Q&A: Google's Shalini Govil-Pai Talks the Future of Android TV

In this interview with Streaming Media's Nadine Krefetz, Google VP & General Manager Shalini Govil-Pai discusses ongoing developments at Google TV, the state and future of streaming, and the growing impact of AI on streaming recommendations, user experiences, and monetization.

The Smart Set: OEMs, OS Wars, and the New CTV Playing Field

How are the OEM and OS battles changing the way TV is marketed and distributed, from live linear to FAST, AVOD, and all other forms of free streaming? Are we heading toward a closed society in terms of CTV, as the worldwide competition for control of TV interfaces continues and dominant OEMs consolidate their power as content gatekeepers? In this article, several leading industry figures weigh in on these questions, offer insight about what is at stake for providers and users, and discuss the current CTV landscape.

REMI Production with LiveU LU800-PRO4 and LiveU Studio

This article will highlight the features of LiveU's LU800-PRO mobile unit and how it can be used for REMI lightweight production, webcasting, online interviews, and multi-camera streaming productions. You'll learn how to get up and running with the LU800-PRO and how to use it for production with LiveU Studio 2.0. You'll also learn how to create channels, add media and live-streaming inputs, and configure multicam streams.

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 OTT and CTV Monetization 2025

Conversation about monetization is so nuanced that after a decade of writing on this topic, I am still looking for meaning where there may be little to find. Essentially, what I've come to understand is that ad­vertising is like the stock market: Certain aspects of advertising deals are not transparent now and may never become fully transparent. What is clear, ac­cording to research from Statista, is that 64% of rev­enue growth in the U.S. in OTT is coming from ad­vertising.

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.

DIY Broadcast: How Underrepresented Sports Are Building Their Own Streaming Stacks

That's changing. With automated cameras, cloud production platforms, and AI-driven tools now capable of delivering the full suite of broadcast workflows—from live switching and graphics to clipping, highlights, and distribution—sports that once had no way to show themselves are building their own streaming stacks. They're not waiting to be picked up. They're going live—and taking control.

JustWatch Reveals Streaming Trends for LGBTQ+ Content in the UK During Pride Month

As Pride Month celebrations sweep across the UK, JustWatch - the world's largest streaming guide - has unveiled an annual analysis spotlighting the best streaming platforms for LGBTQ+ films and TV shows in the UK. This year's analysis showcases which services offer the richest selection of queer content, reveals the most-watched LGBTQ+ titles of the year, and examines how queer film and TV production has evolved over time.

Q&A: Celebrating Pride Month With Quickplay’s Paul Pastor 

Quickplay Co-Founder Paul Pastor has been using his platform as an out gay executive to advocate for more authentic and positive LGBTQ+ representation and inclusion in the tech world. In this Q&A, Pastor shares how he feels about the progress that's been made in LBTQ+ inclusion, why it's important to be your authentic self at work, what streaming media can do to engage in allyship, and how Quickplay is showing up for LGBTQ+ people, and more.

Netflix Makes Quietly Aggressive Aggregation Play

Netflix announced at Cannes Lions that it will distribute the channels and on-demand content of French commercial broadcaster TF1 to Netflix members in France, beginning next year. If successful, Netflix will have jumped a start on all its rivals who have so far resisted, or failed to entice, broadcasters anywhere to share their entire schedule and programme output with a third-party streaming platform.

Stream It in IMAX Enhanced: A Gamechanger for Live Sports Streaming

With its new ‘Stream it in IMAX Enhanced' program, IMAX is bringing its world-renowned brand, expertise, cutting-edge VisionScience™ technology, and proprietary digital source enhancement workflows to live-streamed sports and events.

Kiloview Cradle Series RFO2: The Ultimate Unified Media Center

The RF02 offers multi-channel encoding/decoding, recording, routing, and mixing in one platform via freely combined card modules, simplifying workflows and improving efficiency. It minimizes the need for separate systems, delivering a complete broadcasting solution.

Phone Takeover: Replacing Pro Cameras in Live Streaming

A mobile device with the right software is now a tool that can replace some of the traditional live production equipment such as low- and mid-tier cameras and encoders. This reduces both upfront capital expenses, like equipment purchases, and operational costs for live content creators.

The Value of Content Provenance in the Media Landscape

It is not overstating the case to claim that the health of the media business in the coming years will rest on the extent to which content provenance becomes an organic part of our patterns of creation and consumption. The commercial value of services that deliver such trusted content can be significantly greater than those that do not. Linking a system of content provenance with the next evolution of digital rights management (DRM) should give content creators and rights holders better control over the protection and revenue potential of these particularly valuable digital assets.

Innovation vs. Optimization in Streaming Delivery

While innovation is good at the outset of a transformation (such as analog to digital video), it can become counterproductive to building sustainable businesses. Continuous innovation means taking away resources from making existing technologies more scalable, resilient, and reliable—three traits that are critical to the success of something like a streaming platform.

Which Is Better for Sports Production--More Cameras or More Ops?

Typical broadcast-level sports productions are massive, with dozens of cameras and operators all over the place, and dozens more people working in and around the production trucks. So how does one, independent producer make their content more like "the big league" when there isn't a dozen people to help?

Doubling Down on Live Linear Programmatic Advertising

The problem of adjusting a live ad buy in linear has jumped over one more hurdle. Earlier this year, DirectTV Advertising announced that their satellite TV content can now be bought programmatically in real time. This means an advertiser can see when viewing is surging and double down to serve ads during key moments. This feature will be available for programming on ESPN, MLB Network, FS1, and the Tennis Channel.

Live Sports Streaming, TVXRAY, and the Qvest for Personalization

At NAB 2025 I set out in search of one irrefutable, real-world example of true sports streaming personalization, an innovative and unique experience that might present a mass-media live sporting event on my screen as it appears on no one else's. I found a contender at the Qvest Engage booth.

The Long and Short of It: Measuring YouTube on TV

As YouTube makes short-form viewing in­creasingly commonplace, measurable, and monetized on CTV, and other channels inevita­bly rush to adopt and repeat the formula, time will tell when "YouTube is the new television" gives way to "Television is the new YouTube."

In Defense of (Click to) Cancel Culture

For all its promise, and despite officially going into effect in mid-January, the Fededral Trade Commission's Click to Cancel rule for streamlining streaming and other cancellations remains largely in limbo, due in part to its all-deliberate-speed effective compliance date of May 14 and also because of legal and political challenges from the Chamber of Commerce and others.

The Blurring of Shared Experiences Via Streaming

The shared experience of enjoying a program that's happening at (or very near) the same time as reality is gone. YouTube, Facebook, et al. are typically 20 or more seconds behind when the event happened. Streaming services and apps can have their own pathways and delays. Add more viewers or more processing, and it can get longer.

Is This the End of the CDN As We Know It?

Recent news, like the shuttering of Edgio, signals to many the imminent death of traditional content delivery networks (CDNs). But does it really?

The Next 20 Years: What Role Will Large Social Platforms like YouTube Play in the Future of the Creator Economy?

For the past two decades, YouTube, and large social media platforms like it have been at the center of the creator economy. But many creators have learned that building a business on top of a platform you don't own or control comes with downsides. As a result, after two decades of platform dependency, several large creators have started experimenting with more direct-to-consumer (D2C/DTC) outlets for their content.

Monetization. Agility, and Tech Readiness Define Streaming Success

In the highly competitive world of streaming, there is no single recipe for success. As platforms proliferate and audiences grow more fragmented, it has become increasingly clear that sustainable monetization demands more than one revenue stream. Today's media companies must adopt a flexible, multi-pronged approach to monetization to remain competitive, profitable, and future-ready.

Accelerating FAST Revenue With Live News and Sports

The FAST space is experiencing explosive growth. Platforms no longer want channels that simply fill space. They demand content that drives engagement, ad revenue, and repeat viewership. The bar is much higher: content must be immediate, authentic, and often exclusive. That's why the next phase of FAST will be defined by real-time, high-value live news and sports content as platforms compete to capture and keep audiences.

Manufacturers Want a Cut of Publishers’ CTV Monetization. Have They Earned It?

The expansive growth of the connected TV (CTV) landscape brought with it an explosion of new video content - and by extension, new opportunities for publishers to monetize. And yet, the landscape has been evolving in a direction where publishers don't have full monetization of their video content. So who else is vying for control? Increasingly, it's the CTV device makers - the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) - and the streaming platforms. Those businesses believe that because they're necessary parts of the ad delivery process, they deserve a share of ad revenue. 

CTV’s Frequency Problem Isn’t Fixed … But It Can Be

Despite having more tools, data, and control, overexposure remains a defining flaw of the CTV experience. Viewers still see the same ads too often. Advertisers still struggle to manage delivery across different platforms. The inefficiencies this creates are not a result of outdated technology, but a consequence of endemic fragmentation. 

Why Customer Experience is Key to Reducing Churn

Faced with the ongoing challenge of reducing churn and increasing retention, video platforms have realized that customer acquisition alone isn't enough and nor is aggressive pricing. What's really needed is a better understanding of how users engage with content and what kind of experience they're having.

Why Streaming's Rise Means the Death of DSPs

Going forward, streaming is the best way to capture mass audiences. In the world of TV advertising, CTV has fully grown up and it's time to move on from basic digital tactics. For bigger brands and old school agencies, that's easier said than done. In an effort to move away from relying on streaming TV as a targeting play, they need to divorce themselves from the technical (and digital) tools that they've become so reliant on--especially DSPs.

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.

Sports Streaming Tech Breakthroughs

Beyond-border reach, personalization, on-demand accessibility, fan engagement, and enhanced interactivity are driving new revenue generation models.

Sponsored by: Tiled Media

Coming August 28, 2025

IBC Streaming Solutions

The week before IBC 2025, leading solution providers from the streaming industry will pull back the curtain and offer Streaming Media a sneak preview of the top-flight tech they'll be rolling out in Amsterdam.

Sponsored by: Mainstreaming

Coming September 04, 2025

Live Streaming in Real Time for the Pros

Join key tech providers whose solutions make real-time streaming possible, along with successful streamers who have pulled off real-time streams in the real world.

Sponsored by: Streaming Media

Coming July 10, 2025

Beyond the Game: Next-Level Sports Live Streaming - Europe-friendly timing

In this webinar, join key tech providers whose solutions make real-time streaming possible, along with successful streamers who have pulled off real-time streams in the real world for essential insight and best practices.

Sponsored by: Mainstreaming, Elecard and AJA Video Systems

Coming October 16, 2025