By: Becky Bracken
Binge viewing. If you've never tried it, you totally should. For the unfortunate uninitiated, binge watching is the delicious experience of viewing two or more episodes of an on-demand show
online, in a single sitting. No DVDs, no program schedule, just you and House of Cards for hours. And according to Netflix, binge viewing shows no signs of abating. A survey conducted by Harris
Interactive on behalf of Netflix shows 61 percent of online TV viewers binge watch their favorite shows. The technological hero behind the rise of the binge viewing: Content Delivery Networks
(CDN)…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Video games have evolved and grown faster than any other content segment on the planet, and yet service providers still give more airtime to discussions about competing with RCS-e apps (which,
so-far, have had abysmal uptake) and dubious CEM strategies rather than clearing a path to gaming gold. Gartner valued the global video game market at $93 billion in October, 2013, a figure it
predicted will rise to $111 billion by 2015. Of this pie, mobile gaming is the fastest growing segment; Gartner anticipates it will nearly double from 2013 levels to reach $22 billion in
2015…
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By: Becky Bracken
The old rules of advertising are dead. They don't work. The old, passive approach was too fragmented and publishers are having a hard time making a living off of them. So how are digital
content creators and marketers coming together to solve the crisis? It's pretty simple, really: disguise ads as content. The vogue name for the enterprise is “Native Advertising” and it presents a
true opportunity for Communications Service Providers, particularly in the area of video advertising. Video advertising is everywhere and its working for marketers…
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By: Becky Bracken
Online video consumers are an impatient lot and their numbers are growing every day. It only takes a couple of seconds. Buffering, janky video is something completely intolerable to a
frightening majority of entitled digital media consumers. That elevates Video Quality of Experience (QoE) far above a simple data point to be collected and reviewed at the next managers' meeting.
How fickle are digital media consumers? Probably even more than you think. British Telecom research released at the end of January 2014 shows that only a fifth, or 22 percent, of people sit down to
the TV without interruption, reinforcing the ‘media meshing’ trend on the rise in households today…
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By: Alexandru Voica
The Emergence of H.265 (HEVC) and 10-Bit Color Formats Today’s increasingly demanding applications, such as Ultra-HD TV, wireless display, and high quality video capture are driving the need
for new video encoding and decoding technologies. With the increasing availability of OLED displays and 10 bit monitors, which offer a wider color range, consumers are demanding higher color
fidelity than ever before. Plus, with ‘beyond real time’ HD video handling, video encoders/decoders must provide enough performance for tomorrow’s Ultra-HD 4Kx2K applications, such as display
surfaces and mosaic screens…
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By: Christopher Laska, Louis C. Schwartz
The ever increasing penetration of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices has resulted in a steep-change in consumer expectations. Viewers expect to be able to access content on any
screen wherever they are. This has led to an explosion in operator demand for OTT offerings that can deliver entertainment experiences to any platform, even in markets where broadband penetration
is low. More and more players are entering this OTT battleground. Operators know they need to offer multiscreen in and out of the house to attract new subscribers and retain existing ones; but, of
course, multiscreen deployments add cost and complexity…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
TV Everywhere is cool but it’s messy...really messy. Home media gateways promised to aggregate web and pay content under one roof, but this hasn't really happened. The many content and delivery
companies operating in the video landscape cannot agree on equitable licensing and distribution rates, and this has led to a fractured universe with ever-changing rates and rules. Mobile devices
can be linked up with many service provider content offerings, but this usually requires a time consuming process of authentication codes and manual data entry…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Video is more than a squeaky wheel; it's an 800-pound gorilla screaming for network upgrades and performance enhancements. No other type of content is more desired by the general public and yet
more taxing on network resources. Video is the reason you lost the unlimited, unthrottled mobile data plan you loved.According to Sandvine’s latest Global Internet Phenomenon Report, NetFlix and
Youtube account for more broadband traffic in North America than everything else combined. In Asia-Pacific, mobile video accounts for 50 percent of all downstream traffic…
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By: Tim Young
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” - William Gibson Gibson, whom I trust many of our readers will know as the author of Neuromancer, The Difference Engine and
Count Zero, is known for being prescient when it comes to future trends. He wrote of an immersive form of the Internet, which he called "the matrix", back in the early ‘80s. He wrote about
cybercrime and reality television long before either was ubiquitous. He’s really a geek’s Nostradamus. I quote him above because I think this particular sentiment applies to the current video
content climate especially well…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Pipeline COMET Awards heat upPipeline’s 2014 COMET Innovation Awards program is in full swing, encompassing more than 200 nominations for over 100 companies in 10 areas of
innovation so far. And the mainstream media is taking notice too. The COMET awards program has been covered by everyone from CNBC to Wall Street Journal as well as by other trade publications
that focus on the publishing industry such as min magazine, which covers brand leaders in the space. The 100 nominated companies include technology providers such as Amdocs, CSG International,
Ericsson, JSDU, Subex, Microsoft; service provider nominees such as AT&T, British Telecom (BT), Deutsche Telekom (DT), Google, Sprint, Telefonica; and many others…
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