NBCUniversal’s reality streamer hayu has deployed virtualised media processing tools from Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to enable viewers to create real-time personalised user experiences.
As well as Amazon Personalise, the OTT service is also using Amazon Kinesis, a real-time data streaming service that can continuously capture gigabytes of data per second; Amazon Rekognition, which can identify well-known celebrities in a wide range of categories; and Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, a capture, transform, and load streaming data service found in the AWS Management Console.
European-based media software solutions developer Merapar Technologies has worked with AWS to build a custom multi-layered content management solution that adds viewer personalisation and user data capture capabilities. The OTT platform generates several billion data events per month that now flow through Amazon Kinesis.
“The benefits of using AWS include security, scalability, and reduced maintenance, and these factors were so critical to building the solution that many content providers are seeing AWS as the solution,” said Chris Birkinshaw, technology principal and solutions architect at Merapar and the project lead. “We have been able to move to a different way of developing new features for the platform. We can experiment, spin up, and spin down services as required, without having to worry about the cost.”
Andy Clarkson, vice president of Technology Operations for hayu said, “The system provides increased editorial flexibility, allowing us to present a mix of editorially curated content and algorithmic recommendations (segmented and personalised) to users. So far our data has shown significant increases to views of recommended shows.”
