Operational Discipline in Streaming is Now Non-Negotiable

Cost control is a major priority for streaming services today. Video providers need smarter architectures that enable resources to be optimized, unnecessary costs prevented, alongside better use of data, and effective financial practices that enable cloud spend to be kept under control. Ultimately, video providers need to implement the strictest operational discipline across every aspect of their service.

Planning Beyond the C-band Auction: How IP Distribution Is Shaping What Comes Next

Under new legislation, the FCC is required to auction at least 100 MHz of additional Upper C-band spectrum beyond the reallocation that took place in 2021. To tackle this challenge, forward-looking broadcasters, networks, and rights holders are turning to managed IP solutions with performance and reliability Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees as the primary path forward. These regulatory shifts aren't introducing a new direction but are accelerating decisions that are already reshaping the industry. Broadcasters are moving away from fixed satellite capacity and adopting scalable, IP-based networks that offer full reach, strong guarantees, greater flexibility, better performance, and long-term value.

Designing the Shift to Software-Based Media Production

The broadcast industry is undergoing one of its most profound transitions in decades as media production moves away from hardware-dependent infrastructure toward software-based environments that are more flexible by design. While this evolution has been building for some time, it is now being addressed at an architectural level, with the industry recognizing that incremental change is no longer sufficient to support modern production requirements.

Audio and Video Have Improved Dramatically, So Why Don’t We Feel Present?

For many years, sharper images and clearer sound were treated as largely independent challenges, each optimized in isolation. The result often looks impressive but can still feel incomplete. Presence is not delivered by resolution or clarity alone. It emerges when depth, motion, timing, and sound work together, as they do in the physical world.  

How Global Ingest Is Redefining Cost Control and Agility for Modern Media Operations

Reimagining ingest: Cut costs without cutting corners by treating ingest as a strategic, metadata-driven platform.

Beyond Bottlenecks: Modernizing File Workflows for Sports Broadcasting

Behind every real-time sports highlight is a complex web of file movement infrastructure, and increasingly, that infrastructure is cracking under pressure. As sports production teams grow more distributed and timelines shrink from hours to minutes to seconds, legacy file transfer systems are becoming a silent liability. It's time to address the root cause and embrace a new model for how media moves in the modern broadcast environment.

Intuit Dome Is Just Fan Engagement, and That Means More Than You Think

With the rise of live events, redesigning for a better connection is the key to success. Some may say it's just about fan engagement. And they're right, but it's also much more than that: it's about creating unforgettable experiences that no one will want to miss.

REMI Broadcast Workflows: The New Pillar of Live Broadcasting

In recent years — particularly following the pandemic — new methods of television production had to be adopted. Initially, technology would typically evolve in response to cost optimization needs or equipment obsolescence, as is common in the electronics industry. However, during the pandemic and beyond, many of these methods rapidly evolved and became permanent fixtures. In this article, I want to focus specifically on the rise of remote broadcast productions using the REMI (Remote Integration) model.

Going All-In on Audio-Over-IP: How We Future-Proofed kronehit’s Broadcast Network

Running Austria's largest private radio station means living with the expectation of perfection. Every day, nearly a million listeners count on kronehit to deliver their soundtrack, whether via FM, DAB+, or digital streams. For us, "dead air" isn't just a technical term; it's a scenario we simply cannot afford. Our reputation and our audience's trust depend on seamless, round-the-clock operation. This is the story of why we took the leap to IP-based infrastructure, how we executed the migration without a single second of downtime, and what we learned along the way.

Smarter Streaming with DVB-NIP

Service provision in areas with poor or unreliable connectivity remains a major challenge for the industry. Additionally, many areas of the world remain unserved by terrestrial broadband for a variety of reasons, and so broadcasters and video providers are also challenged with how to reach these untapped markets where audiences are currently unserviceable. DVB Native-IP, or DVB-NIP as it's also known, is a new standard developed by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) to help the industry address these very challenges.

Dynamic HDR and the Future of Visual Differentiation

From my work as a media solutions consultant with InterDigital and contributor to the Advanced HDR by Technicolor initiative, I've seen the need for a strategic shift toward dynamic HDR implementations that preserve creative intent, simplify delivery architectures, and future-proof content ecosystems. In this article, I break down the imperatives across four dimensions: strategy, operations, economics, and technology.

No Weak Links: Security for Streaming and Remote Production

Traditional broadcast architectures had a large, air-conditioned room in the middle of the building, which contained all the equipment. Getting in there required passing through several security checks. Software-defined architectures and IP connectivity turns this model on its head, with creation, processing and control sited where you need it as a business, not where the hardware tells you.

Building a Bingeworthy Content Future on Hybrid Cloud

Cloud computing offers an enticing solution to the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry's scaling, collaboration, and efficiency needs. Yet, full cloud adoption is fraught with unique challenges, including costs, latency, security and compliance. Media companies need more than a "one-size-fits-all" solution. They need a strategy that balances the best of both cloud and on-premises workflows. That's why hybrid cloud architectures are becoming the norm—not the exception—for streamers and broadcasters who are playing to win.

Why Pay for What You Don’t Use? The Argument for Composable Storage Solutions

Sean Lee, CEO of OpenDrives, discusses the critical ways the storage industry solutions and models must transform in order to add value for today's businesses. Today, high performance, efficiency, and scalability are required to remain competitive—all while managing ever-tightening budgets with larger monetization expectations.

Post-Production Efficiencies Hold Key to Video ROI

Cloudinary explores some of the findings from its first global Video Survey of Web developers, marketers, and business leaders from 15 countries.

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.

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.

Unlocking the Promise of 4K Streaming Through VVC Adoption

Tony Jones of MediaKind discusses the steady adoption rate of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) and its numerous benefits, such as significant cost savings and reduced energy consumption for streaming.

Remote Production: The Jewel in the Creative Collaboration Crown

The broadcast industry has changed at an extraordinary pace. Both the underlying technology and consumers' viewing habits have evolved into a complex and varied market. Broadcast news has been no exception, from both the production level and the end result for viewers. Sam Peterson of Bitcentral writes about the ways that collaboration empowers production teams to maximize efficiency.

Christopher Fung Fosters Creativity and Community with the Unstrctrd Acoustic Sessions

.Brooklyn-based creative director Christopher Fung creates and collaborates across various projects, including music videos, installation art, experience design, interactive media, animation, and traditional filmmaking, and his latest focus is his new Twitch channel, Unstrctrd.