex."
The moderator posed a follow-up question, asking if there was a way to simplify the area.
"We saw adaptive streaming for the first time, I think it was three years ago. Now it's five standards very similar to each other, but so different and every one supporting different DRM, a different format and protocol. I hope that we see some kind of standardization in the future," Vågmo offered.
A few minutes later, Michael Lantz, CEO for Accedo Broadband, said that rather than fighting fragmentation, we should all get used to it.
"If technology is improving and things are changing, there will always be new companies figuring out new technologies that will improve existing technologies and voila, we have fragmentation in the market," said Lantz. "My recommendation to everyone is to create processes to deal with fragmentation, because you will have to live with it for the foreseeable future."
To view the entire discussion, scroll down:
From Tablets to TV: Extending the Reach of Content
Moderator: Matt Smith, VP, OTT Strategy and Solutions, Envivio, Inc.
Frank Thorup, Owner & Managing Director, Xstream
Michael Lantz, CEO, Accedo Broadband
Jim Denenny, VP and GM, Online Media Solutions, Concurrent
Jack Davison, Managing Director, 3Vision
Andy Chen, CEO, Preview Networks
Einar Kristian Vågmo, Product Manager, Telenor Comoyo
The massive consumer adoption of smartphones, tablets and connected TVs is one of the most exciting yet daunting developments confronting broadcasters today. On the one hand, the proliferation of devices provides powerful new opportunities to expand audience reach and engage consumers with new interactive experiences. On the other hand, this device landscape has produced an increasingly complex and fragmented runtime environment for broadcasters, from HTML5 and Flash to native applications for iOS and Android and more. This session will showcase how major broadcasters are navigating these challenges and achieving success with video across different platforms and devices.