51 ROUND TABLE Viewer Experience
WE’RE BACK TO QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE HERE. IF YOU FEEL STRONGLY, MAKE A POINT ON SOCIALMEDIA
However, your own personal experience should not be ignored. A good video service provider will be monitoring social media for any feedback and will try to rectify a situation as quickly as it can to avoid bad publicity. SERGI VERGÉS: The best way to measure QoE and user engagement is with an analytics tool backed up with AI. The most advanced technologies now collect and correlate data across the entire session – from the moment users log in until they log out – which means a view of the full user journey. They can detect bottlenecking and underperforming areas in the video service to build holistic, fully engaging media experiences. In the future, good data is what will set video services apart. HANK THE CUSTOMER: I just bought my favourite movie from a well-known VOD provider. I discovered, to my horror, it had been mastered from blurry, low- resolution source material. I also recently downloaded a classic cinemascope movie – only to find it presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio. How can viewers get better information about the quality of the VOD content that they’re buying? FABIO MURRA: It is really the responsibility of the video service to make sure this information is shown before you purchase or play something. If they’re not being clear about it, Hank – complain! We’re back to quality of experience here. If you feel strongly, make a point on social media. SCOTT PUOPOLO: This is a question of file quality control. In this case, the file was transcoded and prepared for delivery, but nobody checked whether the characteristics of the video met the requirements of the VOD service. We encourage VOD distributors and VOD creators to use QC software, which checks that the content complies with VOD network requirements in the file manifest. This is a no-brainer – any organisation that is preparing content for VOD delivery needs that level of assurance, or else there is a high probability that the wrong file format, aspect ratio or transcode could be delivered.
If you are a provider of any type of video, you need to make certain that, from the point of creation through the distribution chain, the quality of the file or live stream meets the customer’s expectations. HANK THE CUSTOMER: Is it fair I should pay full price for HD or 4K content that has inconsistent resolution due to buffering issues? How can I try to ensure that I get the experience I have paid good money for? FABIO MURRA: That’s a tricky one. Once again, the service should be clear to you what sort of internet connection you need to play back the content perfectly. But also good streaming technology should enable the best viewing that adapts to your connection. That said, if you’ve bought a pay-per- view, one-off event under the express understanding that you will see it in HD or 4K, and you don’t think you’ve got this experience in return, then you’re quite within your rights to complain to customer service. Video service providers are very keen to keep subscribers like you with them so they may offer a refund, a discount, or at the very least an apology. SCOTT PUOPOLO: In content delivery there are multiple hand-offs in the process. Whoever the VOD distributor is owes it to themselves that any partners they have in their VOD ecosystem have comprehensive quality management processes in place. They should be demanding it of all the companies they do business with. You will justifiably ring up the VOD service provider and yell at them, irrespective of which company is responsible for the fall off in QoE. Any consumer-facing entity needs to be sure that if they offer HD content, then as much of the ecosystem as possible possesses rigorous quality checks. HANK THE CUSTOMER: I have a subscription to a great niche channel. The content is amazing, but I never make it through a movie without a crash. What issues do niche content providers have in providing a great quality viewing experience for consumers?
In contrast, quality of service depends on the efficiency and stability of the network that’s processing and distributing the video content you consume. SERGI VERGÉS: Quality of experience measures how end users perceive or visualise content, while QoS measures how well components of the video delivery chain are running – everything from encoding to your home router – but with no visibility on how these events affect the end user. Most of the time, the same KPIs will be measured for both QoE and QoS, but for QoE it’s important to measure how these events affect playtime, plays per session, session or playback frequency, engagement levels or even what level of subscription the user has. The better the QoE, the less likely the user is to move on to another service. HANK THE CUSTOMER: What are some of the best methods and technologies for measuring the quality of experience? FABIO MURRA: There are a multitude of them, from technical solutions that monitor how many times your video buffers when you’re watching, to surveys of how likely you’d be to recommend the service to a friend. Service providers should use both objective and subjective measures to improve their services for you. They can and should monitor the video at every point on its path.
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