SVG@NAB Perspectives: Net Insight’s Karlsson on New OTT Streaming Solution, Multiscreen Synchronization
Net Insight (Booth SU3821) is launching its Sye live OTT streaming solution this week. According to the company, Sye allows live content to be streamed with frame-accurate synchronization across any type of screen, including linear TV, with no delay.
Net Insight envisions Sye as a solution to avoid the content-delivery delays seen in traditional OTT platforms, enabling live betting, voting and polling, and enhanced social and entertainment interactivity. In addition, there is the potential for synchronous-screen content, such as driver cams in motor racing. Sye has already been successfully road-tested by TATA Communications: in the proof-of-concept test, a transcontinental OTT feed from a motor-racing event in Singapore was delivered to the UK with no delay between the live linear broadcast of the race and live stream viewed through an app.
SVG sat down with Martin Karlsson, CTO/VP, product portfolio, Net Insight, to discuss the launch of Sye and the how he sees the future of live OTT in the coming years.
Martin Karlsson, CTO/VP, product portfolio, Net Insight
What has been the sports market’s response to Sye?
Sye is the main headline this year [at NAB], and it plays nicely into the sports market and we’ve seen a tremendous response so far. When you start talking about the possibilities of driver cams and player-follow cams being aligned [with the linear telecast], it becomes clear that this is a very strong enabler for a new kind of sports-TV experience. Whether it’s a driver cam for Formula One or a player cam in a soccer or football game, it allows you to utilize different screens for different viewing experiences at once. You can set up your own personalized viewing experience and tune the broadcast to the experience you’re looking for, follow this player or that in synchrony with the first screen.
And you also have the data synchronized. You can see the speedometer and how the driver is accelerating. If you look at Formula One, when drivers are accelerating and braking, it’s extremely precise, so, if there is a 10- to 15-second delay watching a speedometer, it ruins the experience. Being able to align auxiliary data further expands that kind of experience.
What else are you highlighting at NAB 2016 for the sports-production market?
The way we’re enabling sports is through our service to our customers like The Switch, expanding on our offering in at-home production and remote production. We’re seeing more and more data being transported between the stadiums and the studios. One of the things we’re launching at the show is a certification of our equipment, which plays into shuffling data between the stadiums and the broadcast centers.
The Sye OTT live steaming demo highlighted Net Insight’s NAB 2016 booth
We’re also sharing our view of network-function virtualization. More and more of the media function that’s been done with external boxes tagged onto network boxes is being integrated in software instead. So we’re showing how that is happening and how service providers can offer a more complete and more advanced service to their broadcast customers. It’s more efficient, more flexible: instead of shipping an additional box to a venue, a customer can buy this service, including this virtual function, for 10 minutes and, the next minute, can use some other function. The power of software is really strong.
We have the Media Gateway launch as well, pushing standards compliance and interoperability with other platforms to provide an open ecosystem for our customers.
Virtualization and data are the big things. One example of virtualization is that we’ve implemented a Nimbra [Media Gateway] in software, [building transport protocols into] software. We’re showing that off as a prototype at the show.
Net Insight acquired SchedulAll last October. How has its integration into the company gone?
Orchestration is definitely a key to our way forward. One of the things we’re highlighting at the show is our connector ecosystem, which allows users of ScheduAll to exchange services. We have satellite providers offering capacity this way. Everything starts with planning and scheduling throughout the entire broadcast flow. We’re seeing how we can tie that together with the powerful network that we had on the Nimbra side to automate as much as possible of the network flow.