If you watch a game on streaming, you could be anywhere from 30 to 60+ seconds behind the action. Latency on streaming is as much as four times worse than it is on linear TV. You might be seeing the kicker miss a field goal, but that kick actually happened almost a full minute ago.

Latency measured during the Super Bowl found that the latency problem could be more than a full minute. This issue isn’t just a system glitch, it’s a fundamental business problem.

Live sports might be the jewel in the crown of every major media company, but what happens when the real time nature of sports betting, advertising and social media interaction eat away at profits and ruin viewer experience?

The New Viewer Experience Needs Less Lag, Not More
In the world of linear sports, everyone saw the game with about a 15-20 second delay. A decade ago when most live sports were seen on linear channels, the viewing experience was simpler - people more or less just watched the game.

Now that streaming is taking over, we’re actually seeing a moment where viewer experience is moving backwards. The huge lag on streaming is in direct conflict with changes that have happened to how people watch the game, namely the huge increase in fantasy and sports betting, social multitasking and targeted advertising.

Betting Can Beat the Lag
The sports betting market grew more than 22% last year to $16.96 billion. One of the biggest growth opportunities in sports betting is microbetting. Before, most best would be placed before the game and would focus on the final score. With microbetting, fans make bets during the game on individual plays and payers. Microbetting relies completely on the fact that everyone is experiencing the game as it is played.

With a large lag, people with a lag at home can’t participate in the bet at all. The game and the play are long gone. Not only does streaming lag hamper the ability for fans to bet from home, it creates a window of opportunity for people to take advantage of knowledge other people don’t yet have.

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated prediction market platform that processed more than $1 billion in trading volume during Super Bowl 2026, an increase of 2,700% from the year before. The increase is not just based on a natural rise in sports betting popularity. Much like high speed financial trading that relied on shorter cables between them and the trade, sports betters actually bought TV antennas to shave fractions of a second off their data compared to streamers.

Viewers don’t like latency, and its impact is worse on streaming than linear. A report from EMARKETER found that 80% of people find the latency on streaming content annoying. Sports fans are willing to switch to another platform if they feel like they are behind the action.

The Trade-Off No Publisher Wants to Make
Latency is a business problem for publishers that cuts at the heart of their technology foundation. Streaming provides advertisers with ad targeting, which requires data, dynamic ad insertion and other logic that takes time to process. Every ad decision adds to the latency of a game, but it also contributes to the ability to sell inventory to advertisers.

The tradeoff is not ideal, but it’s a fundamental business decision that media companies need to face. Ignore the lag and prepare to see frustrated viewers flee to other platforms. Focus on eliminating the lag and alienate brands who want to be able to target and personalize their ads.

While these are two opposing sides of a single business problem, it’s not entirely a zero sum game.

The Race Is On to Reduce the Lag
While sports betting insiders are investing in schemes to take advantage of the lag, media companies should be focused on closing it. For the sake of protecting the viewer experience and to stay relevant in a real-time world, the streaming lag needs to go.

Media companies can use newer low-latency protocols and new ad serving technology that eliminates a lot of the lag. Similar to the financial industry, media companies could stand to upgrade to edge servers for faster delivery.

In addition to more advanced last-mile delivery, rights holders and distribution platforms can “reduce latency further up the video chain through more closely connected production and playout workflows to achieve measurable improvements without sacrificing reliability.” They can also use forecasting and sales scenario planning to protect key inventory placements from time consuming ad insertion.

Streaming has been a boon to the media world, igniting a technical arms race across major media companies that were stuck in a linear silo for years. While we’re already deep into streaming adoption across household viewers, we’re just beginning to see how media companies will evolve their offering to win audiences and deliver the best possible experiences.

Despite dire predictions that its streaming capabilities would be strained by the massive numbers of viewers watching the first Sunday broadcasts of the 2023-2024 NFL season, it appears that YouTube TV’s launch of its NFL Sunday Ticket went off with minimal glitches. 

Sunday provided the ultimate test for Google’s YouTube TV with millions of fans tuning into the popular service, which offers all NFL games for $500 per season per subscriber (with a variety of discounts). Google inked the $14 billion deal late last year to carry the subscription on its YouTube TV; the service had been exclusive to DirecTV for nearly 30 years. 

Although Google has not released subscription numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket, DirectTV had an estimated 2 million subscribers for the service before losing it to Google. 

Fans were skeptical that YouTube’s streaming service would be up to the task of replicating the technology enabled by DirecTV’s satellite service that allowed the provider to broadcast NFL games with minimal latency. For several years, since the Super Bowl began being streamed, reports indicated that viewers watching the big game on a traditional pay TV service or antenna were catching the action up to a minute earlier than those watching online.

(Read more: Low Latency Distribution: What Does It Mean to Video Streamers?)

CNBC was among those wringing their hands over the prospect of higher than normal delays. “As thousands of football fans fill stadiums across America to see the first Sunday of NFL action, millions more will watch at home and at bars—as much as one minute later,” the network predicted last week.

CNBC based much of its expectations on previous Super Bowl reports as well as experts who noted that due to the technical differences between the efficiency of satellite or broadcast technology—and the “one to one” aspect of streaming—online viewers could end up finding out about a touchdown as much as a minute after the broadcast. Echoing tech experts it interviewed for its report, CNBC said  “the delay ‘Sunday Ticket’ subscribers will face on Sunday can’t be helped and is just the reality of current technology.”

But Google defended its technology, citing the worldwide popularity of its YouTube service. “Overall, YouTube TV is built on the infrastructure that powers YouTube, and reliably serves billions of playback every day, the company told NBC News. “The YouTube TV team is working on building a high-quality Sunday Ticket experience.”

Although there were some issues with YouTube TV's multiview feature, in the end, the handwringing was the most part, all for naught, since technical issues didn’t become the headlines many had feared.

“Wow, Sunday Ticket on YouTube is amazing,” one user wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), Yahoo News reports. “On my phone, the broadcast delay is only 10 seconds… behind AN ANTENNA.” 

“Top notch work moving NFL Sunday Ticket over,” wrote another fan on X. “Truly… No hassles AT ALL. Logging in has been easy, no delays, no weird ‘verify your current playback area’ messages.”

Shortly after games began on the east coast on Sunday, Matt Infante, chief operating officer of media company Pro Football Network tweeted that “NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube not showing the kind of delay that many feared. So far.”

Streaming expert Dan Rayburn praised Google for its first weekend performance, describing the outcome as a “touchdown” for YouTube, but warning that the company isn’t out of the woods.

“I’m rooting for the Google and YouTube TV teams to have great execution every week throughout the year,” he wrote on his Streaming Media Blog. “If they can keep any technical issues to a minimum, and short-lived, plus provide accurate and timely support, it helps the entire streaming industry. If YouTube TV has any widespread problems with streaming the NFL Sunday Ticket, the backlash from many will be that streaming is not ready for primetime and can’t be used as a replacement to broadcast TV distribution and that would hurt the entire industry.”

And while YouTube TV appeared to escape unscathed from its first test, it's a mixed bag for traditional TV with  ESPN, ABC and more than  20 other Disney channels having been pulled from Charter's Spectrum TV service; more than 200 network affiliates owned or managed by Nexstar Media Group blacked out on DirecTV and a new impasse occurring late last week when Dish TV removed subscribers' access to 37 local Hearst channels in 27 markets in a third  carriage dispute. 

Broadband Forum has released the next update of its User Datagram Protocol (UDP)-based Speed Test (UDPST) utility, a development that will help broadband operators deploy new gigabit services and offer better connectivity with low latency and faster speeds. 

The Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications. The newest release is an important step forward in the deployment of gigabit services and applications like AR, VR, gaming and UHD streaming that require very low latency. 

The updated UDPST performs the tests defined in TR-471 Issue 3 ‘Maximum IP-Layer Capacity Metric, Related Metrics, and Measurements’, to quantify and verify broadband networks in instances where consistent low latency is just as critical as speed, the group said. 

It aids the deployment of gigabit services that intend to support next-generation applications with growing user uptake. Applications such as gaming, UHD streaming, augmented reality and virtual reality require low latency to assure the required Quality of Experience, the group said. 

“Our open source implementation provides an approach to Internet access measurement with demonstratable accuracy and is an integral part of Broadband Forum specifications,” said Al Morton, AT&T and OB-UDPST project co-leader and TR-471 Editor. “The TR-471 specification was harmonized and developed in coordination with other standards organizations, including ITU-T, IETF and ETSI-STQ/Mobile. UDP is a critical communication protocol for time-sensitive transmissions on the Internet, and the UDPST measurements provide consumer confidence in their service’s support of applications that use UDP.”

“UDPST’s Latency under Load measurements and capabilities to perform application-layer traffic performance estimation address topics that are of considerable interest to the industry,” Morton continued.

Broadband Forum’s Open Broadband - User Datagram Protocol Speed Test (OB-UDPST) project has produced nine public releases of the open source implementation.

With UDPST Latency under Load measurements, users can compare their performance to the latency demands of their Internet applications in milliseconds. Latency requirements can be categorized with red, yellow, and green indicators, as needed. Results of UDPST conducting Latency under Load (and Capacity) measurements were shared with the IETF-IPPM in late 2022. The UDPST results offered an enhanced and more practical view when compared to a TCP-based method, the group said. 

The group explained that UDP-based methods address an important gap because user applications and traffic with strict response time requirements will use UDP. The percentage of UDP traffic is also significant and continues to grow in proportion to TCP traffic. The fully encrypted QUIC transport protocol – running over UDP – already accounted for nearly 30% of traffic in EMEA and 16% in North America in January 2022.

"As an industry we have long realized the strong need for a common understanding on how to measure performance which goes beyond speed as the only factor to consider. We now have what was missing: a simple, standardized, and open-sourced method ready to be used across the whole industry to fill this void,” said Sascha Dech, Deutsche Telekom.

Initially launched in response to growing fiber deployments with low latency and gigabit service rates, the OB-UDPST project utility applies to both mobile and fixed radio access.

“OB-UDPST is one of the latest utilities we’re using at the UNH-IOL today to measure the capacity and latency of systems with increasing capabilities, such as 5G and higher speed PON networks,” said Lincoln Lavoie, UNH InterOperability Lab, Principal Engineer. “Directly participating in the open source project also enables us to share requirements with the team to ensure the UDPST continues to meet our expanding use cases at the lab.”

More information about OB-UDPST is available here: https://github.com/BroadbandForum/obudpst.

You’re watching a major soccer final, live streamed to your main screen, when your neighbors cheer for a goal 40 seconds before you see it. This is the classic, borderline cliched conundrum, routinely trotted out to illustrate how the user experience is spoiled when viewing live content Over the Top (OTT).

The real question is, why has this problem not yet been tackled?

Despite the growing popularity of streaming services, reducing OTT latency remains a challenge for content providers, broadcasters and service providers, and a major source of frustration for audiences. Is there a way to efficiently deliver lower latency at a large scale while preserving visual quality? Is low latency realistically achievable today in production?

The answer is an emphatic yes! Low-latency OTT is no longer theoretical: it is real.

The trouble with latency
Latency is introduced by the different stages required to process and deliver video content within the streaming pipeline. Some components are already operating very close to their physical limit, i.e., the speed of light, with sub-millisecond processing delays at the sending and the receiving end. Other components, such as the video encoder, come in different versions, many of which include low-latency options to reduce the delay between the last input pixel and the first encoded byte. 

Typical broadcast linear stream delay ranges anywhere from five to ten seconds. In contrast, OTT multi-screen video delivery has historically been anywhere from 30 seconds to over 60 seconds, depending on the viewing device and video workflow used. 

Latency is a critical issue, both for the viewer in terms of Quality of Experience (QoE), and for the streaming provider in terms of monetizing the investment. The challenge for the industry is to reduce this latency to a range closer to linear broadcast latency, however achieving very low latency at the expense of poor picture quality won’t work either.

The aim must be to achieve low-latency streaming on par with broadcast while advancing the audio and picture quality to exceed standard broadcast.

Low latency for both DASH and HLS using existing workflows
Achieving low latency traditionally required investing in different dedicated workflows: one for traditional OTT and another for low latency, both requiring outputs for HLS (iOS products principally) and MPEG-DASH. This meant a considerable upfront investment and additional complexity.

It has taken several years and several iterations for the chief players in each camp (DASH-IF and Apple) to devise a low-latency solution that would be interoperable among devices of both parties.

In 2020, Apple’s release of a new version of LL-HLS finally simplified the integration of the technology over a wide range of video players. It meant that the entire market could, for the first time, take advantage of Just-in-Time (JIT) packaging for both LL-DASH and LL-HLS, making it possible for operators to achieve low latency using existing workflows. 

Where operators were previously reluctant to invest in technologies that would only serve one-half of the market, now with a JIT Packager, low-latency streaming is ready to take off. Since content is only packaged at the request of the subscriber, processing and storage requirements are reduced. This equates to fewer servers and lower energy consumption, leading to lower operational costs and an improved environmental footprint.

To make the JIT Packager even more efficient in this workflow, the Common Media Applications Format, otherwise known as CMAF can be used by the packager, both for input from the encoder as well as the output to the CDN. The advantages of using CMAF are that it maintains the highest quality while also optimizing the streaming workflow, since both DASH and HLS can take the same format of video and audio chunks from the packager.

Moreover, streaming service providers can leverage the same workflow for more typical OTT services—including time-shifted TV, start-over capabilities, and VOD—on any device. Viewers can therefore enjoy a range of high-quality experiences.

Every step matters
Packaging is critical to achieving low latency, but it is not the only component in the video delivery chain that can introduce latency. Each step needs to be considered for further optimization, from encoders to CDN, and finally the player at the consumer device. Driving down OTT latency requires an end-to-end strategy, with every stage playing its role.

The aim must be to minimize latency while maximizing video quality, even with 4K HDR content. For example, the encoder needs to ingest source streams and produce the right size of chunks and segments that can then be uploaded to the origin server for delivery.

Scalability
It is also necessary that the CDN can easily and quickly scale. It is not just a matter of bandwidth capacity but of having the functionality to manage a high volume of simultaneous streaming sessions.

Operators need to increase streaming capacity quickly during prominent events that generate traffic peaks. This is where efficient CDNs often use lightweight caching applications that can spin up to scale quickly and turned off to repurpose the resources when not needed.

There are solutions that support all these functionalities at a level of performance that enables low-latency deployment at scale, relying on fully virtualized software technology that provides the elasticity needed to scale rapidly.

Improving monetization and user experience
Improving the latency to the viewers opens several avenues to increase the revenue component for the streaming service. 

Managing Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) with low latency streams is one important challenge that many customers are interested in solving.  

It’s easy to see why. Events where low latency is highly relevant such as live sports attract large audiences and consequently high-value ad inventory. Being able to insert advertising on a geographic, demographic, postcode or personalized basis on the fly would generate even greater monetization opportunities for the broadcaster.

The key here is Manifest Conditioning—the ability in the Origin packager to indicate where an ad break starts and finishes. Enabling Manifest Conditioning for low latency channels is another active R&D focus of industry leaders today.

Advertising also offers the ability to insert placement ads directly into streams, this can be from the advertising angle to promote and gain ad revenue, but can also be from a shopping angle to insert placement of new revenue opportunities. 

Another path for monetization comes in the form of sports betting, which is seen as a major growth segment. Here latency is critical, and being able to achieve close to 5 seconds should allow streaming providers to leverage this market.   

Conclusion
Delivering low-latency live streams is essential for high-value content such as live sports. The technology is primed and ready for OTT providers to offer audiences the quality of experience and services they expect from broadcast TV—at scale.

One of the early problems with live video streaming—first demonstrated at the 1997 NAB Show—was that the images hiccupped and sputtered due to constraints in bandwidth. Yet, even with those annoying imperfections, it was clear from day one that video had a future over the internet. 

Now—25 years later—getting rid of those video interruptions over the net is close to reality. It hasn’t been an easy engineering problem to solve. In live video streaming, it is important to remember that the lower the latency, the less robust the video signal becomes. Low latency video can hiccup, or stop playing completely, after even the tiniest gap in the bandwidth of the stream.

Balancing Act
Since day one, live video streaming has been a balancing act—low latency versus stability of the content stream. (Though things have dramatically improved from the days when virtually every online video was shaky and dropped out frequently.)

Today, depending on the value of the video content, latency takes on varying degrees of importance. With the standard streamed church service or town council meeting, which ranks as the lowest-valued content, segment size can be reduced from 2-4 seconds with little cost or concern. In this class of video, latency can be reduced to between 6–12 seconds.

More valuable, but pre-recorded, broadcast content averages about 5-6 seconds of latency, while demanding real-time content like OTT streaming of live online sports, gambling or gaming demand special low-latency technology. New technologies with complex names are dealing with the latency issue and programming vendors are expected to charge a premium for the service.

Until recently, ultra-low latencies of less than a second were best achieved using UDP-based WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication), a free and open source protocol introduced by Google in 2011. It provides web browsers and mobile applications with real time communication via program interfaces. 

Until about 2020, the HTTP approach—a competing method—could not provide a low enough latency for interactivity, so WebRTC remained a popular solution. 

Apple vs. Microsoft (Again)
However, the cost and complexity of encoding and storing the same video file twice for the two main computer platforms—Apple and Microsoft—made processing and storage of content expensive. Two versions of the same video stream had to be made either in advance or instantly. With users accessing streams across iPhones, smart TVs, Xboxes and PCs, this expensive complexity became a major issue.

In 2016, Apple and Microsoft suggested that the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) create a new uniform standard called “Common Media Application Format” to simplify online delivery of HTTP-based streaming media (Fig. 1). It was published in 2018. 

Once the standard was created, manufacturers implemented it quickly. The benefits of encoding, packaging and caching a single container for video delivery was obvious. But CMAF did more than just reduce encoding complexity.

HTTP-based video delivery still lacked the real-time delivery options that viewers wanted. CMAF had to also improve latency. Now, Microsoft and Apple have agreed to reach audiences across the HLS and DASH protocols by using CMAF, a standardized transport container (Fig. 2). 

CMAF represents a coordinated industry-wide effort to lower latency with chunked encoding and transfer encoding. It also supports file encryption and digital rights management. Multiple incompatible DRMs are supported, including FairPlay, PlayReady and Widevine.

Since its creation, CMAF has opened the way for a new generation of low latency technology. These consist of Low Latency HLS (LL-HLS), Low Latency DASH (LL-DASH) and the High Efficiency Stream Protocol (HESP). CMAF works hand-in-hand with these protocols.

LL-HLS, which was announced by Apple in 2020, became the most used technology for streams via HLS. There is a DVB standard for low-latency DASH and there is ongoing work to ensure interoperability for all DASH/CMAF low-latency applications. 

Harmonic and Akamai showed low-latency CMAF demos with a latency of under 5 seconds at the 2017 NAB and IBC shows. Since then, most other encoder and player vendors have integrated the technologies into their products. 

Market Competition
All low-latency systems work in the same basic way. Rather than waiting until a complete segment is encoded—which usually takes between six and ten seconds—the encoder creates much shorter “chunks” that are transferred to the content delivery network as soon as they are complete.

In a new forecast from Rethink TV, a research organization, it is predicted that low latency protocols will quickly find a place in live sports delivery. As time goes on, all content—not just sports—will make use of the protocols, the researcher predicted.

Rethink TV anticipates low-latency delivery will be a very competitive market in the next few years. These low-latency distribution technologies, which can be offered as a premium service to subscribers, are key for a number of competitive video technology vendors and users. Pivotal will be knowing how to optimize both the centralized and edge infrastructure to compete with rivals, the research found. 

As most devices are now totally compatible with CMAF, Rethink TV predicts most will be able to receive video streams packaged in LL-HLS and LL-DASH formats. Competitive forces will drive adoption.

For owners of content, rights holders and streaming services, the reduction of latency for live video can differentiate them from their rivals by dramatically improving the reliability of video service.

This also applies to broadcasters that operate both traditional pay-TV distribution infrastructure and an OTT service. Those broadcasters need to get their latencies down to something nearer their traditional pay-TV competitors.  

Reducing OTT latency is essential, but now for only live content. It will probably remain in the sports and betting arena for the time being. However, all on-demand video programming will eventually migrate to a low-latency technology, probably before the end of this decade. 

BASKING RIDGE, N.J.— Verizon and AWS have expanded their 5G mobile edge computing offering to more U.S. metro areas with the addition of Nashville, Tenn. and Tampa, Fla.

Launched in August 2020, the expansion means that companies now provide mobile edge computing via AWS Wavelength Zones in 19 locations in the U.S. and that 75% of the U.S. population is now within 150 miles of a Wavelength Zone. 

For consumers, being in closer proximity to the applications they use, shortens the roundtrip that data needs to travel, which in turn significantly reducing lag time, or latency, for getting data to your device from the cloud, the companies explained. 

For developers and businesses, Verizon 5G Edge and AWS Wavelength allows them to build and deploy a variety of latency-sensitive applications for such applications as immersive VR gaming, video distribution, and connected and autonomous vehicles.

“With the ongoing expansion of our mobile edge compute infrastructure, we’re enabling developers to build transformational applications that enhance consumers’ experiences by moving the data and processing done by applications and services to the edge of Verizon’s wireless network and closer to the end-user’s device,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “By offering both public and private mobile edge compute, we’re giving businesses ultimate optionality. This can transform the way companies can leverage predictive analytics, allowing them to improve operational efficiency, mitigate risk and increase revenue.”

“With the rapid expansion of AWS Wavelength Zones across the US, even more developers can innovate faster and deploy powerful cloud-based applications to the edge – offering ultra low latency, high bandwidth, and high performance for these applications,” said George Elissaios, director and general manager of AWS EC2 core product management at AWS. “We’re excited to collaborate with Verizon to bring AWS services to the edge of the Verizon 5G network across the US to help our customers transform consumer experiences.”

Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength is currently available in 19 locations including Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York City, Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington DC. 

Verizon and AWS also offer private mobile edge computing for enterprises called Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Outposts.

In order to displace an incumbent technology, a new technology must provide significant benefits to users. Streaming video provides greater flexibility, more content and new viewing and engagement models over traditional linear TV. However, the quality of experience (QoE) of linear video delivery has been better, with better picture quality, lower latency, faster channel switching and fewer playback issues. 

But with access to greater bandwidth and reduced latency, such as offered by 5G, it can propel streaming to an unqualified benefit over linear.

Ericsson forecasts a total of 190 million 5G subscriptions by the end of 2020. While the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed some 5G deployment, it is still estimated that, by 2025, 5G will have 2.8 billion global subscribers. Of that total, 88% are projected to be mobile.

At the same time, the COVID-19 lockdown has driven digital transformation quickly, and consumers have spent a huge amount of time online. According to figures from Verizon, during the lockdown, there was a 26% increase in global video streaming traffic and a massive 71% increase in gaming traffic compared to normal pre-COVID usage.

5G will transform video away from traditional linear TV by offering users better engagement and new ways to consume content, such as multiple stream viewing and volumetric video, which is key for AR and VR. It also presents significant benefits to service providers, like the ability to address new markets and improve monetization.

ADDRESSING LATENCY AND BANDWIDTH LIMITATIONS 

When streaming live events, especially sports, there is a slight delay between what’s happening on the field and what is being delivered on a 4G network—an average latency of around 50ms. When expanding this to other scenarios, like cloud-based gaming, latency affects the response time as well.

Some viewing activities are particularly bandwidth-intensive. According to data from Qualcomm, supporting 6 Degree of Freedom (6DoF) head motion parallax 360-degree video (such as for an Oculus Quest) consumes more than 200 Mbps. Below are Qualcomm’s bandwidth estimates: 

5G is expected to provide consumers with a seamless viewing experience because of its massive improvements on latency and bandwidth. 5G is expected to provide a 10x decrease in end-to-end latency. The faster speed improves the production of streaming live events on mobile devices. It can not only compete with fiber, but also give access to consumers who don’t already have access to very high bandwidth connections. Furthermore, 5G enables a lower cost per gigabyte ratio, which means that streaming capabilities will be more cost efficient.

For example, KT Corporation, South Korea’s largest telecommunications company, launched its 5G Olleh TV mobile app on time synchronized playback, multistream/multicamera for live content, low latency and 360VR on a 4K stream. With the VisualOn Player, KT’s Olleh TV Mobile users are able to watch music and sports the way they want, focusing on the camera angle or performer that they are most interested in. 

KDDI, the leading Japanese communications provider, is another example of offering new services to compel subscribers to upgrade to 5G services. KDDI’s au Smart Pass mobile app now features high-quality streaming video services for its subscribers, such as multiple streams synched on a single screen. The VisualOn Player enables new ways for Smart Pass users to experience live sports and concerts over a 5G network. 

BETTER AD DELIVERY, BETTER MONETIZATION

As 5G will improve the video performance, will it also contribute to video monetization? 

Conviva’s 2020 Q1 State of Streaming report showed 46.3% of ad opportunities were missed, either because of playback issues or lack of inventory to serve. The most common playback issue is the ad was not served on time, which means it does not play. When ads don’t play, or are not accurately tracked, the service provider doesn’t get paid. The greater bandwidth and lower latency of 5G will help with smooth handoffs between content and advertising and ensure that ads are served on time, and thus play.

The inventory issue is expected to be temporary, caused by many activities and businesses being shuttered, but the long term trend is toward greater spending on video advertising. For example, according to the IAB UK PwC Digital Adspend study, video has become the key driver for digital ad spend, encompassing approximately 44% of the £2.31 billion display market. 

 With 5G in place, service providers will have access to more sophisticated ad insertion and analytics platforms—even at the video player level. Higher quality ad delivery drives greater engagement, and granular tracking and analytics means more accurate reporting for advertisers to justify increased budgets. 

5G is already seeing successful rollouts in Asia. The impact of COVID-19—limiting live events but driving users to streaming video—has accelerated the rollout of more innovative and compelling streaming services to fill in the gap. In turn, digital transformation has been greatly accelerated. Bottom line, 5G will allow for higher quality and more engaging content to garner eyeballs.

Michael Jones is senior vice president and head of Business Development at VisualOn. 

ATLANTA—The Zingo TV platform says that thanks in part to a new partnership with Streaming Global, the OTT service will be able deliver live streams at sub-second latency, 30-60x faster than the industry average.

Zingo TV, which also recently acquired the rights to For the Fans/Eleven Sports U.S., sought to boost its infrastructure for an improved viewing experience, and will be implementing Streaming Global technology into its streaming pipeline to be able to deliver these low-delay streams.

Streaming Global says that its technology delivers streams directly to cloud storage servers. By doing this it eliminates “unnecessary” parts of the conventional pipeline.

According to Zingo, live sports are about 75 seconds behind the action. It estimates that this new technology will reduce that time.

PLUS: Video Distribution in a Crisis: Efficient Use of Resources Is Critical

“We’re thrilled to bring Streaming Global technology as our delivery partner,” said John Estiva, Zingo TV co-founder. “With them, we’ll be able to provide our viewers with an even better experience and continue to focus on content.”

For more information, visit www.zingotv.com.  

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—Videon today announced its EdgeCaster Edge Computer Encoder is compatible with AWS Elemental MediaStore.

The compatibility means Videon customers can use AWS Elemental MediaStore as a direct ingest from the EdgeCaster H.264/HEVC video encoder in support of low-latency workflows for HLS and DASH outputs using the Common Media Application Format (CMAF). Support of the EdgeCaster’s ingest protocols makes possible worldwide latency of less than 3 seconds, Videon said.

"Live streaming should not come with a latency penalty as compared to traditional broadcast TV," said Todd Erdley, founder and CEO of Videon. "EdgeCaster's compatibility with AWS Elemental MediaStore is a strong step forward to making live streaming truly live—using standards-based, viewer-scalable and cost-effective solutions. Compatibility with AWS Elemental MediaStore represents an important development in our relationship with Amazon Web Services. AWS Elemental offers crucial insight into how streams can be ingested into AWS Elemental MediaStore and how Videon can optimize our platform."

Leveraging AWS Elemental MediaStore, the EdgeCaster encoder reduces the time and cost associated with live streaming, the company said. Rather than relying on the cloud to handle time-intensive computational processes, EdgeCaster attends to these tasks on the network edge, thus increasing efficiency.

Videon developed intellectual property based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon system of a chip semiconductor. Using Snapdragon’s processing power, EdgeCaster streams at resolutions up to 4K at 30fps using H.264 or H.265/HEVC compression and supports up to six bit rates, ensuring low-latency workflows with MediaStore can be deployed, the company said.

More information is available on the Videon website.

Hitomi Broadcast, manufacturer of MatchBox, the industry’s leading audio video alignment toolbox, is partnering with Broadcast Wireless Systems (BWS), manufacturer of the ultra-low latency BWS NanoPRO TX camera-back transmitter, to showcase remote production capabilities featuring Hitomi’s new ‘Matchbox Glass®’ iOS app at IBC 2019.

Using a Sony PXW 500 camera on loan from Presteigne Broadcast Hire and two of Hitomi’s own, fixed cameras, Hitomi will deploy BWS’s NanoPRO TX and associated RF receiver to demonstrate MatchBox Glass’s real-world ability to instantly measure latency and provide fast, accurate lip-sync and alignment of multiple cameras.

Hitomi Broadcast Director Russell Johnson said, “This is not just a demonstration of how to save time and money with MatchBox Glass, we’re highlighting how the latest remote production techniques and technologies can provide numerous advantages for reporters in the field.

“As broadcasters need simple and reliable RF transmitters to move content, they similarly need a quick and accurate way in the field to ensure sync, including for multicamera productions. So long as they have a MatchBox Glass-equipped iPhone or iPad, production teams can now easily measure and correct for latency differences between cameras on site, which is especially useful for remote productions.”

BWS Director Stuart Brown added, “We have an excellent and ongoing working relationship with Hitomi and are delighted to have this additional opportunity to demonstrate the various benefits of what BWS NanoPRO TX offers to the production community.

“Many aspects of technology are rapidly converging to enable remote productions to get faster, more economic and, ultimately, more exciting for consumers. What we are demonstrating with Hitomi are extremely versatile systems that can be readily deployed by broadcasters worldwide to ensure quality transmission of live news, sports, and events, guaranteed by fast, high-quality synchronisation, all of which are essential for modern productions.”

MatchBox Glass and its companion, MatchBox Analyser, are being introduced along with the remote production demonstration at IBC 2019 on Stand 2.C11 in Amsterdam from 13-17 September.

###

About Hitomi
Hitomi is a professional television broadcast equipment manufacturer located in the UK. It's flagship product 'MatchBox'​ solves lip-sync, coherence, line identification, audio level monitoring problems. Hitomi's engineering team has many decades of experience in professional broadcast manufacture, developing world-leading products to exacting standards. For more information, visit www.hitomi-broadcast.tv

Media Contact:
Jennie Marwick-Evans
Manor Marketing
jennie@manormarketing.tv
Phone: +44 (0) 7748 636171

About Broadcast Wireless Systems
BWS has decades of experience in the wireless broadcast area. As well as operational experience the team are product designers with extensive in-house mechanical, software, hardware and FPGA experience.

Company Contact:
Stuart Brown
stuart.brown@broadcastwirelesssystems.com
Phone: +44 (0)1376 390647

“It is not strange...to mistake change for progress.” -Millard Fillmore

I’d like to turn the clock back more than 70 years to 1948, when the first live television remotes began. They were enabled by microwave transmissions and initially used just for parades and specials. Microwave became the every-day solution for remote news and sports programming by the early 1970s.

Shortly thereafter, new technologies—first analog satellite newsgathering in the late 70s, followed by digital SNG and microwave transmissions—provided greater access and significantly higher quality while using bandwidth more efficiently.

While I am not one who pines for the past, I believe we lost something important along the way. With this technological progress came the curse of latency, which has cost TV its intimacy. In today’s content landscape where authenticity is prized by a demanding audience, delays are not free. The price is a high one that we cannot afford to continue to pay. Let me explain.

THE DOOR TO DELAY

One advantage of those early remotes was that they were analog and not subject to any meaningful delays. A correspondent’s or a sportscaster’s report would be beamed to the studio at the speed of light, where it would be switched, released over the television transmitter and sent back for the contributor to view immediately on an off-air monitor. They were instantly and intimately connected to the discussion with the studio.

As time marched forward and digital improved, correspondents in the field were forced by a technology-induced delay to depend upon an audio-only mix-minus IFB (interrupted fold back). They could hear, but not see the people they were communicating with, robbing them of subtle, but vital visual cues from their studio counterparts. Later HDTV and digital television transmission added further delay, rendering the possibility of the off-air real-time monitor a thing of the past.

Since the door to delay had already been opened, it was just business as usual when new compression algorithms were used to squeeze a full broadcast-quality signal onto a couple of cell signals. Bonded cellular was remarkable in that it allowed crews to contribute with only a backpack of equipment, freeing them to make reports from more locations, at a dramatically lower cost. No need for trucks! The trade-off was even more latency, this time, significantly magnifying the delay in the reporter's path back to the studio.

The visual impact was dramatic and remains today in that all too familiar scene of reporters foolishly nodding their collective heads, sometimes at painfully inappropriate moments. Effectively, the studio is taking the heavily delayed remote feeds seconds before the beginning of reporters reply. The “yada, yada, yadas” that Jerry Seinfeld so aptly described have become an inescapable part of every-day broadcasts.

LOSING THE BACK AND FORTH

I am no Luddite. I have spent decades optimizing signal paths, sometimes obsessing over hundredths of milliseconds, while always embracing the forward march of technology. But I am troubled by our acceptance of that loss of intimacy. Producers are taught to bring the viewer into the story; to make them part of the family. When a reporter in the field and their anchor communicate instantly, their banter adds life and energy to the story. This only works when they are present in the moment in a way that lets the viewer witness the dynamics of their interpersonal relationships.

We’ve lost the back and forth of real conversation. The relationship between today’s remote and host is as cold as a factory—one person on an assembly line handing off the widget to the next worker. It’s mechanical, contrived, distracting and harms the relationships between the host and reporters while alienating the audience. Worst of all, it is totally unnecessary.

Audiences are attracted to stories and engaging casts. We should be smart enough to recognize the value inherent in delivering that experience. We can recapture that lost intimacy and rivet the viewer to the screen not only with the story but with the people behind the story.

The combination of high bandwidth IP everywhere and mobile devices with remarkable processors and built-in cameras and screens can replace traditional equipment while changing everything. High-quality, low-cost, two-way visual communication between host and remote opens up totally new, dynamic ways of telling a story. A reporter on location can share the emotion of the moment with the anchor and the audience. A sportscaster on the sidelines can narrate over B-roll, or even do play by plays remotely. Existing technologies can provide two-way hyper-low latency between studio and field, making it possible to recapture lost intimacy and inspire new forms of storytelling.

Real progress means we can have it all!

Want to dig into this some more? Join me in Las Vegas at NAB, on April 9 at 9 a.m. in room N258 in the LVCC where I’ll be speaking on this in detail at "Beyond Bonded Cellular; A Workflow for Broadcast Remotes via Smartphone." Hope to see you there.

Larry Thaler is the president of Positive Flux, a consulting firm that specializes in helping media companies take advantage of the rapid changes occurring in the industry. He can be reached viaTV Technology.

NEW YORK—Day-after conversations around the water cooler about sporting events inevitably come around to “did you see that play” or “call”—and when it comes to the Super Bowl, “commercial.”

However, no one ever thinks to ask “when did you see that” –no one except for real-time streaming specialist Phenix. The company, which has created its own spin on WebRTC to power live video streaming at scale with about 500 milliseconds of latency, is keenly aware of the when, especially when it comes to Super Bowl LIII.

“On average, there was a streaming delay ranging from 30 to 47 seconds depending on the platform,” says Jed Corenthal, CMO of Phenix.

To arrive at that finding, Phenix compared the time plays actually occurred on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta to when the same play began on eight platforms used to stream the game, including the CBS Sports App, NFL.com, Xfinity, CBSSports.com, YouTube TV, the NFL App, CBS All Access and the Yahoo Sports App.

The company released its findings Feb. 5 in the form of two online graphs, one laying out the averages for measured lag behind real-time for Super Bowl 2019 and the other presenting the measured audience drift –or ranges of lag for viewers on the same platform—for the game.

More than 800 data points were collected for the eight streams on multiple devices, such as laptop computers, smartphones and tablets. Each was compared by measuring the delay behind the over-the-air, cable or satellite TV signal.

To establish the start times for each sampled play, a Phenix researcher in the stadium reported on a cellphone when measured plays actually began, explains Corenthal, adding that using the cellphone created about 40 to 50 milliseconds of latency.

Some 20 people around the country using different digital devices and streaming platforms then recorded when the same play began on the streaming devices. Measurements were taken throughout the game.

Phenix found that the CBS Sports App performed best among the streaming platforms with an average of 28.2 seconds of latency compared to the on-field game. On the other end of the continuum was the Yahoo Sports App with an average of 46.7 seconds of latency.

The study also looked at audience drift, or the range of lag viewers on the same platform experienced. YouTube TV recorded the greatest drift with 107.8 seconds, while the NFL App with 69.3 seconds recorded the least drift.

The culprit is HLS, or HTTP Live Streaming, which “wasn’t designed for real time,” says Corenthal.

“They [HLS-based platforms] may be able to do things to it that alter the latency of their particular stream, but when you add up the encoding, the content delivery and all of the points along the way, what happens in HLS is you are kind of relegated to a certain amount of latency because that is the way the technology is built,” he says.

Latency may or may not be a problem for viewers, but any Super Bowl fan who was watching the game on traditional TV and also turning to a smartphone or tablet for the game likely saw the effects of streaming latency firsthand.

“Look, for some people that’s OK. It’s not a big deal. But what we are seeing is the general fan is getting tired of that; tired of streams that are behind; streams that are buffering,” says Corenthal.

“The good news is most of the streams had pretty good quality, and quality and scale have been the first two pegs of the triangle that have been somewhat solved. It’s when latency is added –all three pegs of quality, scale and latency—that’s where these platforms come up a bit short in our estimation.”

More information is available on the Phenix website.

Latency is a continual concern, impacting nearly all forms of media and communication systems. It can be evident in an internet connection, a server, a disk system and in an IP network. We’re hearing a lot more about latency as we move from the SDI-world to real-time video over IP.

Latency is defined as the time interval (or period) between a stimulus and a reaction or response. Latency can be a “physical” property—as in the velocity of propagation (VoP) in a cable referenced to the frequency of the signal carried and is based upon the materials used in the fabrication of that cable.

Latency can also be a “signal transport” property, such as in the time of flight (ToF)—i.e., the methodology describing the time it takes an object, particle or acoustic, electromagnetic or other wave to travel a distance through a medium.

Fig. 1: Typical causes of latency due to propagation delay of the links (Dlink) and in processing delay at the nodes (Dnode) which must be accounted for in system design. ToF might include how the elements in a network (transmitters, receivers, switches and transducers) are engineered; while VoP is influenced, in part, by choice of cabling itself (e.g., Belden 1694A compared to 1855 for video or Cat5 vs Cat6a for IP).

Video latency—especially in a packetized IP-network—can affect reliability, stability and the ability to properly switch a line of video. Practices described in SMPTE RP168, the recommended practice defining the vertical interval switching point for video, help govern how real-time video-over-IP systems address the packetization of essence for live (real-time) video systems.

The needs for a live stream of video compared to feeding a monitor wall or encoder take on different perspectives, which must be carefully considered as signals negotiate segments of any network.

Latency in the recovery and reassembling of packets in a video signal transport network can affect the time it takes to reconstruct a complete frame (field) of video. Too much latency and you have a time inconsistency causing skipped frames or stuttering video.

Buffer capabilities also affect performance. If the network switch’s buffer is insufficient, the impact can result in an incomplete packet resolution, which could cause a series of video frames to be lost or a switch-routing or connection to fail—thus generating another improperly displayed image or a total loss of signal.

Performance and latency go together when looking at any system solution or application, which depends upon consistent and deterministic delivery of data. In today’s media implementations, audio and video essence (the data, sometimes called the payload) can take on variances depending upon where the data is presented in the workflow. One relevant and timely perspective (for the professional video industry) is embedded in the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) characteristics of networking; i.e., how the signals are impacted in a streaming-video vs. a file-based workflow.

Interested technical readers should read and understand such terminologies as RFC 3550 (the transport protocol for real-time applications) and RFC 4175 (the RTP payload format for uncompressed video)—both openly available and developed through the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).

SERVER PERFORMANCE

Servers bring with them their own set of latency and performance issues. Insufficient memory sizing; poorly managed caches or processor core(s) that cannot keep up with the signal throughput demands, which will result in a slowing of applications; signal throughput delays; or, in the worst case, computational errors, which hinder synchronization with the overall system’s demands.

Multicore servers available today have plenty of CPU power; yet getting that power to or from the network may be an issue. Network interface cards (NIC) and host bus adaptors (HBA) can be a server bottleneck if not properly configured, specified or implemented.

Traditionally these I/O components were locked to a single core processor. However, by using other resources, such as hypervisors and resource-side scaling (RSS), performance is increased by allowing the interface cards to distribute the I/O processing across multiple processor cores.

Another server virtualization technique deals with sorting the I/O tasks to the right virtual machine. This technique involves what is referred to as “virtual machine device queuing.” This VMDQ technology is productized by vendors who make I/O and processor cards. It allows the Ethernet adaptor to communicate with established hypervisor products to group packets per the best needs of the VM they are intended to be directed to.

STORAGE SYSTEMS

Storage solutions intended for media production have their own set of throughput, performance and latency issues, which are generated by varying factors. At the single disk root-level, and the most notable or easy to understand, are the impacts of “rotational latency” (sometimes called “rotational delay”), which is based in part on the rotational speed (RPM) of the drive.

This is a physical factor prevalent in every spinning magnetic disk or optical disc drive medium. Rotational latency is measured as the time that it takes the data on the drive platter in a sector to be positioned beneath the head for the read (or the write) process. The worst-case time-period number is found when the drive data has just passed the head, and the command to retrieve that data can only be met when the drive needs to complete a full revolution before being properly positioned to read that data.

Other factors include “seek time,” the time for the actuator arm to travel to the proper track on the drive; and “access time,” also called “response time,” the time it takes for a drive to transfer the data from the specified track to the drive electronics.

These factors are cumulative and affect performance, but in recent times we’ve seen additives to the storage mix that help alleviate performance-latency issues.

Solid-state devices, as complete replacements for HDDs or as supplemental caches for HDDs, help manage performance issues by (in the latter case) putting frequently accessed data into SSD caches. Here, routine calls for operational data or system metadata are stored in SSD devices, so accessing the HDD is reduced, improving efficiencies.

When editing applications know that they will frequently be playing a clip from the primary timeline, the well-designed app often instructs storage management to put that data into SSD. Timeline performance is improved and latency is decreased because the SSD has a significantly faster access time than does the HDD.

EVALUATING AND MATCHING

Storage systems should be demonstrated per the user’s specific implementations. For example, a NAS system designed specifically for media and entertainment will employ characteristics that can’t be met by other non-M&E storage solutions. One known evaluation test used in storage demos is to compare the load time of a set of files from a central storage array to the active NAS used in editorial or shared collaborative production.

Another is to check the ability to accurately scrub the video and audio in a high-resolution file (e.g., a 4K full-resolution sequence) and see how closely and smoothly the audio tracks the video.

Significant differences can be achieved by marrying the appropriate operating system (OS) to the file system, which traditionally have separate roles. When the file system is aware of the underlying disk structure, values are added.

In the past, file systems were traditionally created only on a single disk at a time. When two (non-RAIDed) disks were employed, two separate file systems would be created.

In a RAID configuration, this situation is avoided because the OS looks at only a single “logical disk,” which is likely comprised of many physical disks, on top of which the operating system places a file system.

In software RAID, the file system living on top of the RAID transform sees it is dealing with only a single drive. The implementation reduces read/write process complexities and hence improves performance. One pertinent example is ZFS (originally developed by Sun Microsystems, now Oracle), which is conceived of a combination volume-manager and file system. The concept allows the creation of many file systems that share a common pool of available storage. The storage system could be grown automatically because the file system is aware of the physical disk layout. This permits existing file systems to be grown automatically when additional disks are added to the pool. The new volume-space is then made available to every one of the file systems.

STORAGE IMPROVEMENTS

The evolution of storage “additives” is what storage vendors and solutions providers continually do to “build a better mouse trap,” as the colloquial saying goes. Users will inevitably keep changing their storage solutions because the improvements make consequential differences in their workflows. Pooling resources and using a storage manager product to relegate where that storage is used in the enterprise is just another way to extend the usefulness of legacy and in service storage.

Karl Paulsen is CTO at Diversified (www.diversifiedus.com) and a SMPTE Fellow. Read more about this and other storage topics in his book “Moving Media Storage Technologies.” Contact Karl atkpaulsen@diversifiedus.com.