The video viewing landscape is broader than ever, and is constantly shifting under the feet of content developers and providers. This session will discuss major trends in video viewing, including pay TV subscribership, OTT services, TV Everywhere, multitasking, content discovery and device viewing. Learn about new topic areas, like measuring the impact of "skinny bundles" and "virtual MVPDs," that have the potential to shake-up the TV industry. In the session, experts in video content and distribution will discuss detailed data from Altman Vilandrie & Company's latest survey of U.S. consumer video viewing habits and debate the current state of video – and where it's going in the future.

This session discusses how analytics tools can be used to produce more engaging video content. Learn the metrics content owners use to identify if content is sufficiently engaging an audience and how insights gathered impacts content owners creation and acquisition strategies. The session also covers what efforts are being made to personalize experiences, reviewing the tactics used to create segmented user groups and target individual users. Speakers have an open discussion about the gaps that must be bridged on the technology side to do better content personalization, prediction and the positive impact to content publishers.

This presentation will discuss best practices for implementing a live and synchronized OTT service that enables live OTT streams to be synced to different mobile devices as well as synced and harmonized  with regular linear broadcast TV. Learn how a synced live OTT service can open up new business models for content owners and right's holders, and how this complements a rights holders’ existing business. See examples of how a synchronized live OTT service can be used to greatly enhance viewer experiences, either as a stand-alone service or in combination with regular broadcast television.

Video content has seen significant improvement by the introduction of UHD video, high frame rate and high dynamic range. This presentation will showcase the improvements these features add to the video watching experience. It will also cover the video encoding techniques (encoding standards, bitrates and encoding parameters) used today to deliver high bitrate demanding video to the end consumer and challengers this process faces. Finally it will go through some recommendations for the encoding stage for both VOD and live streaming applications.

As the content ecosystem prepares for HDR, 4K/UHD, and even 8K at scale in an on-demand, any device world, the risk of high-quality pirated content rises in tandem, putting the evolving business models and infrastructure investments at immediate risk. Forensic watermarking is positioned as a requirement in Movielabs' Enhanced Content Protection Guidelines to mitigate the ravaging effects of un-monetized distribution. However, getting the technology widely deployed is challenging due to misaligned priorities among the many players in the value chain who must implement or enable the technology and related services and policies. On this panel, we bring together key experts from leading companies in the forensic watermarking ecosystem to discuss the technical, business and practical challenges of implementing such a system at scale.

Providing a good experience is key when providing millions of live video streams to tens of millions of viewers. This session dives into the technology needed to deliver an industry-leading live streaming experience on Periscope. Learn how Periscope, Twitter’s live broadcasting platform and the first to popularize live streaming, recently partnered with OpenTelly to improve its viewer experience through a series of technology migrations. Attendees will hear how Periscope improved the experience delivered to its viewers by migrating to HTML5 and low latency HLS.

As the OTT market continues to experience dramatic growth, it’s also become incredibly crowded and competitive. Content owners are under more pressure than ever to get to market quickly and having the right business model is crucial. This session will discuss the different strategies for going OTT; a templated, turnkey service that enables faster time-to-market or a more customized, highly differentiated offering and the pros and cons of each. Speakers will deliberate on how to best address the growing challenge of device fragmentation in an increasingly complex OTT ecosystem and how content owners are successfully monetizing content via advertising or subscription models.

Streaming continues its rapid evolution, moving away from proprietary core technologies and towards open standards. Which leading-edge technologies (H.265, VP9, AOMedia Video, WebM, DASH, fMP4 HLS, CMAF, HTML5 & WebRTC) should you be adopting to future-proof your streaming deployments so you reach your targeted devices and deliver a great user experience? We’ll look at the royalty-laden HEVC vs. royalty-free VP9 vs. the new open-source AOMedia Video for streaming with MPEG-DASH. Which will win out in the end? How will Apple’s adoption of fragmented MP4 for HLS impact DASH adoption? Will the death of browser plug-ins finally herald the age of HTML5 video streaming, and how does WebRTC fit in? Our panel will dive into these and other questions, helping you decipher which technologies are here to stay, and which should be forgotten.

The way that people watch television is changing. As the broadcast industry gradually transitions to IP and consumers adopt more online video, it’s clear that a transformation is underway. But what will TV look like in 5 years? This session explores the future of television and how the gradual, generational shift from linear broadcast to online will fundamentally change not only consumption but the underlying business models as well. Attendees learn about the long-term vision for the television experience and how they can prepare (and plan) to take advantage of the evolution in video consumption that is happening today.

This presentation will focus on best practices around reliable live streaming of critical, high importance global events with multiple redundant signal pathways. Learn how to overcome challenging on-site environments like flakey internet, failing encoders, faulty cables and failing CDNs. Learn some best practice tips covering the gamut of on-site challenges (cameras, switchers, signal paths, ingest/uplink) to reliable end-user playback (transcoding/transmuxing, reliable playback engines, CDN selection). Find out how you can implement backups and redundancy at every possible level of your live workflow. The presenters will also cover best practices (and caveats) around successful leveraging Facebook Live - Facebook's native new entry into the live streaming category that is gaining enormous traction and engagement right now. Learn from our experiences (and the odd failure) to make sure your next event is a resounding success.

Building a great Roku channel has never been easier. In this session, Roku will unveil new methods to quickly publish on the Roku platform and monetize with video advertising. The presenter will discuss these new tools and some of the ways that developers and content creators can build their audiences on the Roku platform.

Today there’s a huge range of different devices, platforms and environments on which users want to watch videos. Therefore it’s important to use a technology and a streaming standard which fits for all devices. HTML5 is now replacing Flash. But there are problems and challenges especially when it comes to playback of DRM protected content. Stefan Lederer will present solutions that enable browsers to deliver adaptive streaming and DRM without plug-ins.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Bitmovin branded t-shirt

Discover how ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and the Rio Olympics used 360º streaming technologies, like the Teradek Sphere, to provide their viewers with unique second screen content. Join us to learn all about real-time stitching, proper rigging, and network management for 360º productions.

Tastemade is a video network built for the mobile generation that enables people to come together to discover and share their passion for great food and travel. In this case study presentation, Tastemade will outline how they went from using YouTube as their primary distribution source to building their own global video platform and applications, which connect with over 100M monthly users around the globe.

Server Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) is an excellent path for content providers and distributors to a better user experience, higher overall video consumption, and providing less obtrusive ad delivery. This presentation will explain the differences between SSAI and Client Side Ad Insertion. Learn how SSAI works, its limitations, architecture readiness for migration, ad preparation considerations and possible changes to existing workflows. This presentation will also cover planning for target devices, platforms and video delivery methods and will highlight real-world use cases.

Live video is a key tool to engage with audiences and Facebook is poised to help you get the right people viewing your stream, interact with your content AND measure results. But there are two key things you need to stand out and be successful. This session will cover what they are and share how other Facebook Live customers are doing it right now.

This session will highlight today’s OTT ecosystem and explore why publishers need a holistic view of consumers’ Quality of Experience (QoE) in today’s open and unpredictable internet environment; discuss why consolidation is becoming necessary for many businesses to remain competitive in the evolving content delivery ecosystem, highlighting the growing trend of quadplay providers; and examine how companies are using data to adapt to the changing entertainment landscape.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Apple TV ($199 value)

During this session, leading content owners and distributors will join top technology companies to examine the elements essential to making VR not just a reality but also a viable business opportunity. The expert panel will define VR video and discuss the workflow required to deliver a high-quality VR experience. Considering audio, video and CGI, the group will cover capture and production, processing, delivery and consumption. The session also will address the importance of standards in scaling the VR business, current technical challenges, and how the industry can address those challenges via more concerted efforts - such as those undertaken in the past by the DASH Industry Forum and the Ultra HD Forum - to drive the technology forward.

This session will explore why publishers need a holistic view of consumers' Quality of Experience (QoE) in today’s open and unpredictable Internet environment. Learn how companies are using data to adapt to the changing entertainment landscape and how correlations can be made across the video delivery spectrum to understand the impact of experience as it pertains to the engagement of your audience. In this session, you'll hear from leading OTT providers, about the holistic and comprehensive picture QoE data provides that enables their services to ensure successful video delivery, engaged audiences, and exceptional viewer experiences.

A lot of recent changes are going on in the area of online streaming formats. Apple announced at WWDC 2016 the support of fragmented MP4, a key feature of CMAF, and others have demonstrated its usage on all major browser platforms. Video players now support HLS in HTML5 via re-multiplexing in JavaScript, so that HLS can be played using the HTML Media Source Extensions. In parallel, MPEG-DASH got a lot of traction for DRM-protected premium content, as all major Web browsers support now the HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions. This panel will provide an overview about MPEG-CMAF, and discuss whether it is an opportunity to actually harmonize deployments that currently have to support both (and separate from each) DASH and HLS. Finally, we will also discuss potential threats on existing deployments having its clear focus on MPEG-DASH and DASH-IF.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of how modern video players work, what broadcasters should look for depending on their technical and business goals, and different open-source tools that are available. It will discuss compatible formats, codecs and supported DRMs, user performance, the ability of each media engine to handle edge cases, and the performance of the ABR algorithms. At the end of the presentation, broadcasters will better understand what tools are right for their needs and be able to evaluate the pros and cons of each solution available.

Check back soon for details regarding this Discovery Track session.

In this session you will learn how easy it can be to create and customize your offer and then build native applications for deployment on all app stores for personal devices, streaming players, smart TVs, and games platforms with Cisco’s cloud-hosted Infinite Video Platform.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Beats SOLO2 wireless headphones ($200 value)

Virtual Reality (VR) and 360-degree are emerging as two of the most innovative live streaming trends, powering events such as sporting events, concerts, corporate meetings, education, medicine, military applications, and many other areas. In this interactive session, you’ll get to try live demos and get more familiar with the technology as we walk through some common 360-degree live streaming workflows, including the Lollapalooza Berlin 2015 music festival that allowed virtual attendees to attend the live concert series and be immersed with the band on stage. Most VR technologies use industry-standard streaming protocols that can be implemented with common streaming servers and platforms. We’ll show a few examples of 360-degree camera examples, and also review how playback is achieved using common player apps.