The direct-to-consumer revolution is not only transforming the consumer experience, but it’s also transforming how content is backhauled. The rapid expansion of high-definition video and livestreaming adds to the challenge of that transition. As such, more of an emphasis will be placed on producing anywhere and lowering latency in 2024. 

The Complexity of Multicloud Environments
Cloud adoption had already been steadily climbing in the decade leading up to 2020, but during the lockdown it skyrocketed, owing in no small part to the need for remote collaboration across the media and entertainment supply chain. The benefits include tremendous flexibility, accessibility, processing power, affordable storage, and efficient collaboration on the production side, from editing to sound to animation. The advantages are great, which is why we’ll certainly see continued growth in cloud adoption in 2024, but there are associated challenges. 

The architectural complexity of multicloud environments is hard to manage. Engineers can more easily familiarize themselves with a single cloud environment, which is simpler to mold to the needs of an organization. The more technologies are incorporated, the more of an undertaking implementation becomes, leading to delays, increased costs and more troubleshooting. 

Additionally, managing a growing roster of SaaS providers has become more of a burden. As such, companies will increasingly look to partners that can offer multiple solutions on one platform as a way to reduce costs, boost productivity and streamline operations. 

The explosion of FAST Channels, IP delivery, OTT and other bandwidth-intensive advancements only complicates matters further. As a result, companies will increasingly invest in technologies and solutions that will help address those capacity challenges. Edge technology, for example, enables organizations to process and analyze data much faster, while potentially bolstering security by reducing the distance that data travels from the production to the end consumer. 

The Cybersecurity Challenge of a Decentralized Supply Chain
In 2017, hackers obtained the files of the yet-to-be-released fifth season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black. Even though Netflix refused to comply with the ransom, the PR fiasco served as a reminder for the media and entertainment industry: Your cybersecurity is only as strong as your weakest link. 

In this case Netflix felt the experience they already provided consumers was better than what any hacker could provide. As details emerged hackers didn’t steal the files directly from Netflix. They stole it from a post-production company working on Netflix’s signature series.

The decentralized nature of the media and entertainment industry means that exposure is often interconnected. Media and entertainment companies engage with a wide variety of third-party providers, particularly on big productions, which can include special effects, animation, sound, graphics, so on and so forth. 

With so much data and intellectual property outsourced across a constellation of players, which may include smaller production studios, freelancers and other contractors, it can be difficult limiting the number of people who have access to business-critical information. Some vendors may be specialty studios that lack the resources for dedicated security personnel, which could effectively serve as a backdoor for hackers to obtain valuable data that wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get. 

The In-venue Use Case
With more valuable content on the cloud, therefore, the need for robust cybersecurity solutions has emerged as a priority for the industry—a trend that will only accelerate in the following year. While investing in threat detection and perimeter security solutions goes a long way toward mitigating risk, how these organizations structure their networks will have a big impact on security. Consider the in-venue example. 

Historically, venues have posed challenges both for venue operators and consumers with regard to internet access. Anyone who’s been to a large sporting event or concert, for example, can testify to the difficulty of accessing the internet. There’s just too many people trying to gain access at the same time—and often with highly bandwidth-intensive activities like livestreaming. Couple that with high-resolution video, interactive experiences, and broadcasting and/or livestreaming production setups on the venue side, and the bandwidth demands skyrocket. 

As a result, more and more venue operators are investing in private networks, which deliver greater capacity, speed and security. Connecting a MEC solution to the private 5G network can accommodate applications with a requirement for ultra-low latency and can provide greater support for differentiated experiences, onsite analytics and AI applications. 

Controlling data and IP in 2024
This year, media and entertainment companies will continue to invest in IP connectivity, cloud, Edge and private network solutions. They’ll continue to invest in 5G because it provides the capacity they need to process and analyze large amounts of data. Investing in capacity and speed leads to more responsive systems and applications.

Keeping more data onsite and on the Edge generally helps reduce the security risk. Media and entertainment companies will seek tighter control of their network in the face of continuing threats and industry flux.

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. 

Gamification is changing the rules of the game for live sports, and this is the right time for media companies and sports organizations to take notice. Gamification brings greater fan engagement and more at-scale monetization opportunities that industry players need to notice. 

Scale for live video means the number of feeds for any given event. So far, latency between the venue where the live sports takes place and the device where fans are watching the game has averaged around 30-40 seconds. 

Therefore, live content hits the consumer platform 30-40 seconds too late, severely damaging the opportunities to create deep, meaningful, and lucrative fan engagement. Increased latency has resulted from existing complex cost-prohibitive workflows relying on the cloud to do the heavy-lifting when processing live feeds. 

Edge computing for live video changes all this removing the challenges of latency in live streaming by simplifying workflows and augmenting the cloud by adding powerful processing capabilities at the point of video origin.

Edge computing at the source of live video creates a unified experience for live sports fans and betters, enabling broadcasters and sports leagues to engage their audiences consistently at scale. Live sports consumption turns from passive to active, allowing media and sports organizations to unlock more scalable monetization opportunities.

Why At-scale Ultra-low Latency is Critical for Live Video Monetization and Viewer Engagement
Live video has exploded, with streaming audiences in the U.S expected to reach 158 million in 2022. Live sports is one of the leading sectors driving this growth on several platforms. Broadcasters and sports organizations need to take advantage of live video’s exponential growth to harness monetization opportunities.

Today, we are already seeing live video platforms deliver active viewer engagement instead of the more traditional ‘passive’ linear TV viewing experiences. Live social commentary, betting, and performance tracking are examples of deeper fan engagement available at scale.

Live streaming workflows need to change to deliver compelling live sports content. The current methods of sending a live video feed to the cloud for processing create workflow complexity that increases latency and costs and degrades the video quality. 

Ultra-low latency (ULL) is critical for sports gamification as any delays will result in poorer viewing delivery and limit the fan’s immersive experience. By overcoming the latency challenge, media and sports organizations can engage fans and encourage monetization through sports gamification at-scale.

Edge Computing: Augmenting Cloud Capabilities and Driving Monetization
Research has shown that in 2022 197 million US adults will watch content on a second device while watching a digital video or traditional TV. A second screen is becoming an essential source of personalized content for audiences that can consume content on the platform they want—often in conjunction with a linear program. It creates an excellent opportunity to pioneer secondary, often lightly-produced, content, including different camera feeds or commentary options typically accompanied by on-screen statistics and graphics. These complementary options enable viewers to have a gamification experience, providing an extra layer of game insight and data analytics.  

But for this to happen, media companies need to ensure the live content reaches consumers with ultra-low latency. A video edge computing platform can revolutionize live streaming workflows, putting advanced compute capabilities and processing power on-premise, right at the source of the video, instead of relying on the cloud to do the heavy lifting. 

Changing how we package live video feeds to bypass or augment cloud functions can enable direct output of HLS and DASH in a low-latency format. The feeds can then be pushed into the CDN and delivered to viewers worldwide. These scalable workflows can be simultaneously adapted to HTTP, SRT, or WebRTC, providing the same ULL. 

A video edge computing platform also addresses the OPEX challenge, shaking up the economics of the cloud. By optimizing their dependence on the cloud, media companies can perform and complete critical processing tasks on-premise in a standards-based streaming environment. 

In addition, organizations can take advantage of edge computing’s scalability and build and deploy the functions they require —  customizing their platform to meet their business needs today and in the future. Workflows become simplified as the steps to send feeds to and from the cloud are removed from the delivery chain. 

Depending on the use case, this reduces latency dramatically to less than 3 seconds or even sub-seconds. Let’s take the example of Web RTC. Bypassing the cloud directly to a Web RTC Gateway can bring latency down to sub 1 second. Audiences get an experience of improved quality, less latency, and a unified experience across various platforms at scale. In today’s ever-competitive market, this can give video producers a much-needed edge as it delivers the fan the experience they want in a scalable and unique way. 

Harnessing Gamification and Fan Engagement with Edge Computing for Live Video
Gamification is changing how we consume live sports and opens a host of monetization opportunities for media and sports organizations — provided they resolve the critical latency challenge and achieve real-time content delivery.

A video edge computing platform revolutionizes live streaming workflows by creating powerful computing and processing capabilities on-premise, at the source of live video. Therefore, an encoder no longer needs to send live feeds to the cloud for processing before reaching a CDN. The live video delivery chain becomes shorter, simpler, and more efficient. Media companies optimize costs and deliver content to the consumer with ULL creating consistent fan engagement — and scalable monetization doors open up for live sports gamification.

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what gamification and consistent fan engagement can bring to the media and broadcasting industries. As the growth of live video explodes, a video edge computing platform that delivers at scale changes the realm of possibilities for media and sports organizations, bringing new viewing and at-scale monetization opportunities that we can’t afford to miss.

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby Laboratories has acquired Millicast, a developer platform providing ultra-low latency video streaming capabilities at scale to massive audiences. Financial details of the transaction were not immediately available.

With Millicast, developers can stream the interactive events they build with Dolby.io, such as conferences and concerts, to audiences of more than 60,000 people with delays of less than 500ms, Dolby said.

The Millicast engineering team, which has developed standards such as WHIP, will bolster the WebRTC engineering expertise of Dolby.io. WHIP enables WebRTC interoperability, the company said.

"There is a growing demand to make online events as lifelike and compelling as being there in person," said Marie Huwe, senior vice president at Dolby.io. "We are thrilled to welcome the Millicast team to Dolby. Together, we expand the Dolby.io platform to make it even easier for developers and businesses to stream real-time content and immersive, interactive experiences that look and sound incredible." 

Dolby.io is focused on helping developers and businesses offer audiovisual content and interactive social communications in their applications and services. The ability to scale quality to meet the demands of high-volume streaming for virtual events is critical to Dolby.io’s mission, it said. 

The acquisition of Millicast brings consistent, field-tested ultra-low-latency so that small and large audiences can have high-quality, interactive experiences, it said.

Sample code is available from Dolby.

More information is available on the company’s website.

PARIS, DENVER, SINGAPORE & SYDNEY—ATEME is now offering production-grade low-latency in pull mode for both HLS and DASH with its NEA-Live Just-in-Time (JIT) packager. This is the first low-latency JIT packager to hit the market, according to ATEME.

The updates to NEA-Live will allow streaming service providers to deliver live streaming content in low-latency mode while using JIT packaging in pull mode, where only the format needed for the requesting device is created and delivered. Users can also use the same workflow for more typical OTT services, including time-shifted TV, start-over capabilities and VOD on any device.

With content being packaged just in required formats, both processing and storage requirements are reduced. This allows for the use of fewer servers and lower energy consumption, ATEME says.

“The low latency provided by NEA-Live allows OTT providers to offer audiences the quality of experience and services that they have come to expect from broadcast TV,” said Tanguy Person, NEA-Live product owner, ATEME. “This will help them to ensure that their offering stands out from the crowd and allows them to better compete within the OTT landscape.”

For more information, visit www.ateme.com.  

Think of the major sporting events such as the Summer and Winter Games, the European and global football tournaments, Tour de France, or Ironman. Picture political events such as the G7 conferences, elections, inaugurations, or monumental historic events like the funerals of world leader Nelson Mandela and the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

What do these events all have in common? They are live and often bring together vast crowds of spectators and broadcasters in a relatively small space, all vying for network coverage. Indeed, when natural disasters such as tsunamis or floods strike, or in remote locations ravaged by war, there is likely to be limited connectivity.

During these events, broadcasters rely solely on their field crews to capture and deliver the highest quality of live content from these overcrowded or remote locations, sometimes against all odds. Their success depends on the ability of the field crew and their central production support to remain in constant, precisely-timed synchronization. But because the field crews are not in the broadcast studio, they don’t have access to all the tools, technology and resources the broadcast facility team offers.

Field broadcast crews are expected to deliver professional quality content that compliments the studio broadcast, but the on-location talent and camera operators can be disconnected from what's happening on the live program feed. This is a major issue, as they need to know what the shot looks like when they are on air in order to make real-time adjustments as necessary. It's often difficult to feed anything more than the IFB audio comms back to the field crew without a significant degree of latency—so this becomes an area for improvement.

This lack of real-time feedback causes many daily challenges for field production crews. Technology that simplifies return video and teleprompting is therefore crucial to modern-day field broadcasting. To create precisely-timed and captivating live content in the field, the studio production and remote teams need to be in sync, whether that be for talent cueing, production and confidence monitoring or accessing a teleprompter. Technology that creates a two-way dialogue and allows teams to access production information, simultaneously, with low latency, becomes essential.

How exactly does this help? For starters, graphical overlays can ruin a shot if for example, the graphics cover the talent or the background imagery contained in the live playout. A camera operator who doesn’t know what the graphics look like in the playout feed can’t adjust a shot to accommodate for that. When multiple cameras are involved with multiple viewpoints, it becomes even more complex: If a camera operator sees something unfolding in a sports event for example, they can't check if other operators are aware of the event and are providing alternative viewpoints of the action.

In a high-latency environment, teleprompter feeds are often sent as a one-way static feed that can't be adjusted by the studio, leaving field reporters with limited information and having to listen to audio instructions from the MCR when they should be focused on their on-air presence. This is another case where technology that provides dynamic and low-latency feedback is crucial.

CONFIDENT IN COMMUNICATING

Bidirectional communication also benefits from extremely low latency. Without it, field producers have little information about what their field crew is doing during a live broadcast. This drastically changes the quality of the live feed. Enabling field production monitoring helps crews view current playout and anticipate live reporting from field talent.

For multiple camera productions, such as live sport events, the MCR team can see which cameras are on air and provide more real-time instruction to the camera operators in the field, adding video to the traditional audio feed. For crews that create their own overlays in the field—storm chasers for example, where graphic overlays are generated in the van— return video means they can supervise their own real-time output, allowing them to adjust the graphical overlays and help the field camera operator to adjust their shot as well.

For field camera operators, a low-latency environment gives them the confidence to dynamically adjust their camera framing based on what they see on-air; thus taking into account the graphic overlays and split screens showing various interacting reporters. It empowers them to deliver the most accurately framed shot they can possibly achieve during a live playout. This is particularly relevant for weather updates, where broadcasters want to ensure that shots include not only the on-screen talent, but what is happening behind them such as a tornado or a hurricane. In this situation, it would be unfortunate for a graphic to cover the very thing the audience has tuned in to see!

Low latency also makes near real-time visual talent cueing and teleprompter feeds a reality. Visual cueing offers real-time visual feedback of how they look on-air: Are their clothes straight, do they need to look more engaged, are they standing in the right place? It also lets them see their counterpart in the studio, or their counterparts in other remote locations, so they can have a genuine interaction with their colleagues during significant live events. When researchers and script writers send updates to the teleprompter feeds in near real-time, low latency is really critical. This allows the on-screen talent to read updated text as it flows, ensuring the audience is receiving the most up to date information.

In conclusion, to create precisely-timed and captivating live content in the field, central production and remote crews need to be in sync. Whether that be for talent cueing, production and confidence monitoring or accessing a teleprompter, extremely low-latency is essential to achieving this.

Dejero's CuePoint creates a two-way dialogue and allows teams to access production information simultaneously, with low latency. CuePoint servers can also send a signal to up to eight devices, including phones and tablets, so field crews are not only reliant on expensive production equipment to deliver these feeds.

CuePoint's ability to deliver return feeds at very low latency is what really makes this system interesting. Users can scale the number of return feeds needed in the field because the high-performance server delivers return feeds with as little as 250ms of latency, so that field crews can collaborate with resources from the broadcast center in real-time.

Yvonne Monterroso is director, product management at Dejero.

OYSTER BAY, N.Y.—The spinning wheel when a video is buffering or hearing neighbors cheer a big play while viewers try to live stream sports is one of the top concerns for the growing streaming market, making low latency solutions a need, according to ABI Research.

A new study from ABI forecasts that by 2024 there will be 91 million subscribers that utilize live video streaming. Latency issues have the ability to negatively impact a viewer’s experience streaming content.

ABI states that typical latency for HTTP streaming is 40 seconds, while broadcast latency is about 5 seconds. Especially in sports, that time difference can have a major impact.

“Many cord-cutters are still willing to get live streaming for sports programs. However, high delay compared to traditional broadcast sources can prevent many consumers from accessing live streaming,” said Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst at ABI.

Latency issues do not just impact the time-delay in watching sports, but also issues of buffering for other video content. ABI references multiple studies that show viewers stop watching live streams as they experience buffering issues. So, as a number of new streaming services enter the market, they are finding it important to support low latency streaming.

Other areas consumers don’t want to experience latency issues include eSports streaming, online betting and online auctions.

ABI notes that there are many different ways to support low latency, like encoding, CDN optimization or video playback optimization, but businesses must select the best fit for them.

“When the evaluation between video qualities, deployment cost and business cases are done properly for low latency streaming solution deployment, service providers can offer a high-quality streaming service and improve churn and revenue,” said Lynn.

More information is available in ABI’s full “Low and Ultra-Low Latency Video” report.