Building the Perfect Live-Event Operations Playbook

On Thursday, Aug. 13, LinkedIn's Chris Packard, LiveX's Corey Behnke, and MemeHouse's Zylo Hefferan will join the SVTA's Bhavesh Upadhyaya for a Streaming Media Connect panel that examines how top streaming teams prepare for, monitor, and recover from tentpole live events like sports and concerts. The discussion will range from pre-event capacity planning, load testing, and failover strategies to establishing best practices for managing traffic spikes when the stakes are highest.

QC’ing Live Streams at Scale in the Age of AI: A Q&A with Interra Systems' Anupama Anantharaman

In this Q&A, I had the opportunity to discuss the fast-evolving requirements and best practices for live streaming QC at scale with Anupama Anantharaman, VP Product Management at Interra Systems, developers of the ORION-OTT comprehensive monitoring solution for live and OTT. The 2025 Streaming Media All-Star offers insights into how AI is changing live stream monitoring, how performing "deep QC" impacts streaming workflows, the best KPIs for predictive monitoring, and the continuing role of humans in an increasingly AI-supported QC world.

Vote in the 2026 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards are ready to roll. The polls are open! Let the voting begin!

ICYMI: Streaming Media Connect May 2026

Streaming Media Connect May 2026 was all about delivering and monetizing sports streaming featured exclusive keynote fireside chats with Matt Graham of the Tennis Channel and Maria Malinowitsch of Verimatrix and a slate of expert panels packed with speakers from DAZN, Globo, Fubo, OneFootball, FloSports, NESN, IAB Tech Lab, Telestream, Zixi, BuyDRM, ViewLift, CacheFly, Servers.com, Tiledmedia, Norsk, and more. Check out a playlist with Streaming Media Connect sessions on Streaming Media's YouTube channel to catch the sessions you missed and revel in the ones you want to relive through the magic of VOD.

Nominate Now for the 2026 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

What's your favorite streaming tool, tech, or service? What is the most important new innovation in the business in 2026? It's time to make your nominations for Streaming Media's 2026 Readers' Choice Awards, our annual industry awards program chosen by end users.

Sneak Preview: Ultra-Low-Latency Sports Streaming From Stadium to Screen at Streaming Media Connect

On Thursday, May 14, Elecard's Victoria Tuzova will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "Need for Speed: Ultra-Low-Latency Sports Streaming From Stadium to Screen." This panel of experts from Servers.com, Synamedia, Vindral, and Stats Perform dives into the engineering fundamentals—capture, encoding, delivery, and playback—that underpin smooth execution through the first, middle, and last miles without sacrificing quality. Learn what breaks at scale, how to prepare for and ward off disaster, and why low latency isn't just a number, but the difference between a winning broadcast and a blown opportunity.

NAB 2026, Via LA, and the Future of NDI|HX

As a longtime fan and proponent of NDI, I feel that new codec licensing fees and the response of hardware manufacturers put the entire future of HX on shaky ground.

Independent Report Compares Codec Royalty Costs Across Two Major Licensing Pools

Streaming services evaluating codec licensing face a difficult question: how do the royalty costs of Access Advance Video Distribution Patent Pool and the Avanci Video program actually compare? A new report from Streaming Learning Center's Jan Ozer answers that question with hard numbers.

H.264 Streaming Fees: What Changed, Who's Affected, and What It Means

Via's new AVC Streaming License Fee structure, which applies to new licenses beginning in 2026, replaces the old single-cap model with a tiered system that scales sharply with platform size.

Avanci Video Signs First Licensee and Publishes Rates

The patent pool offers three billing options and aggressive discounts for platforms signing by July 5, with rates ranging from 1.6-2.0% of revenue or $0.12-$0.15 per user per month.

Milano Cortina 2026: Winter Olympics Host Broadcaster Rules Out Remote Production

Is the Olympic Committee's host broadcaster warming to the notion of transitioning to virtual or REMI production for this winter's fast-approaching Milan Cortina games? Speaking as part of a roundtable event three weeks out from the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina XXV Winter Games (MC26) in Northern Italy, Yiannis Exarchos, CEO, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) said that the sheer scale of an Olympics and current technological limitations on behalf of rights-holding broadcasters meant elimination of a physical International Broadcast Center (IBC) is not likely soon, or even desirable.

Sports Media Predictions: Looking Ahead to 2026

The next phase of sports media will not be defined by breakthroughs alone. It will be defined by decisions. About focus. About balance. And about where value really sits.

Roundup: Streaming Industry Predictions for 2026

The predictions game is a fascinating one, and one that's hard not to play at year's end, whether we're talking about what's to come in the next year or three, or what's just as likely to be gone. In the last few weeks, my own editorial inbox has filled to bursting with unsolicited but much-welcomed season's greetings from a disparate array of industry experts and thought leaders ringing in "End-of-Year Prediction Season" with all manner of educated guesses and promising bets about what's going to happen in 2026.

Instant Replay: Streaming Media Connect December

Streaming Media Connect December was all about live and featured exclusive keynote fireside chats with Rebecca Sirmons of NASA+ and Neal Roberts of WarnerBros. Discovery and a slate of live streaming panels packed with speakers from Peacock TV, Paramount+, Google, Globo, EZDRM, nanocosmos, CommScope, Starz, Professional Fighters League, LG, and more. Check out a playlist with Streaming Media Connect December sessions on Streaming Media's YouTube channel to catch the sessions you missed and revel in the ones you want to relive through the magic of VOD.

MediaKind and Harmonic’s Video Business to Combine, Creating a Leading Streaming-Infrastructure Platform

Combined business will be the #1 independent comprehensive streaming-infrastructure platformBrings together complementary product teams to drive faster advancement across cloud and appliance technologiesFurthers MediaKind's mission to redefine the future of media and entertainment through advanced video technology

Rethink's Alex Davies Talks New Transcoding Report and Future of VVC, AV1, and LCEVC

Contributing Editor Jan Ozer recently spoke with Alex Davies, senior analyst at Rethink Technology Research, about Rethink's new report, "The Media and Entertainment Transcoding Workload and Device Royalty Forecast for 2020 to 2030," and what it says about the future of VVC, AV1, and LCEVC for streaming publishers.

Nokia, Ericsson, Fraunhofer HHI Join Forces to Drive 6G-Era Video Coding Standardization

In this exclusive interview, Streaming Media's Jan Ozer speaks with Ville-Veikko Mattila, Head of Multimedia Technologies at Nokia, about Nokia's collaboration with Ericsson and Fraunhofer Institute on a new codec development and its implications for the next decade of video compression.

AI Helps InterDigital Reach Beyond VVC in Race to Develop Next-Gen Codec

Candidates for H.267 already significantly outperform VVC as the hunt for a new video compression standard gets underway

ICYMI: Streaming Media 2025's VOD Archive is Live

Streaming Media 2025, which rolled into sunny Santa Monica last week, featured speakers from Netflix, Roku, Paramount, BET, Google, Warner Bros. Discovery, Televisa Univision, and many more. Check out a playlist featuring the complete Streaming Media 25 program on Streaming Media's YouTube channel to catch the sessions you missed and revel in the ones you want to relive through the magic of VOD.

AV2 Arriving: What We Know, and What We Don’t Know

According to AOMedia's announcement, AV2 is set for release at the end of 2025. The group highlights several improvements over AV1, including significantly better compression performance (with no specifics), enhanced support for AR/VR content, split-screen and multi-view delivery, improved handling of screen content, and operation across a broader visual quality range. Like AV1, AV2 will be offered under AOMedia's royalty-free patent policy, which means licensees can use it without paying royalties to AOMedia.