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.

The 2025 Streaming Media All-Stars

After a 12-year hiatus, Streaming Media is bringing back the Streaming Media All-Stars for 2025 to pay tribute to a select group of key technology innovators who are driving and disrupting the streaming industry.

The State of Generative AI 2025

Can generative AI (gen AI) rip things apart and then try to glue it all back together with more insight, more intelligence, more efficiency, and more value? It really depends on what the application is. Within the video workflow, some tasks are good matches for using gen AI, and others aren't.

Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business

Old Hollywood got Wall Street's memo: "Do whatever it takes to do what Netflix is do­ing." And finally, the studios have begun making money from streaming. With the exception of NBCUniversal, the biggest leg­acy media companies all reported a profit from their direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses in Q3 2024. They got there by variously writing down or shedding ca­ble assets, slashing jobs, hiking prices, policing pass­word-sharing, improving bundled offerings, and put­ting the full focus of their business strategy into online.

Buyers' Guide: Hardware Transcoders

Although software transcoding is accept­able for transcoding most VOD streams and even low-volume live programming, most high-volume live applications need hardware for efficient transcoding, both to save you money and to save the planet. This buyers' guide will cover: What hardware transcoders are, what you need to bring to the table to identify the best hardware transcoder, factors to consider when choosing one, choosing a hardware transcoder for cloud workflows, and choosing a hardware transcoder for on-prem workflows.

The State of the Video Codec Market 2025

HEVC rode the 4K/HDR wave to success, but AV1, VVC, and LCEVC lack an equivalent killer app. With CDNs racing to the bottom on pricing and new royalty pools threatening to increase costs, codec adoption is no longer just about technical merit—it's about survival. These are the issues I'll explore in this article.

All-in-One (AIO) Production Tablet Live-Streaming Devices

This article focuses on AIO tablets for live production and streaming—devices so little that you really can put the smallest of them in your back pocket. The larger ones will travel well in a jacket pocket. The only thing they don't include is the cameras.

Streamticker: The Biggest Streaming Mergers and Acquisitions of 2024

The 2024 edition of Streamticker, recapping the streaming industry's most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2023, kicked off with Disney's gobbling up the last extant portions of Hulu, as Comcast ceded its re­maining 33% stake. But if the late-2023 deal marked only the quiet conclusion of an already-silent part­nership, the much noisier news of Jan. 6, 2025, found Disney absorbing sports-centric streamer Fubo and merging it with Hulu Live + TV. Here we'll review this and other done (or more nearly done) M&A deals that reshuffled the stream­ing industry in 2024.

The State of Streaming Sustainability 2025

In this article, I'm going to look at a few of the un­derlying issues facing the industry when it comes to sustainability, starting with one of the biggest pow­er consumption challenges of our generation: the explosion in data center growth.

Buyers' Guide: Third-Party Commercial Streaming Codecs

For some streamers, open-source solutions meet all their needs. For others, commercial codecs deliver efficiency and optimizations that justify the cost. This article explores the factors that influence those decisions.

Cloud Control: How to Meet the Challenges of Cloud Migration and Operation

COVID accelerated the push to IP-based streaming workflows for many companies, proving that live streaming at scale via the cloud was possible, although not always in tip-top form. Live streaming has been something we've been covering since this publication started, but here we are looking at content that has traditionally been delivered via production trucks, satellites, and a lot of on-prem resources.

How to Monetize Interactive Live Sports Streaming with Real-Time SSAI

Interactivity revenue generator Play Anywhere and ultra-low-latency live streaming platform Phenix Real Time Solutions partner for real-time SSAI at scale

Review: Magewell Director Mini 3.0

All-in-One (AIO) live production devices leverage the latest mobile CPU and GPU power and integrated capability, with real hardware connections for multiple HDMI ports, ethernet, headphones, audio input, and more—all from one manufacturer so there's just one update cycle to track. Magewell recently came out with the 3.0 update to their Director Mini AIO production tablet (Figure 1), and they are pushing the envelope with what these little powerhouses can do.

SiriusXM EVP and CPO Joe Inzerillo Talks Satellite and Streaming Delivery and Personalization

SiriusXM EVP and chief product and technology officer Joe Inzerillo is probably the first streaming pro I've interviewed who also has building satellites in his job description. Inzerillo spent 16 years as a streaming CTO with MLB Advanced Media, BAMTECH Media, and Disney Streaming before crossing over to satellite radio with SiriusXM in 2022. If you're not a SiriusXM listener, you might know the company through its other audio service, Pandora. Either way, its media business gets 80% of its revenue from subscriptions on top of an extremely low churn rate, and we're here to talk tech.

Media Over QUIC and the Future of High-Quality, Low-Latency Streaming

Media Over QUIC aspires to streamline the entire streaming process by bringing both contribution and distribution into a single protocol again, reducing the need for intermediary transformations. Since MoQ is still in the early stages of development, it will take some time to see it deliver on this promise.

The 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! We've counted all of the votes in the 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards, and—drumroll, please—it is now my pleasure and sworn duty to present winners and runners-up in each of our 17 categories.

Q&A: Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft’s Worldwide Media and Entertainment Strategy Director, Talks Gen AI

In this expansive interview with Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft's worldwide media and entertainment strategy director, we discuss how Microsoft customers are leveraging generative AI in all stages of the streaming workflow and how they're using it in content delivery and to enhance user experiences in a range of use cases. Crownshaw also digs deep into how Microsoft is building asset management architecture and the critical role metadata plays in effective large-language models (LLMs), maximizing the value of available data.

The Generative AI Industrial Revolution

Generative AI may prove even more divisive to society than the Indus­trial Revolution. There are many questions well worth examining re­garding gen AI's impact on the streaming in­dustry, the media and entertainment world, and more. In this article, I'm going to focus on a few streaming use cases in the hope of pro­viding a broader perspective on the changes happening in our world now and those we can expect going forward.

Presenting the 2024 Streaming Media 100

Here we reveal the 2024 Streaming Media 100, our list of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the Streaming Media Europe 51, which recognizes Europe's key streaming innovators, exemplars, and disruptors.

Tutorial: How to Nail Your First LinkedIn Live Event

If you make it to the end, you'll learn why it's so hard to start your LinkedIn Live event smoothly (it's not your fault) and some thoughts on how to start like a pro in the future.