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Ensuring a quality future for OTT

Viewing habits have changed considerably in the last ten years and that shows no sign of slowing up. But as Erik Otto, chief executive of Mediaproxy, argues, this, combined with the additional features offered by streaming platforms, will put more pressure on compliance monitoring systems

Streaming, and OTT (Over-the-Top) in particular, are set to continue growing in reach and importance during 2025 as they move towards becoming the primary delivery platform for video. The groundwork for this has been laid since 2020 and the number of OTT viewers is projected to have nearly doubled since then as the new year goes on. This means the global audience for OTT will have reached 110 million, which is not bad considering only a couple of years ago industry commentators were predicting that the streaming bubble had burst in the wake of the pandemic.

Erik Otto, CEO, Mediaproxy

There was a serious basis for this gloomy forecast. While viewing figures for the main streamers had increased significantly during the height of Covid (although what realistically counts as a ‘view’ is now a contentious point), the economic downturn that followed made many people reconsider their financial priorities and cancel subscriptions to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime.

That did not, however, spell the end for the streaming boom. If anything, this blast of reality made the big players reconsider their operational models, and while subscriptions still play an important role, the introduction of FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming TV) has revitalised the sector and increased the audience considerably. The impact of this decidedly old-fashioned format, which mirrors commercial linear television, has been so great that research shows the advertising spend on FAST channels will exceed what is spent on cable, broadcast and subscription-based streaming platforms during 2025.

Regardless of how OTT operators are making their money, there is no doubt streamed video is what consumers want. With the anytime, on-demand and on any device aspect of streaming now firmly established, other beneficial and attractive features are emerging that will continue to pull in audiences.

Interactivity and so-called gamification have already made an impact through enabling viewers to choose how a story develops, as with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, as well as allowing them to get involved with live streams using simultaneous chat options. This will help lead into immersive content, made possible by augmented and virtual reality technologies (AR/VR), but perhaps the real hot topic for OTT is personalisation.

A changing audience

AI and big data are now being used to provide users with viewing choices based on their previous watches and this capability will become more sophisticated, offering even more specific preferences, as the technology develops. Younger generations, particularly Gens Z and Alpha, are a major part of the streaming audience and their familiarity with computer, internet and gaming technologies means they have even more specific viewing requirements than their parents or even millennials.

That’s because Gen Zers and Alphas watch video in a different way to most other people. They multitask, listening to music through headphones while watching a film, drama episode or YouTube channel with the closed captions/subtitles on. There is now increasing pressure on governments and regulators to compel broadcasters and streaming platforms to provide closed captions on the majority of their output. This is primarily as an accessibility service for those with hearing impairments but would also cater to the new way of viewing popular with younger people.

As part of this, AI is now being used to generate more accurate and near-instantaneous subtitles. It will also play a part in other accessibility features, such as on-screen sign language. In 2023 NHK revealed details of KIKI, a virtual sign language interpreter it developed with an avatar that looks human and signed in Japanese. This was being further developed to offer a selection of other national sign languages that could be selected through an on-screen menu.

Such techniques and features, if and when they become available, will be easier to introduce – or will only exist – in the world of OTT and streaming. The challenge is dealing with the larger amount of material and metadata being generated to go alongside the main audio and visuals, something further complicated by the fact that more content is now distributed in international markets.

This will put even greater pressure on distributors, broadcasters, streaming platforms, playout facilities and developers of compliance monitoring systems to ensure, if not guarantee, a high quality of experience (QoE). Inevitably, AI will be incorporated into new analysis tools to do this because it is good at finding patterns. This is ideal for pre-recorded material, such as films and dramas. The tricky area will be live programming because no one knows what they are looking for until it happens.

All of which shows up the problem with what is referred to as OTT. It’s not the basic concept or the technology, it is that the term itself is too broad and often used, interchangeably, to refer to streaming as a whole. This is exacerbated by there being a whole plethora of devices that can be used to receive streamed video: smartTVs, set-top boxes, media players and, perhaps the device of choice these days, the mobile phone.

Setting the standards

What could loosely be referred to as broadcast streaming is covered by SMPTE ST 2110 for the transport of digital media over IP networks. There are also the two main standards for video distributed over the internet: Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG). Unfortunately, there are also several pointless variations on these last two, particularly as part of smartphone operating systems, such as legacy HLS and fragmented MPEG-4.

There is clearly the need for more formalised regulation and proper specifications. As video streaming moves further away from linear broadcast, it would seem this responsibility would fall on the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft. The problem as it stands now is whether current monitoring technologies, which have been standardised for broadcast, will be able to offer the same level of assurance for OTT as it develops in the future.

Established tools either need to adjust and become even more flexible to cope with the different variations involved in streaming distribution or new techniques have to be developed. Either option is necessary because OTT is destined to become the main way people watch video and we need to ensure they continue to have the same high quality viewing experience they appreciate today.