In Broadcast - January 2016 - 52


52

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 6 - Issue 1 | January 2016

InForm

Everything, Everywhere
Broadcast Monitoring
Establishing cost-effective, comprehensive monitoring across linear and
'anytime, anywhere' services, by Gary Learner, CTO, Volicon...

E

very day, a growing number
of consumers use their
smartphones, tablets, and other
connected devices to access and
view Internet-delivered content.
As demand for 'anywhere,
anytime' access to content
continues to rise, broadcasters
are joining the many other
services and platforms that offer
streaming media.
Competitive Edge
By extending their services
to include Internet delivery of
content, broadcasters can leverage
and monetise their high-value
professionally produced content more
broadly, not only reaching a broader
audience, but also increasing brand
awareness and loyalty. With so many
players in the field of over-the-top
(OTT) media streaming, however,
broadcasters are finding that their
competitive edge depends on the
quality of the content and service they
provide.
Consumers access OTT content from
numerous sources and watch it on a
multitude of devices. If they consider
the content or viewing experience
on any one of these services or
devices to be less-than-desirable,
they have many other options
from which to choose. Rather than
complain about the service, as they
might with traditional TV broadcasts,
OTT consumers are likely to move
on to another source of content.
Within this unforgiving environment,
proactive monitoring is the best way

Multiple channels require a quality service

Volicon Observer OTT - monitor across the distribution pipeline

for broadcasters to guarantee the
integrity of their streaming services,
and ensure a consistent experience for
the consumer, as well as the service
quality promised to advertisers.
Quality Monitoring
To address broadcasters' need for
convenient and cost-effective OTT
service-quality monitoring, Volicon
developed Observer OTT. This awardwinning OTT service monitoring
solution reflects Volicon's experience
in engineering the advanced broadcast
monitoring and logging systems that
today support numerous broadcast
operations, from single stations to
large station groups, around the
world in maintaining the integrity and
compliance of their channel offerings.
As broadcasters extend their offerings
into the OTT realm, the innovative
Observer OTT solution simplifies
the task of ensuring a consistent
experience across all streaming
platforms and devices.

Observer OTT is a straightforward
and highly scalable solution that allows
the broadcaster to capture all content
- in all renditions - over all IP delivery
networks to smartphones, tablets, and
computers. With this record of its OTT
services, the broadcaster can verify
streams' integrity, confirm compliance
with the FCC's closed-captioning and
loudness regulations, and validate
the apps used by consumers to access
content.
Troubleshooting
Giving broadcasters much greater
visibility into OTT service delivery,
Observer
OTT
supports
agile
identification and troubleshooting
of issues that threaten quality of
service and quality of experience for
the consumer. The Volicon system
eliminates the need to check services
on the broad array of viewing
devices in use today, automating
OTT service monitoring processes
and making them an economical part
of broadcasters' larger monitoring
workflows. Users manage OTT
monitoring through an intuitive
browser-based interface that features
a customisable multiview function.
Through this single interface, and
using just one visual display, Observer
OTT users can monitor the entire OTT
pipeline for any given service.
Content Integrity
Because the external networks
and devices that support content

delivery and viewing can
compromise quality of service,
Volicon designed Observer
OTT to enable broadcasters
to compare the streams that
leave their facilities, sent to
an online service provider for
distribution, with the streams
received via user devices.
Although content delivery
networks
(CDNs)
typically
monitor the feeds and speeds
offered across geographies,
broadcasters
can
employ
Observer OTT to make sure that
audio, video, captioning and other
metadata, as well as timing (lip sync)
are preserved.
When the broadcaster is unable
to access and capture the direct
feed from the CDN, as is often the
case for content distributed across
different geographic areas, Observer
OTT supports a simple strategy for
confirming the integrity of content
being consumed. Ingesting content
via an array of mobile devices, the
solution offers a window into the
consumer's experience of streamed
content. Complementary data about
these streams helps to speed remote
troubleshooting when necessary.
Service Solution
In today's media marketplace,
consumption of Internet-delivered
content has become mainstream,
and broadcasters are moving to
take advantage of the valuable
new opportunities yielded by this
delivery model. As a seamless and
highly automated part of the larger
monitoring
workflow,
Volicon's
Observer technology serves as an
always-on solution for logging and
monitoring the complete lineup
of offerings, across all outlets and
platforms. Supplying monitoring and
troubleshooting
capabilities
vital
to delivery of high-quality services,
Observer OTT eliminates barriers to
effective and affordable provision of
the anywhere, anytime content that
consumers demand.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.volicon.com/solutions/application-segments/monitor
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