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Answered By
Pieter-Jan Speelmans
CTO
Why Did THEO Join the Streaming Video Technology Alliance?
At THEO Technologies we believe in making streaming technology better to really improve how the world streams video over the internet. We’ve been working towards this goal for a while, for example with THEOplayer. When we started with THEOplayer all other solutions were still on Flash or Silverlight. We were the first video player to do streaming directly into any HTML5 browser without plugins. Over the years, we’ve expanded support towards all possible platforms ranging from the browsers where we started over Android and iOS mobile devices, all sorts of connected devices like Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, Chromecast, RDK powered set-top boxes, smart TVs from the world’s most popular brands and so forth. We don’t just aim to be “a” video player. We aim to be the best while in parallel working to make streaming easier with powerful yet easy to use APIs. We’ve seen this paying off greatly. These days it’s hard to imagine anyone launching a streaming service which isn’t available on these devices. Especially for smart TVs such as the Samsung Tizen models, LG’s webOS platform and the army of Android TV and FireTV devices we see a lot of interest these days. When using the native capabilities, it’s hard to do streaming well, especially when a premium experience is to be achieved with ads, DRM, and the many other requirements. We’ve always taken the approach to build from the ground up, so we have fine-grained control of the viewer experience, stability, and reliability. When looking at the speed with which we’re able to deploy within customer solutions these days, it’s clear our approach is paying off and much appreciated by our customers.
While we at THEO are doing a lot already to make streaming better, there is always more to be done. And streaming is pretty complex. There are many companies, each with their own expertise. While ours is in delivery and playback, we realize there are plenty of other expert companies out there. Usually, these are our partners. Through the Alliance we seek to expand that network, distribute the knowledge further, and aim to drive further innovation in the ecosystem.
What Do You Believe is the Biggest Technical Challenge Facing the Streaming Video Industry the SVTA Can Help Address?
When you look at the industry, I think some of the big challenges are clear. Consumption is on the rise, which is making everything more costly. Distribution costs are going up fast and force you to consider scalability of streaming video. In parallel viewer expectations are ever increasing. It’s our fault really, striving towards a higher viewer experience which as a result is set as the new expectation. There is a constant battle for the viewer’s attention. Viewers don’t want to wait for videos to start, don’t want to see loading spinners when there is a change in network capabilities, and they definitely want to see everything first. As a result, to me it’s no surprise industry reports speak about ultra-low latency live streaming at scale and delivering a stellar viewer experience with high bitrates and fast startup as some of the biggest challenges.
We’ve anticipated this. Over 4 years ago, we started working on the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol. Initially this was a project to get a deeper understanding on media delivery, to learn how we could reduce streaming latencies, further optimize startup times, quality throughput and much more. It turns out that project was quite successful. We achieved to develop a streaming protocol which is:
- reaching end-to-end latencies well below one second at scale, a massive improvement compared to the 20s traditional streaming protocols have and even a huge step forward compared to 4-5s the low latency DASH and LL-HLS manage to deliver in practice.
- capable to start video playback in a fraction of a second. It’s blazing fast and a significant reduction in waiting times and possible viewer churn.
- delivered over HTTP, like the MPEG-DASH and HLS protocols in use by most companies today. This also means it is compatible with all your standard CDNs. No need to build out a custom CDN with limited global footprint or scaling capabilities like the socket-based protocols. Just use whatever commercial CDN you want.
- requiring 20% less bits over the wire depending on the configuration. These are gains which are not related to any changes in codecs, simply by optimizing what you are sending over the wire. Keeping in mind the costs we’re seeing customers make to deliver huge amounts of video: this is an important angle for cost saving.
- compatible with existing infrastructure and playback devices. It only integrates on the packager and playback layers. By swapping out these, you can empower your entire pipeline to use the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol. Streams are even compatible with HLS and MPEG-DASH given they are CMAF streams. This allows to update your pipeline one step or platform at a time.
The standard for the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol is already available with the IETF. It’s quite powerful stuff and we’re working with the HESP Alliance to increase adoption and drive the evolution of the protocol.
How Does an Organization Like the SVTA Bring Value to the Industry?
A streaming architecture is a complex web of standards, linking different components, vendors, with different interests and expertise. When you’ve ever attempted to implement a component which is compatible with a standard, you’ll know it’s usually not that easy. There are plenty of interpretations, gaps in the specs and so much more. All of this is leading to compatibility issues. Within our company we’ve always tackled this problem through partnerships. With the Alliance, this goes one step further, not just looking at the point-to-point compatibility problems, but aimed at larger scale challenges in the industry through examples, experiments and trials to provide baselines for larger set-ups to test against.
Pieter-Jan Speelmans
CTO
About
THEO is the leading provider of universal video playback technologies for online media companies and enterprises worldwide. Our flagship product, THEOplayer, is the Universal Video Player that enables hundreds of leading payTV and OTT service providers, broadcasters, and publishers worldwide. Through its feature-rich SDKs and wide video ecosystem pre-integrations, THEO enables video service providers to quickly bring a consistent video playback experience across any device or platform.
As the leader in low latency video delivery, THEO supports both the industry standards LL-HLS and LL-DASH (CMAF-CTE), and has also invented the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP) – a streaming protocol that enables the industry to do something that was previously not possible: to deliver ultra-low latency streams, using low bandwidth, with fast zapping, on any device. Going the extra mile, THEO also works metadata delivery through another in-house grown solution: Enriched Media Streaming Solution (EMSS), allowing for simpler SSAI implementations and interactive video streaming.