A new video streaming platform achieving real-time latency without the use of WebRTC is undergoing early deployment by nanocosmos, which has built its business supporting low-latency streaming needs of enterprises typically not involved in mainstream media services.

While the new strategy is based on what nanocosmos refers to as “the new next-generation streaming protocol MoQ (Media over QUIC),” it actually has nothing to do with the IETF MoQ standardization initiative that we’ve been tracking, most recently in this article. Instead, as described by nanocosmos CEO Oliver Lietz, his company’s version of MoQ is its own adaptation to use of the QUIC protocol.

New developments combining advances in CDN technology with cloud computing at network edges are creating vastly improved streaming environments for OTT services.

Both Akamai and the less-known CDN technology supplier Varnish Software nearly simultaneously announced radical departures from previous business models ahead of the April NAB Show. These moves, which capitalize on major advances in computer chip processing, follow ongoing successes registered by Qwilt’s next-gen Open Edge CDN platform. While the three companies’ approaches differ significantly, they all have in common the goal of putting edge-based cloud computing to work to accommodate improvements not only in distributed CDN caching but also myriad other processing functionalities video service providers are looking for to drive user engagement at lower costs.

It’s always amazing to see how a negative blip in new technology adoption that’s otherwise bursting with robust activity can be blown way out of proportion by naysayers who think there’s nothing to the larger reality.

Such was our reaction to a recent Linkedin post from streaming media commentator and event impresario Dan Rayburn, who was responding to word that real-time streaming platform operator Phenix Real Time Solutions is going under. Rather than attesting, as Rayburn claims, to there being “insufficient demand” or a “lack of application use cases” for a business based on real-time streaming, the Phenix demise is really a matter of strategic failure.

In an ironic turn of events, amid widespread alarm over AI’s role in disinformation through image fakery and hallucinatory fabrications the technology has become what many traditional TV news broadcasters see as a vital linchpin to their survival as bastions of journalistic integrity.

Adding to the irony is the fact that some broadcasters are strengthening their newscasting reach by taking advantage of AI’s ability to distort reality by turning monolinguistic on-air personalities into fluent multilinguists. This is accomplished through real-time audio translation platforms that can generate multilingual news, sports and other live commentary by replicating the voices and reshaping lip movements of presenters speaking in one language for simultaneous output in one or more alternative languages.

As providers of WebRTC-based streaming platforms respond to surging demand for scalable, reliable real-time video connectivity, that demand is also accelerating progress toward alternative solutions that could eventually achieve equivalent results. Breakthroughs in that direction brought to light at the NAB Show in early April underscored the likelihood that as real-time streaming use cases take hold, the means of supporting them will continue evolving toward outcomes that seemed out of reach not so long ago.

Demand across multiple market sectors for real-time video streaming solutions sparked an outpouring of innovation at the recent NAB Show, making the biggest case yet seen for freeing the world from sole reliance on the prevailing HLS and DASH technologies. New ideas included new approaches to real-time streaming, new ways to streamline activation of supporting infrastructure on an as-needed basis, and applications of AI that enable verbal and visual communications between humans and virtualized counterparts.

The changes sweeping M&E industry approaches to content production have brought producers to a mission-defining crossroads: either they take action to eliminate the impediments to efficiency and innovation imposed by distance or suffer the consequences of restraining the full power of dispersed collaboration across their workflows.

Accelerating demand for multiviewing technology supporting single-screen displays of several channel or camera angle options has brought new solutions to market that surpass the capabilities typical of current applications in sports, news and other live TV and streaming productions.

While advancements in multiviewing introduced over the past couple of years by YouTube TV, Fubo, Roku, and major sports leagues like MLB and NBA accord users varying degrees of freedom to choose sports and other live channels they want to watch simultaneously on a single screen, they all limit the mix to no more than four streams. In contrast, at least four suppliers – MediaKind, Tiledmedia, Red5 and Eluvio – are taking highly divergent approaches to blowing out those restrictions.

A game-changing transformation in how governments use video surveillance is getting underway as emergency responders discover they can combine AI-fueled analytics with real-time streaming to stay current with events extending to the farthest reaches of their jurisdictions. Aided by increased 5G mobile coverage through private and public networks along with other advances pushing visibility into remote areas, surveillance becomes far more useful when responders can put advanced analytics tools to work processing frame-synchronized mixes of multi-camera views delivered to their screens within a few hundred milliseconds of capture from anywhere in the field.

The exploding popularity of micro-betting and other approaches to last-second in-game sports gambling is pushing bookmakers and streaming services toward integrating in-game betting options with the streamed viewing experience. The only way to do that is to deliver what’s seen on screen as close to real-time synchronicity with what’s happening on field as possible. which can’t be done relying on the one-way, high-latency streaming mode dominating the current OTT market.

OTT and traditional TV service providers are discovering they can count on the cloud as a far more cost-effective and versatile space for executing streaming strategies than has been the case so far.

The advent of commercially viable real-time streaming has unleashed a torrent of activity among sports, news and other live programming producers who want to exploit the cost-cutting and other benefits that come with remote production.

The emergence of real-time interactive video streaming infrastructure as an essential alternative to the prevailing one-way streaming grid is set to usher in a new generation of ultramedia apps and services across the consumer and commercial markets.

The OTT sector’s intensifying focus on radically reducing end-to-end live streaming latency has unleashed an outpouring of ground-breaking innovations along with a great deal of confusion over what goals need to be met, how to meet them and how long it will take to get there with some assurance of profitability. The challenge is to make sure aspirations aren’t limited by lack of knowledge about what can be done.

With full realization of the Media over QUIC (MoQ) streaming potential several years off, providers of WebRTC platforms are positioned to seize the opportunities created by rising demand for real-time streaming solutions today. But the assertion that WebRTC platforms offer the only immediate route to real-time multidirectional streaming at mass scales is now challenged by Ceeblue.

The M&E industry’s exuberant embrace of AI continued to accelerate at the recent IBC trade show in Amsterdam as efforts to mitigate the technology’s downsides struggled to keep pace.

What began not so long ago as scattered experiments in next-gen enhancements to sports and other live content viewing experiences is exploding into a global trend driven by applications that can instantaneously leverage massive volumes of digitized assets to fuel user engagement.

Verizon Business Group’s in-venue 5G service enhancement initiatives with big sports leagues are laying the groundwork for a transformation in services and how sports are produced that will impact viewing experiences across the carrier’s mobile and fixed service footprints.

Amid much commentary about the negative impact high-valued sports streaming initiatives could have on local TV stations and MVPDs there’s another much more optimistic view emerging from the ranks of several publicly traded station groups.

Recent innovations greatly enhancing the viability of live on-set virtual production (OSVP) have gone a long way toward addressing concerns about workforce skillsets and costs that are fueling motion picture, TV and other pro video producers’ lingering resistance to upending old ways of doing things