PEOPLE ARE BEING FORCED TO CHANGE AND THAT’S GOING TO MAKE THEM NIMBLER OVERALL “The ad fill rate on many FAST channels are very poor – some of that’s technology, some of that’s ad inventory. We’re seeing platforms investing in this, with Roku recently announcing they’re building their own,” he explains. “From a cost perspective, most of the industry is still very traditional. It’s still going through this transformation to IP and virtualisation, but there’s still a tonne of people on satellite, which is expensive.” With viewer expectations on the quality of the content they consume soaring, this is also an important area to focus on. “Part of monetisation is improving the quality so you’re getting the viewership,” adds Brooks. “If you want to go to 4K, you can’t really do that on satellite; it breaks the model. “People are being forced to change and that’s going to get them to become nimbler overall,” concludes Brooks. “That is the name of the game when it comes to monetisation.”
But then, we took it from the cloud to the Wavelength Zone – the AWS data centre inside of Verizon where they have 5G. This was done over 5G, which nobody has ever done before. “Then, we transcoded in the Wavelength Zone at the edge to NDI. We had two people on the show floor in the Verizon booth producing the game completely remotely using NDI and then played that out at the show. This was done for two different games, for two different shows. “For Grant Nodine, CTO of NHL, it’s all about not having this content in multiple places with multiple versions, but in one place where he can do anything he wants with it. He can personalise it as much as he wants, do it remotely and cost- effectively – giving him more options to monetise.” TIMES ARE CHANGING With so many monetisation methods available, Brooks highlights how there is still always ample room for improvement and change.
efficiency – in both the green and technical senses of the word. “With something called DPDK, we can bypass the operating system and talk directly with the network cards,” Brooks continues. “What that means is we require about one-tenth of the compute using some of these free protocols. It’s hard cost savings – easy to benchmark and prove, while also great for sustainability!” SHOW-STOPPING PERFORMANCE This cost-effectiveness has only been further emphasised by Zixi’s work with high-profile customers across the world. A key example is its recent work with Verizon and AWS for the NHL, delivering content over 5G networks in a remote production set-up. At NAB Show 2024, this work was put on display as an industry first. “At NAB, we did something never done before, and it all relates back to monetisation,” Brooks describes. “We took the content out of the hockey arenas into the cloud on the internet.
NABBING THE SPOTLIGHT Zixi’s
presentation at NAB Show
highlighted the potential of 5G technology in transforming live broadcasting
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