Bart van Oosterhout on LinkedIn: Exciting news! 🚀 We're launching THEOads today! If you're at IBC2024 and… (2024)

🚀 These are the top 5 talks I’d love to see at #IBC2024!The agenda for the IBC - International Broadcasting Convention Content Everywhere talks is available for a while now, and I’m really looking forward to these sessions:1️⃣ Building the future of tech, with Robert Ambrose as moderator and Cristina Gomila, Grace Boswood and Sinead Greenaway as speakers.2️⃣ Mastering cross-platform video playback with React Native, with Pieter-Jan Speelmans as speaker3️⃣ Panel: Sporting content moves into the FAST lane, hosted by Colin Dixon, and with Cees van Versendaal, Scott Maddux and Victor Sawma as speakers4️⃣ Multiple monetization models for market success, moderated by Colin Dixon and with Ashley Reynolds-Horne, Naveen Narayanan and Roberta Cambio as panelists.5️⃣ Panel: Acquisition, retention and the importance of user experience with Andreas Waltenspiel as moderator and Domagoj Bartolić, Gilles Domartini and Martin Prins as panelists.Which talks are you looking forward to?Note: picture is from last year's panel discussion on the roadmap to next generation video experiences with Paul Erickson as moderator and Pieter-Jan Speelmans, Kunal Bhandari and Cees van Versendaal as panelist.

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Absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of the 2nd edition of our market research on the current state of cross-platform video playback!I’m looking forward to once again interview experts from sports, media, and entertainment companies about the latest video playback trends, challenges, and priorities.If you're interested in participating or know someone who would be a great fit, please let me know!We'll bundle learnings in a report, a great way to learn from and share with peers.Special thanks to Alex Gervais, Stephen Burns, Michael Gregor, Mark Ison, Patrick Kunka, and many others for their invaluable contributions to last year’s edition. Curious to hear you’re latest perspectives btw!Complete the survey here and indicate at the end if you’re interested in an interview: https://lnkd.in/ex2-_kWk

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Here's my top 10 checklist for choosing the right technology for live video streaming in sports betting:🚀 Low latency: Maximize revenue through low latency, as it maximizes the betting window. Ideally you can stream real-time, i.e. at sub-second latency, as this really reduces the nr of rejected bets. Low latency also boosts viewer engagement, as it aligns video latency to data latency. The worst experience a user can have is when a data overlay already reveals what’s happening in the game, thereby spoiling the live streaming experience.🎮 Interactivity:does the solution bring or enable interactive user experiences through overlays like instant highlights, in-play betting options and key statistics? As a direct outcome of increased user engagement, users will spend more time on the sportsbook website, leading to increased page retention.⭐ Quality: Bitrate and resolutions will depend on your use case. Sometimes 480p@1,5Mbps is sufficient for watching on a small screen in browser – when you’re streaming to the big screen 1080p@4,5Mbps, or even higher bitrates, will make more sense. Make sure to include ABR to cope with changing network conditions as part of last mile delivery. The balance with low latency and quality is critical for betting, you don’t want any video quality issues like buffering or stalls during key moments!📈 Scalability: Check if the technology can scale to the required audience size. Scaling to 1000 viewers or 1M viewers is a big difference. And make sure the solution can handle flash crowds; when many viewers join at the same time, efficient caching over global CDN points of presence (POPs) takes care of this. 🛡️ Reliability: Does the solution leverage UDP vs TCP delivery? With UDP delivery (e.g. webRTC) you often see frame drops whereas TCP delivery (e.g. HESP) is more reliable. 🔒 Content protection: Check items such as token-based security and geo-blocking. And for important sports games where right holders require content protection, make sure to have studio-approved DRM in place. 📊 Analytics: Track and measure the right metrics, so that you can identify and resolve issues asap, and collect insights to optimize your live sports streaming going forward.📺 Device support: Make sure you have the desired device support, whether you’re streaming in browser, in an app, or to set-top-boxes in betting shops.🛠️ Usability: Interfaces should be adjusted according to each device. For example, the TV interface has to be readable at a greater distance and be easy to navigate using a remote. And when dialogues appear, when does this happen? Hopefully not at the same time that a goal is scored!💵 Cost: Doing real-time streaming at scale can be complex and expensive. Select value (low latency, device support, quality, scalability, content protection) for money! Which other criteria would you take into account?

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Hey everyone! Just a quick reminder about THEOcon 2024 happening today! Big thanks to Daniel Dallos for putting this together!We've got some fantastic speakers lined up, including Daniel himself, along with Christopher Leyssen, Mattias Buelens, and Michel Roofthooft. They'll be sharing insights on various topics like crafting low-cost, high-impact solutions, exploring GStreamer vs. FFMPEG, diving into web streams, and driving innovation in feature teams.Join us at the THEO Technologies office in Leuven or tune in live from anywhere via our brand-new apps! Register here: https://lnkd.in/eAjCBc3sGet the apps and links here: http://bit.ly/theoconAnd don't forget, there will be beer and pizza! 🍺🍕

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The worst viewer QoE you can have for real-time sports betting is choppy streams, black screens or stalls, definitely when it happens just when you’d like to place a bet.Many sportsbooks are lowering latency from 7-12 seconds to sub-second latency, as it maximizes the betting window, and enables in-play betting and micro-betting opportunities.But how do you make sure that there are no stalls when streaming into regions with slower Internet connections? The choice of streaming protocol plays a critical role in delivering a flawless experience.A quick overview:1️⃣ WebRTC: UDP delivery brings packet drops. Whereas this avoids buffering upon changing network conditions, it does bring lower quality.2️⃣ HLS and DASH: Reliable TCP delivery ensures quality but comes with higher latency. ABR quality switches can take 2s or more, so that’s what you’ll need as a minimum in the player buffer to avoid stalls. (and other components in the video workflow will further add to the E2E latency).3️⃣ HESP: Combining TCP-based reliability with the ability to change quality instantly, means a minimal player buffer can be kept, while still guaranteeing a high QoE, even when streaming at latencies <1s.In my view, HESP offers the best of both worlds, providing sub-second latency streaming while maintaining a high QoE, even when streaming over challenging network conditions.But that's only my 2 cents. I'm curious—what's your preferred streaming protocol for live streaming in sports betting, and what’s your experience with viewer QoE?

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Excited to announce that we'll participate in the HESP Alliance activities at the 2024 NAB Show! 🚀Join us as we showcase how #THEOlive revolutionizes real-time streaming for sportsbooks, iGaming, and interactive entertainment.Powered by the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (#HESP), THEOlive offers:🕒 Sub-second latency: Achieve latencies <1s on various devices, including web, Android, iOS, and Amino H200 set-top boxes.📈 Scalability: Seamlessly scale via standard CDNs to accommodate any audience size and handle unpredictable 'flash crowds'.📺 High QoE: Deliver flawless video experiences with no frame drops, resolutions up to 4K UHD, and improved ABR, ensuring optimal quality taking into account network conditions.🔒 Security: Easily enable studio-approved DRM cross-platform.Ready to learn more? DM me or book your NAB meeting here: https://lnkd.in/enAfJ8ng 📅 PS: Don't forget to collect your HESP Alliance t-shirt! 👕

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📽️ Considering porting your video pipeline cross-platform with React Native? Here's why it's not a walk in the park when going the DIY route with an open source video player.Say you have an app which supports iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV & Web-based platforms, and you’re using open source react-native-video as video player package, then you might run into the following complexities:🌐 Web Platform Compatibility: React-native-video does not support web-based platforms such as Samsung Tizen and LG webOS. Instead, it has to be added manually. The Web player will have yet another API compared to AVplayer and ExoPlayer, which are used under the hood by react-native-video for Android and iOS-based platforms.🔒 DRM Integrations: When using a third-party DRM vendor, you’ll have to add this integration natively on all supported platforms, before bridging it to React Native📺 External Chromecast Integration: Chromecast has to be added externally via the react-native-google-cast package.📱 Android Functionality Gaps: Missing features like Picture-in-Picture, MediaSession, lock-screen controls & NowPlaying on Android.📊 Lack of Analytics Integration: This necessitates native build for all supported platforms.✨ Styling Limitations: No subtitle/captions styling is available🛠️ Voluntary Engineering Support: No clear roadmap, no release cadence, no prioritized bug fixes, and no ability to share sensitive data, such as proprietary test streams, tokens, app code, …Many of these items require native development again. For media & entertainment companies solely relying on a talented pool of React Native developers, this means making a tough choice: compromise on functionality, or hire external expertise.For me this is where a commercial video player can make a real difference. It addresses each of the above items through1️⃣ Support for web-based platforms such as Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Vizio, XBOX etc2️⃣ Ready-made connectors for DRM, analytics and ads solutions3️⃣ Premium features like Android MediaSessions, Picture-in-Picture and a React Native UI.4️⃣ Support from video playback expertsDon’t get me wrong, I love open source, many of the great products I use on a daily basis would not exist without it. But really think that a commercial React Native video player can save time & and money porting your video pipeline cross-platform.And... by saving time, a commercial video player enables media & entertainment companies to reassign experienced video engineers from routine video player maintenance tasks to more strategic projects. This not only optimizes the use of experienced video engineers but also empowers them to engage in projects that foster innovation and align with broader organizational goals. That's just my 2 cents. Realize I might be biased here… so would be great to hear your experiences!

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Ever wonder about the benefits of a commercial video player vs open-source ones? 🤔 I get asked this a lot...For me, a commercial video player takes away the complexities of premium video playback across devices, saving media & entertainment companies both time and money.So, let's dive into 6 major differences:1. **Unified APIs**: Jumping between different APIs for each open source or native player? A nightmare. 😱 A commercial player offers a single, cross-platform API set. A developer's dream come true! 💻2. **Ready-Made Connectors**: The hassle of custom-building connectors for DRM, ads, analytics with open source? Forget it. 🚫 Commercial players come with connectors for big names like EZDRM, BuyDRM, Verimatrix, NAGRA, Google DAI / IMA, Amazon Web Services (AWS) MediaTailor, Conviva, NPAW Youbora, Mux data and more. Easy peasy. 🛠️3. **React Native & Flutter Support**: Tired of building those bridges yourself? A commercial video player's got your back, with support already in place for seamless cross-platform porting. 🌉4. **Open Source UI?**: Surprise! Even commercial players have a soft spot for open-source, offering customizable UI components. Best of both worlds! 🌍5. **Smart TVs**: Challenges with optimizing playback on older smart TVs? Commercial video players ensure smooth ad insertion, without black screens even on your 2015 model, improving viewer quality of experience and CPM, 📺6. **Expert Help**: Found a bug, or need custom features? Commercial video players give you direct access to video gurus ready to solve your problems. No more endless waiting. 🆘Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of open source, truly, but when it comes to mastering cross-platform video playback, commercial video players really accelerate time-to-market and reduce maintenance effort. A perfect fit for media & entertainment companies looking to reduce total cost of ownership of their cross-platform video playback solution 💵 Curious about your experiences and observations? Share your thoughts below! 🗣️✍️

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These are my top five questions about the video player user interface (UI) for media and entertainment companies selecting a video player for their cross-platform OTT app.The video player UI is one of the most visible things, and a critical aspect of any viewer experience. As such, it’s important to have flexibility and ease of control. There are 3 types of video player UIsChromeless = build your own UI from scratch. This offers a lot of freedom, but requires significant time and effort. There is also a risk of issues when video player updates are released, which you’d have to fix yourselves.Closed source = ready-made UI which comes with the SDK. It allows for basic changes through API to e.g. text and colors, but extensive customization is not possible. Open source = easily customizable UI available out-of-the box. It’s easy to change the layout, using components (play button, progress bar, picture-in-picture button etc) as building blocks, placing them anywhere in the UI, and it’s also simple to change the style. An open source UI is for me the preferred approach, as it brings the freedom of the chromeless approach, but saves time & money as you can customize existing building blocks, accelerating your time-to-market.The risk with a closed source UI is that it’s not customizable enough, so media & entertainment companies basically have to go chromeless, and build from scratch, prolonging time-to-market of their OTT app, and increasing maintenance effort. So for me, an important first question is whether an open source UI is available (even for commercial video players!)But that’s not all – here’s my list of top question:1️⃣ Does the video player have an open source UI?2️⃣ For which platforms is the UI available? 3️⃣ Does the video player UI have smart TV support through spatial navigation?4️⃣ Is a Flutter or React Native UI available? When using one of these frameworks, you’ll also want to port your UI cross-platform instead of doing native development again. 5️⃣ Is the UI actively maintained? Even if it's an open source UI, this is important, as it avoids having to do fixes for new video player versions.That’s just my 2 cents – would be great to hear your thoughts. Which video player UI approach do you have, and are there other video player UI questions, you’d ask when selecting a video player?

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