Streaming has become a booming business in recent years. Services like Netflix are hugely popular these days all over the world, and Canada is no exception.
As per the 2019 statistics, 16.2 million Canadians use Netflix. This number has likely increased significantly over the years.
As more and more jump on board the streaming video content bandwagon, the streaming industry, which is still relatively young, must develop new strategies to keep consumers hooked in the continuously changing video streaming marketplace.
With powerful smartphones, tablets, and lightweight laptops on hand at all times, Canadians can stream any content they like anywhere.
Although convenient, as per the survey conducted by Penthera regarding US Mobile Streaming Behavior, 88% of respondents weren’t happy with their streaming experience.
Many factors can ruin the overall experience for any user. One of them being geo-restrictions. It’s when you cannot get access to certain content because of your location.
While there are ways to get over geo-blocks, sometimes, there are no options. For example, like different regional Netflix libraries there are many streaming services exclusively available in certain regions and not in Canada. Thus, Canadian users also feel frustrated and deprived of many such wonderful streaming platforms. One of them is Peacock tv, rather relatively new in the streaming market yet one of the popular ones specially for live sports and US tv shows.
Luckily this issue of geo-blocks has also been sorted out for many streaming services, by the amazing technology of VPNs. A powerful VPN can unblock Peacock TV in Canada, however there are still some regions where you may have issues unblocking other streaming services.
This poses a huge challenge for VoD service providers to innovate their platform to retain users continuously.
Constant improvements require research and development and reliance on technological advancements. It is the only way through which VoD service can retain its user base.
In this short article, we will look at how technology is playing an important role in improving the streaming entertainment industry in Canada.
Improving Video Streaming Quality With AI
Video playback quality is paramount when considering the overall content streaming experience. However, by incorporating Artificial Intelligence, streaming services can change the entire game.
Specifically speaking, streaming services can work on something called “Super-Resolution.” This technology is powered by AI, and it can learn how to produce a high-res image from a low-res image.
When streaming, this can avoid those nasty issues where your bandwidth would drop, and you’ll start to see pixelated images.
Super-Resolution uses generative algorithms. It can take a low-resolution image and create a high-res image to upscale the overall quality.
Still not convinced this is useful?
Well, what if we tell you that you can send a video in 480p and the recipient can view the video in 1080p.
Incorporating this technology can help users save around 30% of their bandwidth, improving their overall experience.
Multi CDN Can Fix Sudden Stoppage
Most of us know that any digital content is delivered to client devices through CDN, which caches the content on the server. CDN has servers located in a lot of locations that deliver content.
While extremely useful in content streaming, CDNs have limitations. For example, not all CDNs have Point-of-Presence (POP) in many parts of the world – China for example.
To improve upon these issues, streaming providers can rely on Multi-CDN providers. Such providers can help streaming services access multiple CDNs at once.
Here’s how Multi-CDN can improve the overall user experience:
- Prevents video from suddenly stopping by automatically switching CDNs to pull content.
- Automatically pulling content from the best CDN in real-time by monitoring Real User Monitoring metrics to improve overall quality.
Adapting the P2P Model
It is no surprise that P2P has a bad rep in the technological world. However, it is extremely beneficial in transferring files.
By using CDNs in conjunction with Peer-to-Peer technology, it can greatly reduce the load on CDNs. With devices working as peers pulling content alongside CDNs, the load can be distributed.
This means that content can be pulled from a lot more sources. This also results in reducing costs.
With less load on CDNs, operation costs can drop by as much as 40% while guaranteeing an improved user experience due to little to no buffering issues.
Using Smart Video Encoding to Improve Viewing Experience
When dealing with volatile internet connections, video content online is often encoded in multiple resolutions like H.264 so that, if needed, the video can be intelligently streamed in the appropriate resolution.
When the resolution is automatically switched due to network constraints, this technique is called Adaptive Bitrate (ABR).
Netflix suggested encoding videos in multiple resolutions and bitrates and then choosing the option to render the video without losing artifacts.
Smart encoding is performed after analyzing a metric called VMAF. VMAF is a visual score that can assess the quality of rendered videos.
Smart encoding can greatly improve the overall user experience.
Summary
The streaming industry is currently undergoing some major changes. Technology allows us to reshape how we consume content and helps us achieve what we once only dreamed of.
As we’ve already discussed, we have multiple techniques that can improve user experience and eliminate latency in video streaming.
With AI and ML, the video streaming industry in Canada and around the world will improve drastically.
With the rise in bandwidth-hogging Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality content, it is about time we adapt to the latest technological advancements in the world of streaming to keep up with new challenges.
