Who is really cutting the video cord? What is the impact on virtual multichannel video services? What is the consumer appetite for subscription VOD services? How is mobile video viewing changing both in and out of home? How are consumers viewing OTT video in the living room? A presentation of Kagan data from consumer insights surveys will discuss those questions and more.

Immersive VR is a powerful tool for storytelling and creating emotional engagement with customers when selling complex, futuristic visions of products and enterprises. So VR needs to be incorporated when trying to secure stakeholder buy-in and alignment where human imagination can be limited and biases are strong. The key is to know how to design the immersive experience to really connect with the viewer. Further, VR can also be a tool for rapid iterative product development and concept/viability design testing. It’s definitely here to stay, and this session provides examples of how to make it work for you.

Traditionally, streaming and videoconferencing have been deployed as two separate solutions, but companies are realizing that integrating these solutions provides tremendous value. This trend is increasing as new platforms such as Slack, Cisco Spark, and Microsoft Teams are taking off. Learn how organizations leverage existing videoconferencing infrastructure as production studios when integrated with a video streaming system, how video conferencing allows presenters in multiple locations to participate jointly in webcasts, and how streaming solutions can be budgeted as part of a larger video communications budget.

Using video as a training tool both inside and outside the classroom is no longer just an option, but rather table stakes for any educational institution. The tools and processes for creating, managing, and delivering live and on-demand content keep evolving, getting easier to use, and providing more functionality. In the midst of this cultural and technical change, what are some of the best practices among schools that have been successful? Our education panelists tell you what works, recommend crawl-walk-run implementation steps, and share their lessons learned.

With the right media architecture, viewers and content producers alike can save time on content discovery. Automating the discovery process frees up viewers to spend more time consuming; and it gives producers more time to create content for those viewers to find. This panel examines the business decisions and impacts of AI to streaming applications; the ways in which consumers will get content faster, more seamlessly and without extensive searching; and the technical requirements to build smarter, AI-powered streaming applications.

Streaming technologies disrupted our ideas of how consumers tune in, listen, and watch, and yet we are still far from perfect in terms of distribution, access, and profitability for content creators. These business models are now again ripe for disruption. This talk examines some of the emerging business models that have embraced blockchain technologies, how blockchain satisfies challenges for media, and how to spur growth and further media consumption with greater control.

While CDN prices have never been lower, OTT delivery continues to weigh heavily on broadcasters’ budgets. On the eve of the zettabyte era, growing audiences, higher resolutions and more immersive video experiences bring both technical and business challenges. This panel explores how content publishers are working to scale their infrastructure to growing audiences while getting the best quality for their money. We look at optimization efforts throughout the delivery workflow, with a special emphasis on CDN, multi-CDN, mesh network, multicast, and in-house delivery solutions.

While video gets most of the attention, streaming audio is more established and likely even more popular. Timed to coincide with a two-part feature in Streaming Media magazine celebrating the 25th anniversary of internet radio, this panel talks about where the audio and radio streaming market is heading and how publishers can successfully monetize internet radio, surveying the technologies that have made internet radio so successful and will carry it into the future.

In a few clicks, viewers have more video choice than ever before, and the precise location of the viewer has serious implications. Where previously geo-gating might have been enough, now customers have many more locations and methods to view content. Buying or renting? Mobile, desktop, or connected TV? Streaming or downloadable? SD or HD? AVOD, TVOD, or SVOD? Are there content blackout rights? Subtitles or dubbed? This session explores the complicated world of content rights and licensing, as well as discusses ways publishers can manage it.