Recently, the streaming industry has had various technological breakthroughs, and like the rest of the world, Aussies are in for a treat.
Without leaving the comfort of their homes, viewers now have the option to watch Hotstar in Australia.
What makes this so appealing is that Hotstar is an Indian-based service, geo-restricted in most countries, including Australia. Still, Australians happily enjoy numerous movies, dramas, shows, sports, and more by using a VPN.
Besides having the power of a virtual private network at their disposal, thanks to tech advancements, the internet has gotten much faster, and bandwidth congestion is a thing of the past.
Other than that, VOD Streaming has improved immensely due to the following technologies
Keep reading!
Streaming Technologies
There are four types of streaming technologies:
- Codecs
Large volumes of data can be compressed and decompressed using a codec. Applications employ codecs to play, produce, and send media files over a network for users.
- Streaming Protocols
A standard means of sending various kinds of content (often video or audio) over the internet is the streaming protocol, also called the broadcast protocol.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
A network of servers known as a content delivery network (CDN) is ideally positioned throughout an area to provide high-quality content to distant locations from the source of the stream
- Video Players
Users can view a video stream via a video player. Adobe’s Flash player used to be the industry standard but was replaced because it was incompatible with mobile streaming .
To play back video content, however, the majority of video players nowadays are software-based and run on PCs, browsers, and smartphones.
Advances That Make Streaming Worthwhile
The following five technological advancements lead to a glitch-free, uninterrupted streaming experience:
- Peer-to-Peer Streaming
Video streaming platforms use the client-server paradigm. The data is sent by edge websites designated as CDN, which cache the server’s content.
In order to stream your video, devices like desktop computers, televisions, tablets, and phones retrieve the media from each of these CDNs. However, there are some limitations to CDN-based streaming video.
- It is expensive to broadcast content via a CDN.
- A significant amount of delay is caused by a rise in viewers.
- CDN coverage for streaming media to remote locations is insufficient
Because of these and other problems, it is difficult for a streaming video provider to scale their service while still providing a positive user experience.
Each problem could be solved by integrating a Peer to Peer network with a CDN streaming system, or “hybrid CDN,” as it is often called.
- High Resolution
Video streaming is changing several businesses as a result of artificial intelligence. AI models may be able to learn how to convert low-resolution images into high-resolution images by analyzing a variety of photographs.
As an illustration, the “Super-Resolution” method creates a high-resolution image from a low-resolution one. When a new image is presented based on a significant amount of visual information, retraining AI models makes it possible to upgrade an image.
- CMAF
The Common Media Application Format is an extensible standard for segmented media object encoding and packaging for distribution and decoding on end-user devices in adaptive media streaming.
CMAF is essentially a new format to simplify HTTP-based streaming video distribution. The process works as follows.
- An encoder called h264 transforms the video into a compressed format.
- The video is then changed into a version that may be streamed, such as “MPEG-DASH or HLS.”
- The user’s content is now redistributed using CDN.
- The video player queues a small number of video clips before it begins to play.
- Per Title Encoding :
It is an efficient encoding method that adjusts each video’s speed pyramid according to its level of complexity. The main objective is to choose a speed that gives the codec just enough space to encompass the data required to offer an uninterrupted viewing experience, but no more.
Another way to look at it is that the reduced, responsive package only contains the content that users will really find relevant. It is free of anything that the human eye cannot see.
- Multi CDN :
A multi-CDN (Content Delivery Network) system uses more than one CDN provider to provide material to users. Compared to depending on a single CDN provider, this strategy helps to assure better performance, reliability, and redundancy.
The concept behind a multi-CDN configuration is that various CDN providers have multiple advantages and disadvantages.
By utilizing several providers, businesses can tailor their content distribution strategy based on location, user device, and network circumstances.
For instance, if one CDN provider performs better in certain areas or for particular device types, that provider can serve content to those specific consumers.
Conclusion
The above article describes how technology is improving VOD Streaming in Australia and includes all the details on the many types of streaming technologies and other advancements that make streaming worthwhile for Aussies.
