Multichannel Networks and the Changing Face of TV

IBC

Just as multichannel networks (MCNs) threatened to pull the millennial audience away from TV for good, operators have spent big to get them on board. It's a synergy that benefits both parties and a topic covered in depth at the IBC2016 Conference.

http://www.ibc.org/hot-news/multichannel-networks-and-the-changing-face-of-tv

MCNs started out linking millennial content creators with video aggregation platforms, principally YouTube. Sandwiched between the content creators and the audience for YouTube channels, “uncharitably you could call them middlemen,” says Ampere Analysis research director Richard Broughton, and “that model had to evolve.”

YouTube revenue was $5bn in 2015 of which the Google-platform took 45% with MCNs taking the remaining $2.9bn, most of which flowed back to the original content creators leaving MCNs with little margin.

In response MCNs began to verticalize to get closer to content creators. Broughton explains, “If you can produce content you no longer have to give away the majority of revenue that comes from advertising.” For example, Tastemade, for example, concentrates on food, Stylehaul on fashion.

A parallel strategy was to work more closely with brands and ease the reliance on pre-roll ads. Examples include Fullscreen's partnership with GroupM to form influencer marketing group Playa, which will exclusively service GroupM and WPP clients.

“Influencer marketing matters where the big agencies, that have historically bought lots of TV and lots of preroll ads, recognise this as a way to market and reach customers," says Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos.

MCNs gained greater leverage to negotiate distribution deals when Facebook entered the video game. Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter offer other options, in particular to reach millennials on mobile devices.

In a flat to declining market broadcast and payTV stakeholders have identified MCNs as a source of growth. Those who bet early have seen some serious returns on their investment. DreamWorks acquired Awesomeness TV for $95m in 2013 then sold a quarter stake to Hearst valuing the MCN at $350m. Verizon took a subsequent 24.5% stake to value the network at $650m.

“MCNs are typically being sold at 25 to 35 times revenue, a figure which reflects their massive growth rate and longer term strategic importance,” says Broughton. “They are seeing 100-200% growth every year so you can imagine, over the course of five years, that the initial 35 x ratio might come down to something of a more typical 5 x ratio.”

MTG took control of Swedish MCN Splay; Fullscreen is owned by AT&T and The Chernin Group; The RTL Group has invested in MCN Divimove and Canadian MCN BroadbandTV which itself recently acquired Indian MCN YoBoHo.

Aside from large dividends for their founders - what do MCN's get out of the deal? “Many MCNs have very low margins, almost negative numbers, so allying with a major broadcaster or content creator makes sense,” summarises Broughton. “They can access ad sales teams for cross media campaigns and tap into big brands and production expertise. Alliances also offer a way of getting content onto broadcast platforms which is still where the bulk of money is. Plus it means investment. There are only so many times an MCN can go back to the market to raise capital.”

With fewer MCNs left to snap up, media organisations have a choice: build their own, buy one at great expense, or attempt to curate them.

Going the latter route, Sky, has launched Sky on Demand via Sky Q which curates content from digital creators including Barcroft Media and GoPro. Vice is launching European linear channel Viceland, with Sky in September.

While Google thinks millennials will pay for ad-free content on YouTube Red, MCNs are also launching their own SVOD initiatives as Fullscreen did in March – cutting out the middleman.

“MCNs exist less as aggregated networks of channels for advertising and more as sophisticated organisations that encompass the entire spectrum of content creation and delivery,” says Mano Kulasingam, Co-CEO, Digiflare. “Whether through direct-to-viewer models or by integration with pay TV platforms, MCNs will be able to enhance production values, acquire new talent, and obtain a higher degree of personalisation in the design and functionality of the platform.”

In the next few years, the ability to exercise control over the way their content is discovered and delivered is going be a fundamental part of any MCN’s strategy for reaching and engaging new audiences.

Explore ‘The New Broadcasters: The rise of internet TV networks’ as part of the Platform Futures conference stream at IBC2016 and network with executives running MCNs including Damon Berger, VP, Business Development, Fullscreen;  Matt Campion, Founder and Creative Director, Spirit Media; Scott Ehrlich, CEO, The QYOU; Sam Barcroft, Founder and CEO, Barcroft and Bengu Atamer, Co-founder and Director, BuzzMyVideos.

Cloud Cover

Digital TV Europe p24

As operators recognize the limitations of traditional in-home service provision we are starting to see a steady rise in Cloud technology adoption.

http://media2.telecoms.com/e-books/DTVE/magazine/junjul16/

In order to match the heightened consumer expectation for TV everywhere, all service providers have cloud technologies on their roadmap. Rollout is hampered in many cases by existing investments in legacy on premises equipment, copyright and legislative issues and some technical nuts which have yet to be cracked.

The benefits, though, of a shift to Cloud are widely understood. As John Carlucci, president & CTO, Alticast, notes, “What’s important about Cloud is how it helps operators to break free from the bounds of the STB and use DevOps models and ubiquitous IT tools like HTML5 and JavaScript for app development.”

It's also worth observing that Cloud tech promises to revolutionise business models even further. “The next big step is providing events-based channels and disaster recovery capability and ultimately doing full linear playout of sophisticated channels in the Cloud,” says James Gilbert, co-founder, Pixel Power. “In that light, cloud DVR and ad insertion are good tests of the infrastructure, but in terms of the future, the Cloud is about much more.”

Cloud DVR

Some reflection of this shift in thinking is in the terminology, which has shifted from RS-DVR to nDVR to, now, cDVR. While increasingly being deployed, “there's no big bang shift in behaviour” as Accedo's EMEA VP Adam Nightingale.

Accedo expect over 50 per cent of cDVR penetration to have occured by 2022, roughly the timeframe which Ericsson forecasts too. Parks Associates research predicts cDVR subscribers worldwide will total 24 million by 2018.

Nokia, which took over French firm Alcatel Lucent for $17bn, says it has nine deployments for cDVR including Liberty Global, Telefonica, Numericable and Vodafone Portugal.

South Korean sat-caster KT Skylife is among those using Alticast solutions to deliver either cDVR or hybrid systems that leverage the STB and Cloud. Spanish cable service provider Euskaltel launched cDVR last year using a Nagra solution to offer a multiscreen service on legacy STBs and OTT to connected devices

Arguments in favour

The upsides are numerous. For end users, content deployed in the cloud enables multiscreen access and recording of multiple simultaneous shows (not restricted by physical set of tuners). Without the limit of a 500GB hard disk content, storage capacity is dynamically allocated, plus the relatively high failure rate of STB disks and consequent loss of personalised content can be mitigated. Customers can also retain recordings when they upgrade to new devices in the home.

For the service provider there are capital savings from using shared and scaleable storage over dedicated hard disks, and theoretically fewer service issue call outs. Ericsson says a typical truck roll costs $75/subscriber. This has been the main driver for the deployment of cDVRs by operators such as Cablevision in the U.S. and KPN in the Netherlands, it suggests.

“Associated costs quickly add up given that approximately 5 per cent of hard drives fail per year and new features and upgrades require hardware replacement,” says ays Itai Tomer, head of cloud DVR, Ericsson. “A centralized network is more reliable than distributed drives.”

More importantly, cDVR delivers a greater degree of control over content for customer, service provider and advertiser alike.

“A content provider can assign rules around which content can be recorded and for what period,” says Roland Mestric, Nokia's head of video marketing. “Such data can be used by advertisers who can place relevant ads around content when it is actually watched. You can also ensure the ads aren't skipped.”

However, technical and licensing challenges are still hampering rapid advancement of this kind of service. Negotiated rights vary programme to program and country to country, with the pivotal issue being whether a unique copy is required for every subscriber. Each scenario has its own challenges and services providers must ultimately decide between a private, shared, or hybrid architecture.

Licensing challenges

“In the U.S. for instance, the landmark Cablevision decision deemed a unique copy saved per user as the standard, although we are still seeing MSOs looking to readdress that decision independently,” says Tomer. “In Europe it varies according to region with issues ranging from high costs (of deploying a private copy solution), to securing the rights to content and consolidating within a variety of regions with different regulations.”

Matters are evolving. For example, new legislation before the French Senate should provide a legal framework encouraging the deployment of cDVR solutions in France.

Private copy cases are extremely costly to deploy and therefore less economically viable than shared copy scenarios. Explains Tomer, “A private copy system requires a unique copy of a program to be saved for every subscriber that requests it, meaning recordings cannot be shared. Each single, unique copy of the program has to be saved for each user, which requires a huge, growing volume of storage, very high recording and playout concurrency and that can be problematic to sustain.”

Technical challenges

This plays into the three main technical challenges: scalability, flexibility and reliability. Regarding the first, says Mestric, “We need storage that can scale from a few TB to tens of petabytes. We need to ensure the platform can ramp from start to full deployment.”

More flexibility in the system is vital to make sure the service is optimised based on service or use case requirements. “With cDVR you can deploy a number of end user services like live restart or catch-up,” says Mestric. “The characteristics of a system for live are, however, not the same as for VOD or catch-up, so based on the requirements of operators a system has to have the flexibility to be optimised. Moreover, if an operator starts with catch-up they need to be able to add full cDVR as it negotiates rights with content providers.”

Platform robustness ensures the consumer always has access to content and will not lose it. “If a hard disk fails it needs to be recovered very quickly. Performance and speed is the key criteria.”

At the network level the technology is now available from streaming and content delivery network vendors (such as Harmonic or Edgeware), enabling robust solutions to be deployed. Of course, 'Cloud' in cDVR doesn’t mean a 'public' cloud. “Operators are, for the most part, still skittish about public cloud due to concerns about security, quality of service, and control. So these cDVR deployments are happening on private clouds,” observes Yuval Fisher, CTO, MVPD, Imagine Communications. “The general view is that a cloud is an infinitely scalable and fungible collection of resources. But the reality for cDVR clouds is that this doesn’t scale. As a result, cDVR deployments require specialized clouds, and this is something the industry is just now digesting.”

The bottom line

“Rights holders are also starting to realize that cDVR actually offers new opportunities to monetize content with services that appeal to a new generation of multiscreen TV viewers that value convenience and flexibility more than any other market segment before,” says Simon Trudelle, Sr. director product marketing, Nagra. However, says Tomer, “cDVR isn’t a trivial deployment and legal issues, storage concerns and performance requirements must be considered.”

Cloud Ad Insertion

Generally speaking, operators are yet to fully embrace the cloud to deliver ad insertion across live and on-demand services.

According to Thinkbox 2015 figures linear still accounts for 81% of all TV broadcaster viewing in an advanced market like the UK. As overall Cloud-based on-demand TV consumption increases, the value in managing addressable ads delivered to personalised, connected screens will become more transparent to broadcasters, brand advertisers, and measurement firms.

“The deployment of next generation fully connected STB, complemented by other screens, is clearly the enabler that will drive demand,” suggests Trudelle.

Early adopters are beginning to implement ad insertion technologies, others are in wait and see mode. “It’s early days,” says Ericcson's Tomer. “One thing is clear: operators agree that changing viewing habits combined with OTT video and innovation in cDVR technology have changed the game for advertising.”

Value in targeting

“The real value of the Cloud here is targeting,” says Imagine's Fisher. “A different way to look at this is that as advertising moves towards impression-based targeting, it is also moving toward software and cloud deployment as a natural evolution in how solutions are packaged.”

Cloud enables scaling - the ability to utilise more ad insertion resources when needed (such as at prime time). This is “basically a cost saving feature” for Fisher. “So it’s not really a benefit as much as a mitigation of the extra cost associated with deploying full targeting capability. More importantly, new ad insertion mechanisms are based on software, and that brings significant operational simplicity.”

Cloud ad insertions also overcome issues with ad blockers, so operators can increase revenue from ads, although it won't totally eradicate blocking.

“Generally the user experience is better with Cloud ad insertions but probably the most important advantage is that an operator is in control of the ads, rather than having to rely on the platform owner,” says Accedo's Nightingale.

Making it happen

Whether server-side or client side, ad insertion is now well defined from a technology standpoint. Client side solutions include using one player to play the main content while a second is used to play ads. According to Nightingale, this solution “permits the app to initialise the players ahead of playing the content and then switches players (brings a player to the foreground) when required.” He says, the customer doesn't see any buffering or delays between the main content and ads. “This solution generally works well but it does requires a lot more memory on the client device.”

Alternatively, client stitching applications make use of one player, and while playing either the ad or the main content, is able to buffer the other content for the next item ready to be played when required. “No buffering is seen by the customer and the UX is seamless,” he says. The player can also be given a playlist of assets to play which plays sequentially one after another.

Dynamic stream stitching, sometimes called manifest manipulation, is performed on the server side and requires very little customisation of the client side player. Explains Nightingale, “The client tells the server what content the customer wants to play and any ad requirements and the server makes the calls to the ad server. The ads are stitched into the main content and delivered to the client.”

While Cloud ad insertion requires greater preprocessing of ad content in terms of adaptive bitrate, video quality, sound codecs and so on, the challenge service providers face is often more on the business front.

“With the exception of the U.S. market, where MVPDs actively manage some of the advertising space on behalf of broadcast networks, demand for addressable ad insertion remains low as the ad space is managed by broadcasters,” says Trudelle.

Tomer also notes the that current inventory of ads, although growing, is very low “plus they are expensive to create”.

The bottom line

For scenarios where STB connectivity and interactivity are not guaranteed or are limited to a subset of the subscriber base, the Cloud may not achieve value in the short-term. “It really means that service providers should have a plan to go 'fully connected' before envisioning deploying Cloud ad insertion,” says Tomer. “Those who can move fast will clearly reap the benefits of this new technology.”

Cloud TV UX

Transplanting user experiences to the Cloud offer many of the same advantages to operators, notably the ability to change the UX rapidly and at scale, rather than rewriting UXs for every make and model of STB, and enabling an operator to innovate discrete UIs for every subscriber.

“The always-on nature of the cable network enables the Cloud to be harnessed so that operators can deliver advanced user experiences – such as Millennial Navigation, Kids’ Modes and Sports Zones – that are not capable of being supported by the set-top box alone,” says Carlucci. “Since UXs no longer need to be resident on the STB, operators – and customers – can have an infinite number of UX variations.”

With Accedo AppGrid users can update applications in real-time across platforms and control it per user, country or time of day without redeploying and submitting applications. “Being Cloud-based means providers can easily engage with viewers, for example through in-app notifications,” says Nightingale.

UX's delivered as streams to every STB enable operators efficiently to deploy services “that are equal to – or better than – experiences that run on the box itself,” says Murali Nemani, CMO, product management and marketing, ActiveVideo.

There are a number of instances illustrating how Cloud UIs can bring a diversity of advanced UXs to existing STBs. VOD and catch-up services with Ziggo in the Netherlands; trend-driven UIs with multiple tiles of live video on single tuner STBs with Liberty Puerto Rico; and the complete YouTube experience to upwards of 500,000 existing STBs at UPC Hungary (all these are ActiveVideo deployments).

Similar innovation is taking place in the U.S. where Cablevision were the first to make the full Hulu experience available on all its current generation boxes.

Not a stop-gap measure

Cloud-based or STB strategies are not mutually exclusive. Operators are always going to want to bring the best possible user experiences to customers; the more compute power they can move to the Cloud, the more it reduces the operational burden of improving user entertainment and navigation.

“You’ll see the industry continue to use the Cloud to deliver TV UXs even as boxes become more capable,” says Carlucci. “We will leverage what the improved STB can do but we also will continue to see the cloud and the network evolve.”

There's a similar strategy at ActiveVideo which offers GuideCast and StreamCast products to ensure that next-gen services can be delivered at scale to STBs already in customer homes, as well as to new devices coming to market.

“Some [operators] are streaming the entire UX from the cloud; some are using cloud resources to complement a next-gen device strategy,” says Nemani.

U.S cable company Charter has moved to stream its entire UX from the Cloud beginning with its Spectrum Guide guide. Tom Rutledge, Charter president & CEO [speaking at CES 2015] said: “We’re taking the intelligence out of the box and putting it into the network and making the box a thin client box so that the processing power of the box is no longer a relevant issue; the processing power moves to the network. That’s a breakthrough.”

Craig Moffett, of MoffettNathanson Research, estimates that Charter will spend $2bn over five years for its cloud-based guide build compared to $8.4bn for IP-enabled boxes: a 77 per cent capex saving.

Questions of deployment

However, there are notes of caution. While agreeing that Cloud UX can tap “virtually unlimited back-office CPU power” Nagra believes this is “driving the industry to a position of compromise” because the functionality of a native embedded UI/UX “cannot be replicated with today's Cloud UI offering.”

Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, sr director, product marketing elaborates, “Cloud UX deployment has its share of issues technology challenges. These include the latency of the remote control, as each action of the remote has to be transmitted to the cloud for processing. If network resources are limited it is difficult to anticipate the actual load of the network. This is the case in particular for live/linear services where each video stream is unicast.”

There's a real question about the simplicity of the STB/CPE client, he suggests. “Both video and audio still need to be decoded, taking into account the numerous compression and transport formats, this requires a variety of computing power requirements.”

Plus, he wonders how open providers like Netflix or YouTube will be to being “proxied” by a Cloud infrastructure. Currently they have their UI implemented in the client device.

The bottom line

“Ironically TV everywhere is addressing laptops, smartphones and tablets that have enormous computing power,” says Smith-Chaigneau. “So with a Cloud UI-UEX are we just talking about the issue of 'incapable' STB/CPEs in the field? Is that is the problem that we are addressing with this solution?”

He answers his own question: “It may well be that cloud UX is the solution for small and medium operators who want to deploy similar advanced services and advanced UX without having to bear the cost of implementing a middleware in the client STB/CPE, or at least be able to support a middleware that provides mainly the video and audio rendering means: no PVR, no video gateway to home network. Network bandwidth still remains a challenge, but there might be less problems as these operators have to serve smaller number of clients.”

The Missing 4K Link

TV Technology Europe

https://issuu.com/newbayeurope/docs/tvte_june_2016/1

http://www.tvtechnologyeurope.com/buyers-guide/the-missing-link-where-is-rf-for-4k/01325

A 4K wireless link has been the missing piece in the live UHD workflow but developments at NAB shows the problem is being surmounted.

At the risk of restating the obvious, 4K is four times the size of 1080p video, which is a huge amount of data to transfer across a wireless link. It’s a problem that has, and hasn’t yet, been solved. It’s been solved in the sense that there are wireless 4K systems out there but there's debate about the whether such systems are currently practical.

For Domo Tactical Communications (formerly Cobham) it’s all about making 4K production work, that is, to get it on a screen properly. Latency is the primary issue, especially for sports. Until the latency reduces, 4K will continue to be a challenge, says Domo's broadcast sales director, JP Delport.

“For example, if people are using H.265 algorithms to encode data, which on paper is 50 per cent more efficient than H.264, there’s still a heck of a lot of encoding going on, which by its nature increases latency. Until such point that Domo can provide the industry with a demonstrably usable 4K solution, we’re going to stick with 1080p. 4K can be done, and we’re working on it, but it will only be unveiled when it’s absolutely ready at the lowest possible, usable, latency.

There are a variety of ways to bring 4K to TV screens in the RF domain. Delport believes it will require the adoption of a new encoding algorithm, which will be H.265 or HEVC.

“If we want to do 4K in H.264 it’s possible that that amount of data could be modulated with our MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) technology over a wireless link. But it seems to me the obvious way to go is DVB-T2 with an H.265 encoder, which is where we are heading. Our current latency is one frame. Anything more than that would just not be suitable for 4K. Until we’re 100 per cent sure that we can have a 4K wireless camera at the side of a football field that has one frame or less of latency, there’s no point.”

The SOLO7-OB Tx camera-back transmitter is Domo's first 1080p60 solution. It has integrated camera control and swappable RF modules. It’s able to work at 4:2:2 chroma and does H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video encoding. Its latency ranges from 1s to an ultra-low 10ms and fits directly onto the back of an ENG type camera.

At NAB this was demoed with a bi-directional link using MIMO IP Mesh technology firing 26 Mbit/s in combination with a Sony HDC-P1 camera mounted on a remote-controlled pan and tilt head. The unit takes HD-SDI from the camera, encodes the audio and video data to IP, and transmits it wirelessly to Domo’s MIMO IP Mesh system.

“Because IP Mesh provides an exceptionally high bit rate for bi-directional IP links, we can transmit A/V data one way while camera control and remote control data travels the other for control of pan and tilt, plus camera control data for colours, iris, etc. within the camera. Typically, this would require three separate frequencies, but with the SOLO8 SDR and IP Mesh combination, it’s three data streams in a single bi-directional link, which makes the entire remote camera and control system completely wireless. This, claims Delport, is a genuine “first”.

The data rate required to send 4K is about 19Gbps. “When you are trying to compress that amount of data, all the issues related to compression such as quality loss, added latency, and increase susceptivity to errors are increased dramatically,” says Uri Kanonich, vp, marketing, Amimon.

The firm's Connex technology doesn’t use regular compression, rather a unique video-modem solution. “This allows us to send today HD 1080P signals with less than 1ms latency and the same chipset will allow to do the same for 4K UHD,” says Kanonich.

The Connex mini is the latest addition to the Connex range. Unveiled at NAB, this is a ultra-small transmitter supporting 1080p, full HD wireless video at a range up to 1500ft, ideal for airborne drones as well as other unmanned systems.

“Drones require the support of both high range and transmitter robustness, adding to the already hard task of sending 4K. An additional critical parameter is the mobility of the drone,” says Kanonich. “The wireless link must be able to maintain the connection in all directions and while moving.”

Amimon previewed a solution for 4K straight from the lab. “The latency we are already able to present is practically zero, and the quality is just amazing,” claims Kanonich. “The unit's size we envision to be the size of the Connex mini. There's no need to increase size to support 4K UHD. But it will be next year before we launch it in actual products.”

BBC R&D's system is completely bespoke using relevant parts of DVB-T2, DVB-NGH and MIMO to maximise channel capacity.

“Having extra bit-rate allows for lower latency video coding,” says project engineer John Boyer. “The latency of the system is variable as interleaving can be dialled in by the user to improve link ruggedness, but the video coding is seven frames code/ decode delay. We expect future coder developments to reduce that delay.”

The UHD system uses extensions of an original HD version. “The new UHD system has additional advanced RF techniques, so we are expecting good performance and expectations are fuelled by range tests that we have done,” says Boyer.

BBC R&D is liaising with the industry to perform trials. 


Vislink is already providing what it says is the world’s first end-to-end wireless 4K/UHD live-video solution. The UltraLite module is designed for integration with existing UHD cameras, allowing customers to quickly and cost-effectively upgrade.

“We know that being wireless creates new and different points of view for the audience and allows the cameraperson flexibility when capturing action shots from different moving points,” says Ali Zarkesh, VP, product management, Vislink. “It allows the viewer to really be there, and now they can do all that with UHD”

Vislink’s system provides broadcasters with a simple upgrade path if they want to move to a 4K/UHD wireless live solution. The firm says they can upgrade existing cameras with the lightweight attachment that mounts onto a variety of 4K cameras and, with the UltraDecoder (on the receive side), they can use their existing wireless.

360-degree wireless streaming

It's well worth noting one other exciting new product launched at NAB, designed for streaming panoramic video and monitoring the results. Teradek's Sphere features a patent-pending video processing platform for iOS and OSX. Sphere’s hardware interface features four HDMI inputs and a built-in H.264 encoder that can encode up to 10Mbps, providing a “realistic 360º-video experience.”

It was paired with four GoPros at NAB and by adjusting each camera’s white balance, tint, exposure and lens distortion in real-time, Sphere is able to display and stream a consistent panoramic video. It streams to Apple laptops and iOS devices over WiFi where users can record or view live 4K (4x1080p) content as a pan and zoom across all four video feeds stitched together; by moving the iOS device the camera feed moves with it and on VR headsets.

For remote viewing, the Sphere app can be used to live stream to any compatible 360-degree online video platform, including Wowza and YouTube.

How the industry is taking on pirates

Broadcast

With illegal streaming on the rise Broadcast explores how technology is helping content providers protect their multibillion pound investment.

p32 http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/digital-edition-broadcast-tech/5104694.article?blocktitle=Digital-Edition&contentID=43898

Experts dub it 'cat and mouse' or 'whack a mole' but piracy is not a game to broadcasters who have paid, in some cases billions of pounds, for rights to content which is being leaked in ever greater numbers online.

The issue is particularly acute around the high value properties of live sports, more and more of which are pouring onto OTT platforms. English Premier League matches for example are available via Sky Now, and in the US, Twitter will stream a package of live NFL matches next season.

Illegal streams start as legitimate transmissions (such as a Sky Sports Sunday afternoon live match) but are then captured and re-broadcast for non-subscribers or they are being captured outside of the geographic restricted areas.

An accurate assessment of the problem is hard to come by. The EPL, which collects £5.136bn from Sky and BT Sport and another £3 billion for the sale of overseas rights in its most recent deal, doesn't divulge figures relating to theft.

A check on aggregator websites – which list URLs that link to the content being hosted – suggest that the audience of unauthorised streams is in the millions.

Brand protection service NetNames reckons that more than 23% of web bandwidth is used for digital piracy costing the global economy more than $75 billion per year. Analysts MUSO [in its Global Piracy Report] states that 58 billion visits to illicit websites were to stream pirated film and TV content last year, 28% of them using mobile devices. The EU's Intellectual Property Office report that 19% of British 15-24 year olds illegally accessed content in 2015 (albeit 14% less than youth in Spain).

“Given the ease with which content can be re-streamed online and watched for free, rights holders need to protect revenue and ensure that this market remains viable for investment,” warns Alistair Cameron, European sales director of content protection firm NexGuard.

“With the growth of availability of live streams there is a natural growth in people stealing the content,” says Arik Gaisler, Sr. director of product, infrastructure at video management platform Kaltura. “In parallel this has made security something of a commodity.”

There is no silver bullet but a combination of approaches can being used to limit the scale of damage.

A first step is to secure the stream with encryption (and/or conditional access systems (CAS) in set-top boxes) and add digital rights management (DRM) to authenticate usage.

Kaltura encrypts content as part of the ingest process or on the fly. Then it adds a Universal DRM which is integrated with Google Widevine, PlayReady and Apple Fairplay for content protection which Kaltura says will work regardless of the browser, device or platform being used.

“DRM makes sure that those watching content have relevant access rights,” says Gaisler, who adds that this is the approach taken by most pay TV broadcasters. “To overcome DRM it would need to be hacked in a deeper, sophisticated way.”

Traditional DRM and CAS do a good job of ensuring that only legitimate viewers can access content through paid services. But once the video is displayed, it is still vulnerable to re-streaming through numerous methods, including camcorder capture and screen-scraping in which data is copied in realtime and rebroadcast as a live stream.

“Traditional access control works up to the point where the customer starts watching the content,” argues Cameron. “From that point, all bets are off. Most pirates will pay for a subscription or will buy the pay per view. The DRM checks are done, but the security mechanisms have not accounted for human behaviour.”

According to Ampere Analysis, most viewing of illegal streams is among people with low income (and therefore can't afford to view) and/or who live with others (so that their control of the TV is limited).

“These are demographic issues rather than a fundamental business threat,” says research director Richard Broughton. “Making multiplatform streams available is important for operators so that they can reach consumers on different devices.”

However, illegal uploaders can turn a profitable business by selling ads around the site or in some cases selling a subscription service.

“Some sites are so professional even down to the small print of terms and conditions,” says Cameron. By embedding an invisible forensic watermark (such as NexGuard's) in each video stream, content that is improperly re-distributed can be traced back to its source. “By knowing the source, immediate action can be taken to interrupt the pirate stream while the event is still going,” says Cameron.

As further back-up, monitoring and analytics technologies are required. “HTML-based video players allow you to look at reference urls to get an idea of whether the content is being accessed in unusual places or whether stream volumes are in line with expectations or if you have a leakage,” says Mark Blair, vp of EMEA at video player developer Brightcove.

Once illegality is verified operators have some choices. Sending cease and desist notices works in some cases, legal action in others.

“The problem is that when people do take content down it will respawn quite quickly on a new website,” says Blair. “Pirate organisations will often use web servers in countries where intellectual property enforcement is difficult.” A February 2016 study by Stony Brook University, found that 25% of live streams originate from servers hosted in Belize.

“Another way is to starve the supply pipe to viewers illegally viewing those sites,” he says.

“Unfortunately, it is a mammoth task and one that becomes harder over time due to increases in technology which allow faster, better quality, streaming of data,” says Stuart Fuller, director of commercial operations, NetNames. “There's also the catch 22 of broadcasters having to increase subscription costs to cover their increased investment in brand protection mechanisms to counteract illegal streaming, which leads to more people turning to illegal streams due to the increase in costs.”

While there are instances of net piracy funding criminal organisations, there are more illegal views among those characterising themselves as digital robin hoods and others who have turned to torrent out of frustration with being able to access a decent quality legal stream.

“Illegal views represent an important but relatively small business impact on broadcasters,” says Broughton. “Most people are generally happy to pay for sports.”

The social streaming challenge

Social streaming apps like Meercat, Periscope and Facebook Live present another challenge to rights holders.

Twitter's Periscope came to attention shortly after launch last March when ringside streams of a Floyd Mayweather boxing bout gave some viewers free access to a fight which HBO and Showtime had paid a fortune to air pay per view.

Use of mobile phones are also banned at events like The Open golf, ostensibly to reduce distraction for the players. However, it is believed not practical to police use of video phones going forward. Such forms of amateur live broadcast are viewed as more of an irritant than a serious breach of rights and could be turned to a broadcaster's advantage.

“Watching social streaming for a whole match is not an enjoyable experience and is not a viable alternative to pay TV unless professionally done,” says Cameron.

“This summer, the IOC are not going to be able to prevent everyone entering the Olympic stadium from using their mobile phone,” says Blair. “This should be treated as a business issue.”

While bandwidth capacity restraints at crowded events currently hinder mass live streaming, WiFi advances mean this will likely be overcome

“Rather than a big brother approach it makes much more sense for a broadcaster to create an app for fans to download which make it easier for them to stream,” says Chris Knowlton, vp Wowza, whose media servers support Periscope. “You might have a curation committee moderating all the live streams and encouraging action. You could challenge fans to send in streams via your app so that you control the experience.”

As it happens Wowza has developed a software development kit called GoCoder enabling organisations to launch streaming apps. One idea is that a broadcaster would be able to identify by GPS the position of every mobile device/camera at a venue and offer these angles up online.

“It could be really interesting to crowd source this video and give it back to fans as an experience, allowing them to choose different angles and, if any videos are of high enough quality, to use them in the main live broadcast perhaps for another view on controversial incidents not caught on camera.”