Go MAUD: Knock out jerky images & video freezes at peak live streaming periods — and save costs

By Shirish Nadkarni

During the course of the recently concluded First Cricket Test between Australia and India for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, beamed live from Perth on the Disney Star network, there were several instances of the TV screen freezing and a cursor revolving in an endless circular motion. To get back to the action, customers had to exit the app and go through the tedious process of re-entering it.

In another part of the world, in mid-November, there were several similar video freezes during the heavyweight boxing match in Arlington, Texas, between former world champion Mike Tyson (58) and Jake Paul, who was less than half Tyson’s age. The gimmicky bout, which nevertheless attracted millions of eyeballs, was streamed globally by Netflix.

Thanks mainly to its end-to-end investment in streaming technology, from encoders to players, Netflix is considered by many to be the gold standard in streaming, at least for video-on-demand (VoD). Yet, even it had its hands full when demand was at its peak. 

The Tyson-Paul bout attracted more than 120 million viewers, with a peak of 65 million simultaneous streams — making it the largest streaming audience ever recorded on the Netflix platform. Many viewers, however, were frustrated by issues like video freezes, jerky images, and audio-video sync delays.

“Due to the surge of demand, when everyone connects at the same time to watch content, caches can become saturated very quickly,” explained Elodie Levrel, Corporate Marketing & Communications Director at Broadpeak. 

“They reach their maximum capacity and are unable to deliver more traffic in good conditions. In live streaming, content must be captured, encoded, transmitted, and displayed to viewers as close to real-time as possible — and any delays or network imperfections can be seen on the screens.

“Our Multicast ABR (adaptive bitrate) could have easily knocked out these video freezes during the Tyson-Paul fight.”

Driven by the proliferation of connected mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, video viewing habits have changed drastically over the last decade. Most of these devices have strong capabilities to support high quality video playback, thereby making these screens-of-choice for many users.

One study from Statista found that 89% of US video viewers use their smartphones while watching content on TV. In some instances, these viewers are engaged in television-content related activities on their connected devices. At least 20% of viewers watch more than one programme at the same time using a second screen, while 19% engage in real time social media discussions about the content they are watching. 

Sometimes, the second screen is a natural substitute or alternative for the TV set. For instance, a viewer could start watching a video in the living room TV set and then continue watching it on their smartphone or tablet in bed. Regardless of the use case, multiscreen video is the new normal for consumers and they expect the same or similar quality of experience (QoE) across all platforms.

For pay-TV operators worldwide, multiscreen distribution is a must-have strategy, and many leading operators, including SFR and Orange in France, PCCW in Hong Kong, Ziggo in Netherlands, Verizon and Comcast in the US, are already enabling it. 

But several find it challenging, as it requires a simulcast of TV services to not just a TV set powered by a set-top-box (STB), but also to multiple connected devices that differ in brands, form factors, operating systems, and resolutions.

Multicast ABR (mABR) requires the deployment of two main components — a transcaster in the headend to encapsulate the unicast stream into multicast and a nanoCDN agent in the home gateways or STBs to convert the multicast back into unicast.

“Broadpeak has more than 10 years’ experience in mABR,” said Broadpeak CEO Jacques Le Mancq. “We have integrated the nanoCDN agent with more than 150 models of CPEs: optical network terminals (ONTs), home gateways, cable modems and STBs, including Android TV boxes and Apple TV. 

“nanoCDN is the only mABR solution commercially deployed and exploited at a global scale by many customers worldwide. nanoCDN allows more than 20 million viewers today to benefit from the best QoE, in particular when watching high audience content such as live sports.”

Broadpeak is providing BT Group with components to create what it calls the world’s first Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery (MAUD)-enabled network, including its nanoCDN mABR. The nanoCDN will integrate into BT Group’s consumer smart hub routers and leverage multicast capabilities to group individual streams together in the network core, before converting them back to unicast at the edge for consumption by player applications on end-user devices. 

“With MAUD, video service providers can serve millions of viewers with a single stream, improving content delivery efficiency and reducing costs for broadcasters, CDNs, and internet service providers,” said Broadpeak’s Levrel.

“MAUD’s unique architecture takes mABR one step further by integrating seamlessly with content provider player applications, eliminating the need to modify customers’ apps,” Le Mancq added.

“Using up to 50% less bandwidth during peak events, MAUD reduces energy usage through the reduction of the number of deployed caches. And by efficiently delivering live video streaming, it allows broadcasters and video service providers to deliver a higher quality of experience.

“MAUD answers the critical requirements for enhanced video quality, simpler content delivery, and increased sustainability, making it a game changer for broadcasters and video service providers.”

There are others in the market, apart from Broadpeak, which offer high-efficiency live streaming, and allow switching between unicast and multicast to support scale out. Velocix offers ultra-low latency live streaming that slashes stream latency for live events to two seconds or less to elevate the fan experience and deliver content in sync with social media alerts.

Jim Brickmeier, Chief Executive of Velocix, said, “Unlike traditional unicast delivery, which demands greater network capacity as viewership grows, our mABR software employs a single shared video stream to support millions of simultaneous viewing sessions.

“Our customers get to conserve valuable network bandwidth and save money with the only standards-based mABR solution built to carrier-grade specifications. You can run a low-memory footprint mABR proxy client on a multitude of home gateways, ONTs, set-top boxes, and other connected devices.”

Velocix specialises in providing multicast live content simultaneously to millions of consumers to save network bandwidth, then switch to unicast to support targeted ads. It delivers mABR streams using industry-standard protocols like FLUTE, which adhere to DVB, CableLabs, and 3GPP specifications.

“Reducing latency for live video streams delivered using HTTP adaptive bit rate technology has become a top priority for service providers that are seeking to deliver a better multiscreen viewing experience to consumers,” Brickmeier added.

Today, ABR streaming is widely used to deliver pay-TV video content to second-screen subscriber devices in the home, such as PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Now, ABR streaming is making its way to the primary home screen — the family TV — supported by next-generation 4K / HD STBs and home gateway devices.

As a result, the number of streams is going to increase dramatically. Network operators are facing challenges in adopting unicast streaming required for ABR, particularly for high bitrate 4K and HD video.

Each additional subscriber device represents an incremental increase in home bandwidth requirements — with potential issues for video quality and user experience. This is causing network planning headaches for operators looking to adopt an all-IP video network strategy.

“CommScope’s mABR solution enables ABR streaming to all pay-TV subscriber devices in the home, while leveraging the bandwidth efficiencies and video quality of IP multicast,” said Charles L. Treadway, CommScope’s CEO.

“Over the years, multicast has proven to support high value pay-TV services efficiently and reliably. The mABR solution enables network bandwidth optimisation of adaptive streams across the operator video network — without requiring changes to content or video player applications. Service providers now have a valuable new tool for managing their IP network investments.”

Against a backdrop of rapid transformation in the video services market, one factor remains the same — people love to watch live video programming.  While consumer behaviour is shifting toward online and mobile viewing versus TV, consumer interest in sports and news content remains strong. Live events like FIFA’s Football World Cup or the ICC’s T20 Cricket World Cup provide great examples.

The 2022 World Cup final attracted a combined global audience of 1.24 billion and more than 78% percent of viewers (967 million people) watched the event live.  Live services are especially important to pay-TV operators facing increased competition for subscribers from online services. 

According to a study published by Altman Vilandrie & Company, 52% of all pay-TV customers indicated that live sports was a top reason for subscribing to pay-TV and 63% of all viewers identified news content as a main reason to subscribe.

Needless to say, high quality live video services remain a key part of the value proposition consumers have come to expect from their video service provider.   

Reducing latency is critical to improving the quality of live sports broadcast services and keeping consumers satisfied. It is critical that operators work with an experienced partner who can configure and tune the system to account for specific network environments and unique attributes of the end-to-end content delivery architecture.  With the right advice and expertise, operators can be assured that they are delivering the best live viewing experience to each and every one of their  consumers.