The Video Business is in the Best of Times or the Worst of Times? Mark Donnigan Marketing Head at Beamr




Read the original LinkedIn article here: The Best of Times & Worst of Times in the Video Business

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Mark Donnigan is VP Marketing at Beamr, a high-performance video encoding technology company.

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Best & Worst of Times in Video Mark Donnigan Vice President Marketing at Beamr

Can a 4 character innovation conserve us?
This is an interesting question since there is a paradox emerging in the video service where it feels like the the very best of times for numerous, but the worst of times for some.
Here we have Disney revealing that they have actually currently accumulated one billion dollars in loses, and this even before launching their direct to consumer organisation. And after that we have Verizon Media announcing sweeping layoffs which represent an exit from some of the core entertainment service and innovation organisations that were running under the Oath umbrella.

And obviously there isn't a reporting interval that goes by where the cable cutting numbers have not grown, which puts increasing pressure on the video side of the provider service.

Yet, Netflix stock is on the increase again, allowing the business to buy content at levels that need to mystify their rivals. And after that we have news of PlutoTV selling for a mouth watering $340 million dollars in cash to Viacom (deal was revealed on January 22, 2019), proving that the AVOD business design can be feasible and quite important.

5G is going to save us all, right?
This is where I want to get in touch with the huge investments being made in 5G and supply my point of view on why 5G may well break some video business while at the same time make others.

Let's take a look at AT&T.

In the last 4 years AT&T has included 80 billion dollars of additional financial obligation leaving it with more than 160 billion dollars of short and long term financial obligation. Now, 50 billion of this staggering number was the outcome of the 2015 purchase of DirecTV.

My point is not to break down the AT&T debt numbers, I'm not an analyst, however rather provide a viewpoint that the financial circumstance for AT&T going into its huge 5G financial investment cycle, while at the exact same time making understood their strategic initiative to construct up their video service capacity through Warner Media direct to customer offerings like HBO, and DirecTV, is going to be challenged, unless they do something really different with video.

What can a service provider like AT&T do to deal with the financial squeeze, and the overall headwinds to the video service? Such as decreasing pay TV subs, and fragmenting OTT service offerings. This is the question on lots of minds who are examining the future of the video company.

It is my strong belief that common high speed mobile networks powered by 5G will let loose a video tsunami of traffic on the network like we have actually never seen before.
This will be great news for the PlutoTV's of the world and other ingenious video services like Quibi who will have the ability to reach more customers with a much better quality experience as a result of being able to take advantage of a quicker network thanks to 5G.

However, it's bad news for network operators without a plan to monetize this additional traffic load, and obviously incumbents who are intending to manage with incremental enhancements to their services; such as switching from handled to unmanaged, or OTT circulation, while continuing to utilize aging video requirements like H. 264 to provide low resolution mobile profiles.

Video suppliers who continue to under serve their clients will quickly be at a drawback, and ripe for disturbance, I think, from brand-new service designs such as AVOD and the most recent and most efficient video technologies.
The four character video innovation that might conserve the video service.
The four character video standard that I think will play a crucial function in the success of the video service is HEVC, the video codec that is now deployed on two billion gadgets. The following slide discussion offers numbers concerning HEVC device penetration which deserve seeing.


There has actually been much discussed HEVC royalty concerns, something that activated development of an alternative codec which most likely is royalty complimentary. However, while some in the market became preoccupied with questions around licensing and royalties, significant developments have been made on the legal front, consisting of almost every CE gadget maker consisting of HEVC playback support.

For instance, HEVC Advance waived all royalties for digital distribution of content. This means, HEVC encoded content that is streamed will just bring a royalty for the hardware decoder and this is already covered by the receiving device. Offered that you are providing bits over the wire and not by means of a physical system such as Blu-ray Disc, your business will not have to pay any additional royalties, a minimum of not to HEVC Advance.

Now, if it's any convenience, the business who have already done their due diligence on the royalty question, and are streaming HEVC material to customers today, include: Amazon, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Netflix, Sky, Sony, Vudu, Vodafone, and Orange, simply to name a few.

What about HEVC playback assistance?
This is a great and crucial question and perhaps the location of development around the HEVC ecosystem that is least known or comprehended.

Beginning with in-home playback, if your users have purchased a TELEVISION, video game console, Roku box or Apple TV in the last 3 years, you can be almost guaranteed that support for HEVC exists without any requirement for extra licensing or player upgrade.

HEVC is now resident in nearly every SoC that goes in to any mid to high-end CE video device. Because 2015, market reports reveal this group of products numbers 400 million. That's 400 million devices that support HEVC natively. It's an excellent start, but what Click Here to Learn More about mobile?

The information business ScientiaMobile maintains the largest dataset of network device gain access to profiles by getting information from the biggest wireless operators on the planet. This company reports that a tremendous 78% of all iOS smart device demands originate from devices that support hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding. And though iOS devices are predominant in the majority of industrialized markets, Android is still a very crucial gadget profile, and here the ScientiaMobile information is really encouraging with 57% of Android smartphone demands originating from gadgets that support HEVC decoding.

These two numbers are where the photo of HEVC as the most logical video standard to follow H. 264, begins to take shape. Here we have significant video suppliers and tech companies already encoding and distributing content in HEVC. And given the HEVC gadget penetration and hardware support any concerns about a premature transfer to HEVC are not called for. However, what other elements verify the concept that HEVC will be a booster to the video organisation?

LiveU recently published a report called 'State of Live' that revealed growing patterns in HEVC broadcasting, particularly worldwide of sports. And simply in case you have thoughts that making use of HEVC is a passing trend en route to some alternative codec, think about that in 2018, 25% of all LiveU produced traffic was streamed using the HEVC video standard while the only other codec used was H. 264.

The report specified that the high HEVC use was a direct reflection on the increasing need for professional-grade video quality, a trend that was clearly evident at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

So what does this mean for the industry?
The trends we simply analyzed reveal that we have an ever more demanding customer who desires material that displays the full abilities of their viewing gadget, which means greater resolutions and more innovative video requirements like HDR. This same user is now taking in more material, which contributes to further congesting the network.

This customer consumption pattern is hitting a shift from managed services to unmanaged, or OTT distribution and creating technical stress inside incumbent service operators who are facing technical shifts and service model fracturing. Astonishingly, in spite of a very clear risk to the incumbent services who are seeing video subscriber loses mounting into the hundreds of thousands over just a couple of brief quarters, some are continuing with the status quo even while brand-new entrants are releasing services that offer the customer more for less.

This is where completion of the story will be written for some as the very best of times, and for others as the worst of times.
HEVC is more than a technology enabler. It's a video standard that is set to disrupt a lot of the standard operators and early OTT streaming services. Not due to the fact that the customer understands the difference between H. 264, VP9, or perhaps HEVC, however since the consumer is realising that better quality is possible, and as they do, they will migrate to the service who provides the finest quality economically.

At Beamr, our company believe that the evidence of our product and technology quality should be experienced and not simply discussed. Which is why we've created the very best deal that we have seen in the market where you can utilize our codecs in combination with our VOD transcoder, 100% free of charge.


HEVC is now resident in nearly every SoC that goes in to any mid to high-end CE video device. These two numbers are where the image of HEVC as the most rational video requirement to follow H. 264, begins to take shape. Here we have significant video distributors and tech business already encoding and distributing content in HEVC. And given the HEVC gadget penetration and hardware support any worries about an early move to HEVC are not necessitated. What other elements confirm the idea that HEVC will be a booster to the video organisation?


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You can try Beamr's software application video encoders today and get up to 100 hours of complimentary HEVC and H. 264 video transcoding each month. CLICK HERE

Originally published by: Mark Donnigan

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