Newswire

Amazon Web Services has announced the general availability of Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), a new fully managed service for interactive video streaming that uses the same technology as Twitch. Three second latency means live interaction is possible across web or mobile applications. A Japanese streamer is among the early users.

The Pay TV operator has a public roadmap to phase out satellite services and become all-IP by 2026, using the Infinite cloud platform from Synamedia. As part of that journey the company has squeezed latency from its end-to-end workflow, covering encoding, CDN and player. Yes believes it is pioneering broadcast-level latency for streaming.

The CPE giant has unveiled its H7 Android TV set-top box with notable innovations, but this is also backed by its own UI/UX for Operator Tier deployments, and a voice assistant solution and back-end analysis as part of an end-to-end ‘platform’ capability. A major North American telco has just signed a contract with Humax for a next-generation, Android TV based solution.

STB VOD refers to VOD seen by households via a managed network, most likely delivered by a ‘traditional’ Pay TV operator. Until recently this was not sold programmatically but that is now changing. DISH Media announced the unification of STB VOD and virtual Pay TV streaming inventory in April. In June, FreeWheel and Comcast Technology Solutions unveiled a solution that unifies connected TV, other digital video and STB VOD inventory for programmatic trading.

The wholesale telecoms service provider CETIN has introduced a multi-national cloud TV service that telcos in the CEE region will use to launch TV services. Kaltura provides the platform – the third cloud TV service it has deployed for operators that are providing a single multi-tenant cloud-based TV service across multiple countries. Broadpeak’s innovative S4Streaming technology, which moves ABR bit-rate control from clients to servers, features as part of a private CDN.

Sky Media is giving advertisers direct and fast evidence of what linear , on-demand or addressable advertising exposure (and eventually sponsorship) does for online activity including website traffic and sales. The analysis can be used to help demonstrate ROI and optimise campaigns in real-time. The capabilities are available via Sky Analytics, using ad exposure information from the Sky Media viewing panel.

The Greek telecoms company is deploying hybrid DTT/streaming Android TV set-top boxes from Technicolor. Zappware provides the full TV service as a managed solution. Broadpeak takes care of the streaming delivery with video delivery mediator, origin, packager and cache. Multi-island distribution required architectural flexibility.

The Global TV Group, the informal grouping of trade bodies representing TV companies and sales houses in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and Latin America, has released the third edition of its Global TV Deck with data from 26 countries covering TV’s reach, popularity, resilience, impact, and effectiveness. It shows that French TV advertising delivers an ROI of €4.9 for every Euro spent, and that while TV in Portugal reaches 99.7% of the population each month, the equivalent figure in the USA is 88.9%.

A forthcoming Videonet webcast looks at ‘The 5 steps to best-in-class targeted TV advertising’, considering what service providers must do to harness this increasingly important opportunity. Topics range from the provision of premium context and safe user experiences to harnessing multi-channel demand through programmatic, to the use of AI and analytics to track and optimise advertising performance.

The new direct-to-consumer service took a near-17% share of market within weeks of launch in the UK, boosted by the lockdown, making it the most popular SVOD after Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, according to Omdia. The analyst firm has also found that the average U.S. home now has approx. three SVOD services, with the figure close to two in the UK, France and Germany.