overdigital-blog

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New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2015/02/19/photoshop-turns-25/

Photoshop Turns 25

Photoshop is turning 25, a quarter century of empowering creatives around to the world. Adobe published a homage in form of an Aerosmith music video. My favorite YouTube video comment so far has been.

I just switched window from Photoshop to Chrome and watched this. Now going back to Photoshop [YouTube comment]

Photoshop is widely used, theNextWeb has an interview with Photoshop’s Senior Product Manager Zorana Gee. On the question how to handle a potential “Photoshop Killer”, she responds.

We’ve been hearing this for a very long time and we always hear it, but the good thing about the Photoshop team is that we always take it seriously. So if there’s something out there that is potentially an ankle-biter, or a even bigger like foot-biter, we’re very attuned to what’s happening in the market.

Meanwhile Jimmy Kimmel is asking – Fashion Week��or Photoshop?

Read the official Adobe blog announcement, and follow the #photoshop25 hashtag on Twitter.

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New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/12/05/consider-building-2015-ready-ad-architecture/

What to Consider When Building a 2015-Ready Ad Architecture

Online video has come a long way, and is increasingly becoming the digital TV of tomorrow, driven by a demographic shift and continuously increasing migration to digital TV consumption.

The Nielsen Q3 ’14 Total Audience report is highlighting the trend with some new data.

Nielsen has released its Q3 ’14 Total Audience report (which is the new name for the previous quarterly Cross-Platform report), the highlight of which is the marked reduction in linear TV viewing across every age group except 65+, with an accompanying surge in online video. I charted the new Q3 ’14 data vs. Q3 ’13 data below.

The big quarter-vs-quarter change that pops out is the 19.2% reduction in linear viewing per week by adults 18-24. This age group is now watching 17 hours, 34 minutes per week, which is 4h, 11m less than the 21h, 45m a year ago. While this group increased its online video usage by 20.7%, that only accounted for 25 incremental minutes per week. [more on Videonuze]

Meanwhile South Park’s latest episode #rehash is talking about changes in gaming demographics, with an increasing popularity of game streaming, rather than directly interacting with the game in the living room.

  What does this mean for your online ad strategy?

Scale will be more important than ever. The TV audience is migrating to digital platforms, which includes the large screen, but with gaming consoles, media hubs or smart TVs as source, rather than the traditional cable box. The business models are aligning, demonstrated by the increased popularity of TV Everywhere and OTT direct-to-consumer offerings.

Advertisement reach is not optional anymore. While certain platforms were considered too insignificant and technically too hard to monetize, this is not an acceptable long term approach anymore.

Data and Targeting is increasingly important to optimize the ad experience. This includes more integrated solutions with Analytics tools, and taking advantage of programmatic advertisement technologies.

To be able to successfully execute a strategy to incorporate this, the following architectural considerations are important.

Reduce redundant workflows that could increase the operating costs and prevent scale. This includes preventing redundant streaming protocols, DRM or advertisement architectures.

Define a base design that allows future growth. As example, even though advertisement might not be a requirement for the initial roll-out, select the right base architecture that will allow it in the future, taking your existing advertisement environment into consideration.

Reduce client complexity for ad monetization, as example for ad insertion, without impacting scale or IAB compliance.

Architect for long-terms scale by using cloud services intelligently.

In the traditional broadcast model scale came for “free”, and monetization options were limited. In the Digital TV model, opportunities, but also technology challenges, are greater. With demographics shifiting, finding a scalable Digital Ad architecture will be the key to success.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/09/08/silverlight-stopped-will-stop-working-chrome-browser-now/

Silverlight Won’t Work In Chrome. What Now?

Episodic television and film content delivered over IP would not be possible without Digital Rights Management (DRM). Implemented correctly, it is invisible to viewers and provides a seamless user experience.

Chrome and Silverlight The Silverlight browser plugin has been an enabler to give consumers secure access to content. Although Sliverlight’s low rates of penetration rates often required users to perform an additional installation or upgrade step, the reward of getting access to high quality content was often worth it.

Google is now taking steps to deprecate browser plugins in Chrome browser. This transition began with a blog post in September 2013, with the Google Chrome team announcing the deprecation of NPAPI, the interface used by plugins in the Chrome browser, including the Silverlight plugin. Because it has been embedded into the Chrome browser within a secure sandbox environment using the Pepper interface, and is auto-updated and protected by the Chrome browser, Flash Player has not been affected by the changes in Chrome.

NPAPI support will be completely removed from Chrome. We expect this to happen before the end of 2014. – (Google Chrome team)

This means by end of this year Silverlight will stop functioning in the Chrome browser, which represents roughly a 45% audience based on June 2014 browser statistics.

Meanwhile OSX is getting an upgrade to the 64-bit version of Chrome, which is now removing the support for 32-bit plugins.

The new version, though, drops support for 32-bit plug-ins — software like Microsoft’s Silverlight or Adobe Systems’ Flash Player that extend a browser’s abilities. Chrome has its own version of Adobe’s Flash Player built in, which means the most-used plug-in isn’t a problem, but others won’t work. (via CNET)

Although Silverlight has a 64-bit version for Windows, it does not have the equivalent for OSX, meaning 64-bit Chrome users on Mac won’t have access to Silverlight-protected content. Silverlight-enabled premium content will not work in certain Chrome browser configurations, even before the support of the Silverlight plugin in Chrome officially ends towards end of this year.

The migration path To avoid a suboptimal viewer experience given the expected changes, Silverlight-based players need to migrate to a new technology platform for content protection.

There are three paths to enable DRM protection for users in a post-Silverlight world:

Switch to an HTML5-based DRM solution for all browsers. This currently requires licensing different DRM solutions for each browser. For Mozilla Firefox the DRM HTML5 technology is Adobe Primetime DRM.

Switch to Adobe Primetime for DRM protection, and use a single DRM solution across all browsers, mobile platforms, gaming consoles, and OTT devices. Use Flash Player to cover DRM for desktop browsers.

Deploy a hybrid model with a mix of Flash/Silverlight for certain browsers, and HTML5 DRM for others. As example, Primetime DRM for HTML5 for Firefox, and Primetime DRM with Flash Player for all other browsers.

Given that multiple DRMs create more complexity for licensing and infrastructure, Adobe Primetime DRM is the only solution that provides a single DRM environment on the desktop. In addition, Adobe Primetime DRM can be used for mobile platforms, gaming consoles and OTT devices, providing a highly simplified content protection workflow.

Adobe Primetime DRM is part of the DECE, and was recently named the market leader for DRM technologies by ABIresearch.

Conclusion Silverlight is going away. Thankfully there are options on the market to provide a smooth transition for users, but it requires a migration, and the time to act is now.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/08/18/streaming-live-space/

Streaming Live From Space

Wondering how good a video connection is to space, and how work is beyond earth? Watch astronauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev work on the international space station (ISS).

Live video from the International Space Station includes internal views when the crew is on-duty and Earth views at other times. The video is accompanied by audio of conversations between the crew and Mission Control. This video is only available when the space station is in contact with the ground. During “loss of signal” periods, viewers will see a blue screen [via Ustream Channel]

Watch the live stream on the Ustream channel.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/08/13/virtual-reality-will-change-way-consume-media/

Why Virtual Reality Will Change the Way We Consume Media

Similar to 3D cinema, the roots of Virtual Reality are many decades in the past, specially in the early nineties with some of the first versions of VR headsets coming to market. Naturally they failed the high expectations set by movies like Thron, which resulted in the industry moving to the less complex rendering of projected 3d on 2d screens.

Meanwhile stereoscopic 3D television made a comeback the last years, but didn’t fulfill its expectations in terms of sales and consumer reach, to a point where it is in decline again, and replaced by 4k marketing to sell new television sets.

Now with the 2014 version of Virtual Reality we are facing a remarkable breaking point - not only did the technology catch up to create a truly immerse virtual illusion, other areas of technology innovations are all contributing to the experience. 4k becomes a lot more attractive when used in VR headset technology due to the close distance to the screen, and in parallel smartphone displays are constantly increasing in resolution.

It is the perfect storm – the pioneer of next generation VR experience, Oculus, got acquired by Facebook for 2 billion even before launch of the commercial product, Sony is working on their own PS4 VR headset, Project Morpheus, Samsung showing its first VR prototypes that use their smartphones, and Google Cardboard is showcasing a simplistic approach to VR. It is a vision that gained a lot of momentum. With its success, it will trigger the revival of a whole industry – more demand for new forms of content, more demand for hardware, and finally an experience that gives consumers a good reason to upgrade.

A technology not only made for gaming, as one of the most popular Oculus Rift VR applications shows.

The use cases on a sudden become very broad – e-commerce, social, a virtual movie night in a cinema with remotely located friends. A revolution in consumer experience is about to begin - are you ready player one?

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/07/07/smart-ecosystems-will-king/

Smart Ecosystems Will Be King!

Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Verizon, Comcast and others are investing vigorously to become the content gatekeepers of the future.

As many of you know, my posts tend to be centered around the evolving world of streaming video & television. The pace of change, acquisitions and announcements in this space have accelerated in 2014 as the leading media companies begin to retool to better service changing consumer preferences. Over the long weekend I had the opportunity to analyze some of these changes and consider what consumers should expect in the near future in regards to digital services and video in particular.

The most important observation I determined is that neither content or device will be “king”. Smart Ecosystems will be. Let me unpack that a bit. Apple & Google at their recent developer conferences outlined 2 very similar visions for the future of device interaction centered around the presence of their respective operating systems Apple’s (IOS/MacOS), Google’s (Android/ChromeOS). While announcing its Fire Phone, Amazon also outlined a series of FireOS features only available to participants within its developing ecosystem. Microsoft, Samsung, LG and Sony are building their own ecosystems utilizing their own mobile software while simultaneously licensing Android.

As the digital media market evolves consumers are being encouraged to choose a single ecosystem for all of their digital interactions anchored by their choice of smartphone. App developers and content companies are being asked to develop unique experiences for consumers based on the operating environment.

Below are a few of the services now linked to what I’ve begun calling smart ecosystems.

1. App Stores

2. App Notifications – including Information Cards

3. Cloud Storage Services

4. Voice Search & Commands, Image Search (Amazon), Motion Control (Microsoft)

5. Content Casting

6. Across Device Presence Awareness & Content Sharing

7. Backend capabilities like DRM, Video Playback & Software Development Languages

What does the rise of these smart ecosystems mean to content companies and consumers?

First and most importantly – In order to build and manage a content businesses companies now need to pay particular attention to the unique capabilities of each ecosystem. Software Development teams will have to become familiar with the API & SDK libraries of each of these providers. As service offerings within the ecosystems begin to differentiate; developers and business leaders must evaluate what features to deploy with their apps and the business benefits of doing so.

Browser based experiences are on the decline. Browser based internet experiences dominated desktop computing and found some footing on smart phones. With the rising complexity of involved in building experiences for the smart ecosystems we should expect more investment in Apps that utilize the unique features mentioned above.

The smartphone will continue to be our digital information hub – but will not dominate content consumption and interaction in the future. Mobile operating systems are being translated to power a growing menu of devices. These devices each offer a unique opportunity to ease the burden of interacting with digital information for the consumer. Tablets, televisions, video game consoles, watches, health monitoring devices, home monitoring devices, and cars are becoming smart. Each offering a newer more compelling view into digital information and experiences previously only available on our smart phones.

Video holds a special place within the smart ecosystem because of its ability to attract consumer attention and its value to advertisers. Video content is the most compelling form of digital information and source of entertainment. Audio content is considered second. The smart ecosystem providers are aware of videos special status and are utilizing their video franchises to influence our device choices.

Finally, building video applications & experiences across devices no longer stands as media’s main challenge; building these experiences across ecosystems now takes precedence. Building Apps and mobile experiences for Android and IOS devices have defined the last 3 years of video based media investment. The invention of the iPad tablet and consumer adoption of the tablets being the key motivator. In the coming year(s) electronic device makers intend to invest in smart televisions and connected-tv devices with the intention of expanding on the consumers appetite for digitally delivered video.

Delivering video to Smart-TV’s represents a larger more complex business opportunity than tablet video or smartphone video and will require content owners to reconsider current investments. Each smart ecosystem provider offers a unique vision and set of tools to attract audience and better monetize video. With a bit of experimentation content companies may find unique opportunities in one ecosystem that may be lacking in another.

App developers will face native competition from the smart ecosystem providers who view video delivery services as a growth opportunity for their device and operating system franchises. App developers will compete with Youtube and Google Play on Android; iTunes on Apple devices, XBox Live on Microsoft devices, and Prime on Amazon devices. These native services will surely push the envelop when it comes to utilizing the unique features of their respective operating systems. The smart ecosystem providers are also well positioned to earn revenue from the paid App downloads & inApp purchases of third party apps.

These are the new gatekeepers for digital media. Traditional video services like those provided by your cable company have taken notice and plan to offer compelling smart ecosystems of their own. (I plan to elaborate on this in a future post).

As investments in digital video technologies continue to scale we should all expect these new smart ecosystem providers to take the lead. With their strong consumer brands, device acceptance, existing video & video-game distribution platforms, operating system dominance, and desire to intelligently surface all forms of digital entertainment to all consumers; these ecosystem providers have positioned themselves as gatekeepers for the future of all media.

Guest Post by: Clive Henry

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/06/21/difference-encrypted-hls-phls-hls-drm/

The Difference Between Encrypted HLS, PHLS and HLS with DRM

Streaming technologies tend to differ in formats, but also within a format have variations with different characteristics. Security with HLS is one of those cases – the default model is fairly public and standardized, while additional security layers can often create confusion about the terminology.

From an Adobe Primetime perspective, here are the different security deployment models for HLS streaming content, ranked in reverse order of security.

HLS without content protection.

AES 128 encrypted HLS with clear key encryption and keyserver

PHLS without a DRM server or keyserver

HLS with Primetime DRM / Adobe Access DRM Server

The technical differences between the options are as follows.

  HLS without content protection

Standard HLS based on the IEFT specs without any form of content protection. This means content that reaches the client is unencrypted, and can be easily played locally and redistributed. This is often used for lower value content that is not meant to be protected, or sometimes for live content, only valuable in the moment of the event, with later redistribution/copying inherently less valuable. It does not require any sort of key server.

Target platforms: Unprotected HLS is supported on all platforms that have HLS support, though implementation quality can vary greatly.

  AES 128 encrypted HLS with clear key encryption and keyserver

The content is encrypted with AES 128, and the manifest contains a link to a key that allows the decryption of the HLS content.

#EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=AES-128,URI="http://www.myserver.com/mykey.key"

This alone is not providing security, since once the key is obtained, the content can be easily decrypted and redistributed. There are few mechanisms in place that allow to protect the key, such as serving it over HTTPs, or different token authentication models. It secures the content against most standard users trying to get the content, but is not considered DRM level content protection.

Target platforms: Encrypted HLS is supported on most platforms that have HLS support, though implementation quality can vary greatly.

  PHLS

PHLS, or protected HLS, is an Adobe Primetime content protection scheme that embeds the key in the the HLS manifest, and secures it robustly in a PHLS enabled client, such as Adobe Primetime Player SDK. It is the HLS equivalent to PHDS, which applies the same security mechanism to HDS, but available across mobile and digital home platforms as well. The security level of PHLS is equivalent to PHDS.

The PHLS enabled client can enforce DRM features, such as the ability to enforce output protection, policies, SWF or application whitelisting, and jailbreak detection, but PHLS cannot be considered a DRM solution due to the lack of a DRM server. Its design philosophy is to provide the ease of deployment of RTMPe in combination with increased security over AES 128 encrypted HLS with clear key protection.

Adobe Media Server and Adobe Primetime Streaming Server can package and encrypt PHLS content, both just-in-time or in advance.

Target platforms: Platforms that have Primetime Player support, which include Desktop (Flash), Android, iOS, Roku, Xbox 360, and more to come.

  HLS with Primetime DRM / Adobe Access DRM Server

HLS with Primetime DRM is closely related to PHLS, but uses a Primetime / Adobe Access DRM server, which is a requirement to be a full DRM. Adobe offers this as on-premise deployment as well as cloud hosted solution.

Features that makes it an industry wide accepted DRM include.

Application whitelisting to ensure that protected content only plays within approved applications from trusted packagers

Domain management to bind content to a domain of devices all sharing a license under your business rules

Device filtering so you can exclude certain devices from specific content based on screen type, OS, or hardware capabilities

Key and license rotation you can set to a certain number of seconds or to end-of-program, as you prefer

License chaining that supports a root license encrypted and bound to a certain device, with automatic updating of all related leaf licenses

Selectable output controls to guard against consumer recording

More information in the Adobe Primetime DRM datasheet.

Adobe Media Server and Adobe Primetime Streaming Server can package and encrypt HLS with Primetime DRM content, both just-in-time or in advance.

Target platforms: Platforms that have Primetime Player support, which include Desktop (Flash / HTML5), Android, iOS, Roku, Xbox 360, and more to come.

  What is the right level of content protection for me?

If you don’t know if you require a DRM solution, you likely won’t. DRM is used for licensed content that requires legally DRM protection to be able to distribute it.

If you are looking for protected content that can be played on a variety of devices, AES 128 encrypted HLS with clear key encryption and key server provides the most cross platform compatibility.

The easiest to deploy content protection option is PHLS, since it does not require any key server, and provides a high level of security out of the box. It requires an Adobe Primetime enabled client.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/06/19/ad-blocking-impacts-online-industry/

How Ad Blocking Impacts the Online Industry

Is ad blocking a great user experience improvement or a huge problem for premium content on the web? Obviously it highly depends on who you talk to, but the question should go beyond simply users trying to get content without ads, or companies trying to maximize their online revenue.

How does it change the nature of online monetization? To better understand the impact of ad blocking today, let’s look at some recent trends.

Google Trend for “Ad Block”, June 2014

The curve clearly shows an increasing interest in ad blocking. Even though mostly a desktop problem, Google made a move last year to prevent it from expanding to Android.

Google has removed all ad blocking apps from Google Play, its online store for Android applications, on the basis that they interfere with other services [via Information Week]

There are certain demographics that are hit most, as example gaming site Destructoid announced that half of their online ads are being blocked.

I needn’t point out to anyone that the videogames press has shrunk at record speed this year. Whether you’re a freelancer for an established site or well-fed at a temporarily funded business that relies on ads, this ad-block trend will eventually take a slice from your livelihood. Take stock, do your diligence, and have a quiet conversation with your staff and readers about it. Yes, it is a business issue, but it also a matter of the viability of the independent press.

Does this mean sites need to fall back to subscription pay walls, which will inevitably lead to less “free” consumer choices? Is the Internet eventually the wrong medium to pursue business models that came from a traditional background?

The Guardian is asking if a “tiny plugin is holding the web’s biggest business hostage”, referring to Ad Block Plus, one of the most popular solutions.

Adblock Plus’s model is straightforward: unless a site is on its “whitelist”, then it blocks all the ads shown there. And, as it makes clear, even big websites whose advertising methods (text only, no flashy gimmicks) it finds acceptable must hand over a share of their advertising revenue for the reward of being on the “whitelist” and showing their ads to visitors. 

Currently there are just 148 sites on the whitelist out of 777 which applied, according to a blogpost from Adblock Plus. For those which have to pay – which includes Google, Amazon and Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine – the fee for not having their ads blocked is reportedly the cash equivalent of 30% of the revenue generated by showing ads. [via TheGuardian]

In addition, hardware devices like the “Ad Trap” filter out ad traffic on network level, even though the price will very unlikely lead to ad blocking rates of 50%.

Ad Blocking has been around for years, but recent trends indicate that it will change the industry, and it is worth paying attention to - both for the consumer and the industry.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/06/18/worldcup-2014-breaking-online-streaming-numbers/

WorldCup 2014 Is Breaking Online Streaming Numbers

As expected, the World Cup is starting to break online streaming numbers again, with the majority of the matches happening during US business hours.

Here is some interesting data for the USA Ghana match published by ESPN yesterday.

The match also garnered a 469,000 average minute audience on WatchESPN, which set a product record for an event which had a total of 1,400,000 viewers and 62,400,000 minutes viewed for the contest.

In addition to its record audience for USA vs. Ghana, WatchESPN generated its second best event ever in unique viewers for Monday’s Germany vs. Portugal contest with 1,100,000 viewers. [via ESPN press release]

  In addition, a media reporter for the Sports Business Journal indicates an impressive amount of concurrent viewers.

ESPN says WatchESPN had 525,000 concurrent streams for Mexico-Cameroon match today (not including AppleTV & some other platforms).

— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) June 13, 2014

Moreover Akamai is reporting some new record numbers.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup is still in its opening round, but the soccer tourney has already broken the record for peak amount of online-video streaming bandwidth as delivered by Akamai Technologies, and also set new high-water marks for ESPN’s and Univision’s digital-video services.

Monday’s Germany-Portugal match drove a peak of 4.3 terabits per second of streaming video on Akamai’s content-delivery network, blowing past the previous high of 3.5 Tbps as measured for the U.S.-Canada men’s hockey semifinal during the 2014 Winter Olympics. [via Variety]

Amazingly we are already seeing those numbers, although the World Cup only just started. There are many more games ahead of us this year, including some decisive games for the US team.

This shows another reason to consider scalability as one of the key metrics for success in a growing TV Everywhere landscape.

Adobe’s Jeremy Helfand provides some interesting insight in TV Everywhere growth in this interview – Adobe Primetime provides the technology for the majority of TV Everywhere authentications in the US.

We saw a 250% increase in TV Everywhere streams this past quarter.

Watch the World Cup on WatchESPN.com.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/06/16/fresh-design-overdigital-com/

A Fresh Design for Overdigital.com

Some of you might have wondered what happened to my frequent blog posts. Rest assured, there are many in the making as we speak, with a potential new guest contributor. Meanwhile, I refreshed the theme of Overdigital.com to give it a new look for 2014, which hopefully helps with readability, and overall usability.

Are you interested in specific technology topics I should cover in the coming weeks? Let me know in the comments.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/05/22/current-state-net-neutrality-pay-attention/

The Current State of Net Neutrality and Why to Pay Attention

There has been recent intense discussions on net neutrality, and it is clearly a decisive moment in the evolution of the internet. But why is it so important. To understand the background, it is useful to look at the history of net neutrality.

Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. [via Wikipedia]

While the EU has had a few jurisdictions to support net neutrality, the topic is heavily under discussion in the US.

  FCC policy

(2005-2010) 

The initial proposal was to allow “any lawful content, any lawful application, any lawful device, and any provider” to have equal traffic priorities.

(2010-present)

The FCC Open Internet Order 2010, which banned cable television and telephone service providers from preventing access to competitors or certain web sites.

2014

On January 14, 2014, the DC Circuit Court determined that the FCC has no authority to enforce Network Neutrality rules, as service providers are not identified as “common carriers”.

On February 19, 2014 the FCC announced plans to formulate new rules to enforce net neutrality while complying with the court rulings.On April 23, 2014, in a press statement, the Federal Communications Commission announced their new proposed rules which would allow Broadband Internet service providers, such as Comcast and Verizon, the “right to build special lanes” with faster connection speeds for companies, such as Netflix, Disney or Google, willing to pay a higher price. Their customers would have preferential access [via Wikipedia]

Obviously this new ruling changes significantly the dynamics in the market in context of the importance of fast Internet connectivity, and limits the ability to create competitive high bandwidth broadband content offerings that don’t include payments to the ISPs.

  Relationship between content providers and ISPs

Dan Rayburn of StreamingMediaBlog.com looked at existing connections between content providers and ISPs.

 All of the information I provide in the chart below is from public information that anyone can lookup simply by knowing the networks Autonomous System number (AS) and looking at their peers. [...]

Based on the AS lookups I did, here are the companies that have direct interconnects with various ISPs. I didn’t look at every ISP out there or every content owner, simply some of the larger ones. [via StreamingMediaBlog.com]

Image Credit StreamingMediaBlog.com

  Dan concludes;

Historically companies like Netflix have always paid for their transit connectivity, or Internet delivery costs. The 60% of broadband customers who do not use Netflix, should not suddenly have to pay for the network transit/interconnect costs of others because Netflix feels their Internet costs should now shift to all ISP customers.

Meanwhile a petition to “Restore Net Neutrality By Directing the FCC to Classify Internet Providers as ‘Common Carriers’” reached 105,572 signatures, which triggered a public response by the White House.

Preserving an open Internet is vital not just to the free flow of information, but also to promoting innovation and economic productivity. Because of its openness, the Internet has allowed entrepreneurs — with just a small amount of seed money or a modest grant — to take their innovative ideas from the garage or the dorm room to every corner of the Earth, building companies, creating jobs, improving vital services, and fostering even more innovation along the way.

Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide [complete response on petitions.whitehouse.gov]

Future

The final ruling could significantly shape the direction of premium content delivered over the internet, which makes it an important time to pay attention. On May 15 a FCC 3:2 vote on a proposal indicated a direction.

While the rules are meant to prevent Internet providers from knowingly slowing data, they would allow content providers to pay for a guaranteed fast lane of service. Some opponents of the plan, those considered net neutrality purists, argue that allowing some content to be sent along a fast lane would essentially discriminate against other content

[...]

That essentially means that as long as an Internet service provider like Comcast or Verizon does not slow the service that a consumer buys, the provider can give faster service to a company that pays to get its content to consumers unimpeded. [more on NYTimes.com]

While the discussion is still on-going, this is an important crossroad for digital video delivery.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/04/14/adobe-primetime-player-mpeg-dash-4k-demo/

Adobe Primetime Player MPEG-Dash and 4k Demo

The Adobe Primetime team showed an interesting tech preview at NAB 2014, MPEG-Dash and 4k playback with Primetime Player in Flash Player.

It is part of the official Primetime 2.0 announcement.

4K support ensures that Primetime customers can deliver the highest resolution content to the latest set of digital home devices allowing consumers to enjoy stunning viewing experiences. Primetime leverages the latest UHDTV hardware capabilities to ensure fully optimized performance. Support for 4K is being previewed at NAB and is expected to ship in 2014.

Primetime 2.0 also offers support for the new MPEG-DASH streaming format in its core video engine layer. Support of the new industry standard gives programmers and operators the flexibility to deliver consistent video experiences across devices using their preferred format. MPEG-DASH support will ship by the end of 2014.

While this is a preview, and the Flash Player version number under no means indicates a release date, the resolution of the demo is quite impressive.

  The feature is targeted for Primetime customers and premium content, therefore don’t be surprised if some of your favorite content is becoming available in much higher resolution later this year.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/04/06/wwe-wrestlemania-xxx-defining-top-history/

How WWE WrestleMania XXX Is Defining Over-The-Top History

World Wrestling Entertainment, founded 1952, recently unveiled the WWE Network, a streaming online subscription channel, providing an over-the-top 24/7 channel, including all WWE pay-per-view events.

In the context of most premium channels in the USA only available through higher tier cable subscriptions, the approach is pretty unique and potentially disruptive.

In an interview with Time, Michelle D. Wilson, chief revenue and marketing officer for WWE, stated their reason for bypassing cable companies and instead only offering the WWE Network online: “Digital over-the-top offerings represent the future, and given that our passionate fans consume five times more online video content than non-WWE viewers and over-index for purchasing online subscriptions such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, we believe the time is now for a WWE Network”.

In response to the announcement, DirecTV issued a statement saying that they are re-evaluating whether to continue carrying WWE’s pay-per-view events. [via Wikipedia]

WrestleMania XXX will the first time be available through WWE Network, broadcasted in digital form over the Internet.

While ordering WrestleMania through pay-per-view television costs between $55 to $70, WWE has also made WrestleMania XXX available live through its new WWE Network online streaming service, which costs $9.99 per month with a six-month contract; thus WrestleMania would be the first event available simultaneously on pay-per-view and on the WWE Network. [via Wikipedia]

The success of this new model will define the direction of over-the-top offering in the future, and has the potential to make history.

WrestleMania XXX is airing on WWE Network tonight.

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New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/03/24/tv-everywhere-2014-beyond-path-true-scalability/

TV Everywhere 2014 and Beyond - The Path to True Scalability

The modern cable industry, at least in the US, has been forcefully moving ahead and endorsing TV Everywhere as their digital model – the ability to access online content as part of the cable subscription, migrating the high value revenue stream to the digital age. On the other end, Netflix has been trying to create more original content to move beyond the exclusivity of cable.

Even though there are many different opinions what model is the best, it’s clear that TV Everywhere has been constantly raising the quality of content accessible online. With it comes an interesting challenge – scalability. Many projections during the last 25 years proclaimed that the web will collapse due to increased traffic, but we can now stream 4K content online, and often higher quality video content than available with traditional broadcast technology.

To reach true scale, there are still a few obstacles:

Although TVE popularity is increasing, we are nowhere close to broadcast size audiences yet – once this changes, scalability will be the business deciding factor.

The nature of broadcast is linear. Digital video provides more flexibility for time shifted viewing, but linear or live viewing events are where the excitement is (live sport events, season premieres, breaking news, etc.)

Data from the Adobe Digital Index underlines the trend, with live sporting events becoming increasingly more popular online.

What does this mean for broadcast’s digital future? Will the internet finally collapse? It’s unlikely, since the Internet survived the massive amount of traffic coming from main stream video services such as YouTube or Netflix. But mastering scalable technology will be a business advantage.

  How to scale

Even though scalability can be influenced by many different factors, and there is certainly not a golden bullet, there are some areas that greatly lower the risk of issues.

Cloud based services

Running operations in the cloud often can provide a quick fix for device reach and abstraction across clients, but it is the number one bottleneck to your operation. True cloud scale is rarely spinning up a few additional servers, but requires in-depth knowledge of scaling techniques. This means to rely on an experienced third party for cloud scalibiltiy, or a solution that provides scale by not overusing the cloud.

The Network

Mastering the lower level mechanics of networks is an important skill. Most of it has been solved for us today, but understanding how to increase caching efficiencies to maximize CDN performance leads directly to a better user experience, and more engagement.

Streaming Technologies

The fragmentation of streaming technologies can be significant if not architecturally addressed.

Streaming protocols

DRM technologies

Authentication

Measurement

Lower complexity and an architecture with a single workflow in mind provides the foundation for true scalabiliy. It allows to focus capacity on certain systems, vs. trying to stretch it over parallel workflows. The same for authentication services, and measurement. While in the traditional cable world authentication and transactions occurred way ahead of time (think cable subscription), access authentication to digital content is often happening very close to or during the digital event.

  The Future

We need to be ready for scale, it is unavoidable. Usage patterns are shifting, and the generation of digital natives is here. We can influence our faith by making architecturally smart decisions and consider scalability as one of the lead factors. It might not influence the near future, but will be the key for exponentially future growth.

[overdigital-blog]

New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/03/03/squiggle-racer-addicting-8-bit-racing-game-interview/

Squiggle Racer, Addicting 8-Bit Racing Game - Interview

Squiggle Racer is a down to the core racing game for mobile, developed by the Comb Over Charlie creator Charlie Schulze.

The game has been already featured on DailyAppShow (video in this post), and Today’s iPhone, and shows that fun gameplay can be achieved with simple concepts.

Here is my interview with Charlie.

Squiggle Racer is quite a different game than Comb Over Charlie, where did you get the idea from?

I’ve always loved those old school racing games. I remember playing the Super Sprint as a kid at our local Roller Skating rink / arcade.

Why “Squiggle”?

Squiggle goes back to funny nicknames my wife and I used to come up with for our dog RIley. I used to call him Professor Squigglebottoms when he would come to me while teaching at a Portfolio design school in Atlanta, GA.

What technologies did you use for each platform, and why?

For the iOS version I decided to just go native. I would normally have used Cocos2D & box2d, but instead this time used SpriteKit and its built in physics for detecting contact. I wanted to see all what SpriteKit had to offer, and it’s impressively easy to use, but hopefully there are a few features they will add sensors / motors for the physics.

For the android version I ended up using Adobe AIR with some native extensions for Google Play. I have not done a lot with lua or unity in recent years and it was quick for me to pick up the flash / flex workflow.

How long did porting take to Android?

The port to Android ended up taking about 2 days. I already had the graphics and concept complete on iOS so the workflow was extremely fast.

How was the first week after launch?

This week has been pretty crazy. So far the game is well received. I normally get two types of feedback “I hate you for making this game, it’s so addictive” or “It’s too hard, I couldn’t get a single lap”. Hopefully they will keep trying.

What is next for Squiggle Racer?

Coming up in the immediate future are small bug fixes. After that I have a long list of v1.5 / 2.0 features including easier cars, more tracks, some pretty cool new animations and maybe some enhanced leaderboards & achievements.

  Squiggle Racer for iOS

Squiggle Racer for Google Play

Squiggle Racer for Amazon App Store for Android

[overdigital-blog]

New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/02/19/adobe-primetime-awards/

Adobe Primetime Awards

After showcasing a lot of the technology of Adobe Primetime on this blog, it’s hard to ignore the awards slowly gathering in the office.

This includes the recent SIIA Content CODiE Award  for 2014 Best Video Platform for Media & Publishers, and the Digiday Video Award for Best Video Technology 2013. If you want to learn more about the technology, I would encourage to explore the Adobe Primetime category and the official Adobe Primetime blog.

  Here are some helpful posts that introduce Adobe Primetime.

Adobe Primetime Explained (Part 1/4) – Ad Insertion

Adobe Primetime Explained (Part 2/4) – Solving the Android Video Problem

Adobe Primetime Explained (Part 3/4) – A Single Protocol and DRM

Adobe Primetime Explained (Part 4/4) – Bringing It All Together

  Deskop demo:

Technology Demo: Adobe Primetime 1.2 With Native HLS Support in Flash Player

[overdigital-blog]

New Post has been published on Overdigital.com

New Post has been published on http://www.overdigital.com/2014/02/02/watch-superbowl-2014-online-today/

Where to Watch the Superbowl 2014 Online Today

Are you getting ready to join one of the largest sport events in history, with more than 100 million viewers each year? Fox will offer the event both as traditional broadcast, but also online and mobile with their FOX Sports Go application. Normally this is only for TV subscribers, but for the Superbowl event, it will be unlocked and accessible to everyone.

This is certainly a smart decision to prevent live streaming piracy given the popularity of the event, and increases the online advertisement opportunity.

Talking about advertisement, ensure to follow the ads, when the brightest minds of the TV ad industry gather to make an impact on millions of enthusiastic viewers.

More ads in the Hulu AdZone.

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