MediaKind touts rapid channel creation and monetising live 360

CSI

IBC2019 is shaping up to be about live video with vendors jockeying for position in the race to deliver live streams from the cloud where the promise is speed of launch, tailored business models and latency slashed to near broadcast levels.
https://www.csimagazine.com/csi/MediaKind-touts-rapid-channel-creation-and-monetising-live-360.php

MediaKind is one of the riders.

“The one size fits all media chain we used to talk about is no longer,” says VP Portfolio Management, Stuart Boorn. “We need to deploy a robust media architecture at speed. That means compression and packaging and stream processing in the cloud.”

The company which is 49% owned by Ericsson is moving its entire product suite towards cloud-based, software-defined, as-a-Service offerings.

It has also spotted demand for live 360-degree streaming of music and esports.
“We are evolving what was a very fixed set of applications across our entire portfolio to flexible solutions that enable our customers to more quickly embrace the cloud and new business models,” explained MediaKind’s VP Portfolio Management, Stuart Boorn.
Central to this is the ability to rapidly create end to end channels.

“Streaming VOD or live video services used to take months to set up – now it takes minutes,” says Boorn. “The planning cycle is the thing that takes longest – now you can launch media at speed.”

He claimed MediaKind was the biggest player in this space. “We’re able to launch SaaS in minutes. We can launch cloud-based contribution services very fast. We’re even seeing some success from parts of the business that were not that keen on moving away from hardware.”

New product and services spearheading this effort include a solution for ABR delivery, which targets latency to 3-7 seconds.

Aquila Streaming is a new cloud-based OTT and broadcast headend solution. “It enables you to do pop-up OTT services without need for a physical headend but with the same resilience as a conventional headend,” Boorn explained.

MediaKind is using machine learning to perform SDR to HDR conversion on the fly. “Operators can run HD and transform that to 4K HDR using ML in a very fast and optimised way so that they retain control over the assets and the complete HDR stream rather than cede it to the STB.”

As the industry transitions to 8K, Boorn stressed the importance of creating cost effective HD services today.

“CDN and satellite cost are very relevant to customers. Standard DTT or ATSC are still significant costs. Regardless if it’s for traditional broadcast or streaming, reducing costs means focussing on bandwidth efficiency and optimisation.”

MediaKind has existing alliances with AWS and Google but aims to be even more multi-cloud.

For streaming analytics and monitoring, it is integrating technology from Telestream. That’s interesting because, with its own virtualised channel technologies like OptiQ, Telestream is a rival to MediaKind.

“While we have come from a world of broadcast and broadcaster OTT, Telestream perhaps has more expertise in streaming on-demand and live,” says Murray Barker, MediaKind’s Director Marketing EMEA MediaKind. We are focussed on offering clients the best components and we see Telestream as complementary rather than competitive to us.”

Having made a splash partnering with Deutsche Telekom for a live 360 broadcast of basketball last year, the company says it has more content partners on the cards.
Cygnus 360 Events is designed to enable operators and content owners to complement their existing live services with 360-degree video. The core of this is the ability to capture in high resolutions up to 8K with smart encoding from TiledMedia ensuring that only the immediate field of view of the viewer being streamed.

Barker says, “We’re looking at where next for 360 and are in discussion with key stakeholders in esports. We see gaming colliding with the media space and our 360 technology can help build new experiences in gaming, music events and football.”