Covid-19 presented streaming services with an unexpected opportunity to move into mainstream entertainment, and secure and retain subscribers. With lockdowns in effect for months, their audiences ravenously devoured content and asked for more. The huge demand saw streaming services scramble to procure new content while also struggling to ensure their technical infrastructure was able to handle the rise in traffic. Several streamers looked for new solutions, CDNs, infrastructure upgrades and partnerships to accommodate new subscribers and offer a seamless viewing experience. We bring together experts in the field to look at how some streaming services coped and what technologies helped elevate their service.

In the session, John Illingworth explains the best practices for streaming or OTT organizations seeking to scale their customer base while maintaining a low cost of operations. You’ll walk away from this session with a basic understanding of multi-pass encoding solutions and how multi-codec implementations such as HEVC and VP9 will save you big on delivery costs, all while delivering content in the highest possible resolutions.

• A look at the key components of a technically and commercially sound streaming service
• New developments in the context of reinventing streaming
• QoS can be impacted by so many variables – How do you best identify infrastructure and platform issues to maintain the best customer experience?
• The role of CDNs in improving the viewer experience
• The ideal tech approach – Investing in infrastructure vs investing in product features
• The role of analytics and leveraging multi-tenant architectures to understand customer behaviour better.

Moderator: Vijaya Cherian, Editor, BroadcastPro ME

Panelists:

• Nauman Qureshi, VP of Product, StarzPlay
• Peter Riz, CTO, OSN
• Rick Cordeiro, Director – Middle East and Africa, Brightcove Inc.
• Salloum El Dahdaah , Chief Technology Officer, ITWorksME

Streaming services became the primary source of entertainment during the lockdown, and the likes of Netflix, Shahid, StarzPlay, OSN Streaming App, Jawwy TV, Viu, Zee5 and several others in the region have upped their game in the market. Most have continuously added new content, Originals, Arabic-language programming, sports elements while also improving their interfaces and enhancing the viewer experience.

We bring together OTT experts to discuss new strategies that will firmly place OTT within the realm of mainstream entertainment.

• Personalization and Monetization
• Revenue generation models – AVOD/TVOD/SVOD
• Cloud-adoption technologies to drive OTT
• UX features- what is hit vs hype?
• How to ensure greater audience reach across devices

Moderator: Christophe Firth, Senior Principal, Kearney

Panelists:

• John-Paul McKerlie, Chief Commercial Officer, Intigral
• Remi Beaudouin, Chief Strategy Officer, ATEME
• Tim Pearson, Senior Product Marketing Director, Nagra

OTT and pay-TV companies have lost around $9.1bn in revenue due to piracy and account sharing in 2019 alone. The numbers in 2020 with Covid-19 forcing people to remain home are thought to be significantly higher.

This webinar will bring together some of the stakeholders and tech providers to look at new numbers, shed light on new trends in piracy and how they can collaborate to counter it.

• The different types of piracy in the MENA region
• Emerging trends in piracy
• Content assets that attract the most piracy –soccer events, movies, series, dramas?
• How are solution providers and end users collaborating to address this?
• Tactical and technical strategies that global and regional players are undertaking to address piracy

Moderator: Vijaya Cherian, Editor, BroadcastPro ME

Panelists:

• Hashim Ossaily, Regional Sales Director, Synamedia
• Hanif Khan, Director of Anti-Piracy and Content Security, OSN
• Kieron Sharp, CEO, FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft)