Built to Scale? Why Live Sports Need Multicast ABR and a Video-Specialized CDN

Live streaming is rapidly emerging as the primary destination for major sports events, but not without significant challenges. For sports streamers, three imperatives are emerging as critical priorities: scale more efficiently, reduce operational and environmental costs, and secure content against piracy. All while giving fans the high-quality experiences they demand from investing in multiple premium subscriptions.

No Second Chances: Why Streaming Providers Should Embrace a Unified Observability Approach to Avoid Costly Site Failures

When millions tune in for live events, just seconds of downtime can have irreversible costs. Here's how providers can build resilience into their tech stack.

Optimizing OTT Experiences: Five Streaming Strategies That Deliver Better QoE

This article explores practical, vendor-neutral strategies that OTT service providers can use to strengthen QoE across the entire delivery chain, from pre-delivery checks and multi-stage monitoring to client-side analytics and emerging innovations in automation and personalization.

Anatomy of a Low-Latency Origin Service

At the core of every streaming workflow is the origin server—the system that receives encoded video segments and playlist files from an encoder and makes them available to the distribution network. The origin acts as the authoritative source for the stream, ensuring that each request from a video player, whether for the latest HLS segment or an updated manifest, is served with accuracy and speed. Its performance directly impacts startup latency, playback stability, and the ability of a stream to scale to millions of concurrent viewers.

The Next Evolution in Streaming Depends on Distribution

In the modern streaming ecosystem, the content owner often must now deliver the content to numerous streaming platforms while modifying the content in each case to meet the tangled web of unique needs associated with distributing their content on each streaming platform. 

From Dish to Digital: How Standards and Smart Protocols Are Powering IP distribution

IP-based infrastructure is becoming the backbone of next-generation media operations. It's reshaping how broadcasters think about scale, flexibility, and cost, moving away from more constrained satellite models toward smarter, agile, software-defined workflows built on interoperable standards.

Three Emerging Forces That Will Reshape the Content Delivery Space

The content delivery world is getting more complex. The traditional CDN model has splintered, the need for vendor diversity is rising, and user expectations keep inching upward. But it's not all friction. Several emerging technologies and standards are poised to meaningfully improve Quality of Experience (QoE)—not just in a piecemeal way, but across the entire delivery path. Here's a closer look at three forces that will reshape the future of content delivery.

Streaming Platforms and CDNs: Time for Disruption

CDNs are clearly strategic partners for content streamers, yet content delivery is often viewed as a commodity service. This has resulted in massive turmoil within the CDN industry. Several CDNs have already collapsed under the pressure or simply left the market. Other CDNs, to remain viable, have diversified into areas such as security and edge computing. That might be a great business strategy for the CDNs—but it means they're no longer solely focused on the needs of streaming video platforms.

Three CDN Strategies To Lower Live Streaming Latency

Akhil Ramachandran addresses some key challenges he faced when he added low latency streaming support for MediaStore, leveraging the state-of-the-art Chunked Transfer Encoding, and the strategies adopted to solve them.

5 Ways to Prepare Your Video Service for the Holidays

The holiday season brings more than just festive cheer: it brings a significant spike in streaming viewership, as families gather to enjoy their favorite shows, movies, and seasonal specials. With viewers spending more time at home and streaming expectations at an all-time high, it's crucial to ensure video services are fully prepared. Yoann Hinard, Chief Operations Officer at Witbe, has created a checklist to help streaming service providers deliver an exceptional viewing experience this peak season.

Content Piracy in 2025: Emerging Threats and Strategic Responses

Modern content pirates are smart. They have a deep understanding of the technology used by their victims and of the anti-piracy and cybersecurity solutions built to stop content theft. As we approach 2025, content piracy continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, with pirates leveraging increasingly sophisticated technologies and distribution methods. Robin Boldon of Friend MTS writes that the most effective way to combat it is to anticipate, adapt, and scale techniques to keep pace with the shifting pirate landscape and predict and match pirates' talent for reinvention.

Why Streamers Need Rural Sports Fans — and Why Quality is Key for Keeping Them Around

Steve Miller-Jones, Vice President, Product Strategy, Netskrt Systems, discusses why streamers need rural sports fans, the reasons quality is key for reducing churn, and how streaming platforms and ISPs can beat buffering problems associated with delivering live sporting events to remote areas.

Residential Proxies for Streaming Platforms and the Role of IP Address Intelligence

The streaming industry in Europe is poised to flourish in the coming years with a forecasted growth rate of 20.36% from 2022 through 2027, highlighting a continued trend of rapid expansion within the industry according to data from Technavio. While growth is projected to be strong, profits and ad revenue could face a hurdle, as the streaming industry faces potentially one of its biggest threats: residential proxies.

The Quest for Greater Efficiency in Video Processing

Viewer demand for high-quality 4K video content has skyrocketed, and there is an expectation that 8K video will also surge in the coming years. However, with increased resolution comes much larger file sizes, which is challenging for media providers because of the increased storage and processing power needed. Naturally, media companies are seeking ways to process video more efficiently. Frank Schönberger of MainConcept explores how content providers and video services leverage technological developments in video compression and AI to improve efficiency at every stage of the broadcast workflow, from the point of capture to delivery to the end user.

Streaming Wars: End-to-End Quality Assurance and Video Analysis Gives Streaming Service Providers the Upper Hand

The battle for audience retention continues to intensify in the highly competitive streaming realm. Anupama Anantharaman of Interra Systems highlights the critical role that end-to-end quality assurance, media QC monitoring, and in-depth video analysis play in meeting the escalating demands of today's video consumers and why the role of these processes is becoming more crucial than ever.

Considerations for Providers Shifting from QAM to IP Video Delivery Networks

Traditional, controlled broadcast environments are being replaced by dynamic, complex ecosystems where multiple applications and services must coexist harmoniously. The challenge is to maintain the quality of a provider's main service, like linear TV with dynamically inserted ads, while accommodating the diverse requirements for and potential interference from third-party applications. Yoann Hinard of Witbe discusses the challenges faced throughout this process, including remote monitoring, dynamic ad insertion, and QC testing across devices.

Instant Replay: Streaming Media Connect November 2023

Streaming Media presented its 12th Connect virtual conference November 13 - 16, with media industry cartographer Evan Shapiro as host and MC. Shapiro kicked off the event with a dynamic keynote, digging deep into the Q3 earnings call data to hold the spin doctors accountable and giving an unvarnished view of the industry. Other highlights included The Future of Streaming with Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Director of Engineering at Google TV, and several panels covering topics such as Cloud Workflows for Streaming and CTV, Optimizing Live Streams at Scale, How Codec Patent Pools Will Impact Streaming in 2024, Making Live Streaming and VOD More Accessible, Live Streaming Technology Trends, and more.

Navigating the New Media Revenue Frontier: Unifying Strategies for Success

This article by Lindsay Van Kirk of Operative spotlights recent developments in revenue management technology, and how cloud-native and modular approaches are enabling media brands to unify their existing systems and deliver faster ROI. Kirk offers practical insights and advice for media professionals navigating this dynamic landscape.

The Future of CDN Technology: Unlocking the Next Frontier in Video Streaming

The video streaming market is booming, and as video streaming consumption continues to soar, content delivery network (CDN) technology needs to evolve rapidly to keep up. Damien Sterkers of Broadpeak discusses the current challenges with streaming and what measures to take to face them.

Netflix’s System Architecture Represents A Rare Competitive Edge

Netflix (NFLX) is the only major streamer to build out its content delivery network infrastructure. Netflix has invested roughly $1B over the past decade in a once-secret project called Open Connect that is proving to provide long-term strategic value to the company's balance sheet.