The State of AI In Live Streaming

As with all streaming workflows, AI has steadily crept into the live streaming technology stack. In some cases, the impact is incremental, in others, profound. From production to monetization, here's a quick overview of where AI has become relevant for live event producers and engineers, and some areas where, surprisingly, it hasn't.

The State of Streaming Sustainability 2026

Is it still fashionable to be sustainable, even with AI?

Streaming Year in Review 2026

Two stories dominated streaming media in 2025: Netflix versus the rest and YouTube takes TV. YouTube may be the bigger story.

The State of Live Sports Streaming 2026

One streaming platform's increasing appetite for live events combined with titanic global reach means that it will dominate discussion in 2026—and it's not necessarily Netflix.

The State of Streaming Codecs 2026

Streaming codec adoption used to be an engineering abstraction governed by RD curves, BD-rate tables, and roadmap slides that no one outside of R&D ever considered. Over the last 15 months, codec adoption decisions have morphed into a much broader discussion, involving C-level execs from finance and legal. While the precursors to this transition occurred pre-2025, the situation coalesced in 2025. During the same period, we saw one codec step to the front (AV1) and another shrink before our eyes (VVC).

Streaming the Universe: A Q&A with GM & Head of NASA+ Rebecca Sirmons

After launching on Nov 8, 2023, and the sunsetting of NASA TV (NASA's linear channel) in August 2024, NASA+ has become the official destination for all NASA content, whether you are watching on Amazon Prime, Netflix or NASA's website, and app. Currently, NASA is planning to stream the first crewed launch to the Moon in over 50 years, Artemis II (estimated viewership 25M) and will become the world's largest live streaming event, the next moon landing on Artemis III (estimated viewership 250M). In this Q&A, I spoke with General Manager and Head of NASA+ Rebecca Sirmons about how her team built NASA+ and the infrastructure, gear, ops, and workflows that launch live streams at this massive scope and scale.

Losing the Feed, but Owning the Story

For decades, broadcasters were the heartbeat of live sports. They owned the feed, shaped the story, and set the standard. But today, that control is slipping, not because audiences have abandoned them, but because the definition of "live" has changed.

5G Without the Hype: Taking Control of Live Sports Production

For years, 5G has been sold as the technology that would transform live broadcasting. Network slicing, guaranteed quality of service, zero latency—all promised, few delivered. What's really changing the game now isn't another operator trial. It's private 5G, giving broadcasters the ability to design, deploy, and control the network themselves.

AI's Streaming Stack: Meet the Media Workflows

How has AI entered the media workflow? For this new column, we'll look at different applications used in the media industry. For this issue, we'll start with asset management, asset storefronts, and localization. While some of this functionality—speech-to-text transcription, translation, voice synthesis, natural language processing, logo detection, facial recognition, and object detection—has been around for a while, the biggest improvement is that much of it is now available on workflows with live content.

Presenting… The 2025 Streaming Media Top 100

Here we reveal the 2025 Streaming Media Top 100, our list (appropriately enough) of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the 2025 Streaming Media Europe 51, which acclaims Europe's key streaming innovators and high achievers.

Review: Media Excel HERO 6000

This review will highlight Media Excel's HERO 6000 and walk readers through the process of configuring streaming using the HERO platform. You'll learn how to deliver live streams, create encoding presets, add audio presets, create channels, and add outputs for playback. The article will also cover how to add roles and play streams.

The Multiview Imperative: How Technical Architecture Determines Streaming Success

The largely unsung hero in YouTube's growth may be a feature that cost the company 99% less to implement than Sunday Ticket: multiview streaming capability. As this article shows, if you're broadcasting sports, multiview--particularly Build Your Own Multiview (BYOMV)--is quickly becoming an expected feature among sophisticated viewers. It's also one of the most affordable and effective ways to amplify the value of your programming, particularly when your content isn't exclusive and faces direct competition in the same market.

Industry Champions Revealed: The 2025 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! Here we present 19 top tech solutions of 2025, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media .

AWS GM of M&E Samira Panah Bakhtiar Talks Gen AI and Interactive Sports Streaming

In this Q&A, Samira Panah Bakhtiar, Amazon Web Services (AWS) general manager of me­­dia, entertainment, games, and sports, talks about how AWS and agentic AI are changing the ways streaming workflows are executed. In her interview, she spoke both to the business side of the house and the underlying tech.

Review: YoloLiv YoloBox Extreme

YoloBox, an Android-based tablet with live production software and hardware-based connectivity, marries the capabilities of software, the I/O of hardware, and the portability of a tablet. The all-in-one tablet-based streaming solution market also has entries from Magewell (Director and Director One) and Cinetreak. YoloLiv is not only the pioneer in this segment; it also offers the most diverse solutions, from the single-input Mini to the new device I'll be looking at here, the eight-input Extreme.

How the Gen Z Playbook Is Reshaping Next-Gen Sports Streaming

Going 'round the horn with a handful of strategically positioned industry players reveals a range of emerging strategies in play for attracting and holding the interest of Gen Z sports fans, including building interactive experiences, emphasizing player-centric fandom, and embracing gaming and social media-based fan communities.

Q&A: Globo Director of Product & Engineering Igor Maciel Macaubas Talks Content Delivery, Discovery, and Build vs. Buy

In this wide-ranging conversation with Globo Director of Product & Engineering for Digital Products Igor Maciel Macaubas, we discussed Grupo Globo digital products that deliver content at scale monthly to 90 million unique Brazilian viewers.

Producing Seamless Multi-Lingual Live Streams: A Practical Guide for Independent Producers

In this article, I'll walk you through a practical workflow for producing multilingual live streams with real-time translation—a solution that's often simpler than managing a complex hybrid event.

Maximizing Content Value with Subtitles, Dubbing, and Localization

AI-driven dubbing has recently gained attention as major platforms like Amazon Prime Video and YouTube roll out new tools designed to expand their content's global reach. Amazon is testing AI-assisted dubbing on licensed content, while YouTube has introduced auto-dubbing for thousands of channels. Both efforts reflect a growing belief that dubbing can help platforms engage new audiences—but the results so far have been mixed.

Software Decoding and the Future of Mobile Video

If you'll be encoding with SVT-AV1 or VVC, in this article you'll learn a bit about how to optimize your encodes, particularly the trade-offs that pre­sets deliver, and how many logical processors to use. With SVT-AV1, I also explore the qual­ity and playback efficiency of the fast decode option, although I didn't find much to show for it. You can also peruse the FFmpeg command strings used for all encodes.