Optimizing Streaming Quality Across Devices in OTT Services

Optimizing OTT Streaming Quality Across Devices

The Basics

The only way to elevate your streaming quality and keep it consistent is with a foundational commitment to adaptability, where you have systems that are designed to dynamically calibrate output to match the idiosyncrasies of each receiving apparatus. This adaptability has to also extend to your content preparation. Multi-format encoding has to transform your raw footage into layered variants that can be displayed across resolutions and come with synchronized audio tracks and metadata. This basic preparation ensures that a smartphone's modest processor can handle compressed streams without strain, while a high-end smart TV monitor can display your work in all its uncompressed grandeur.

Next, you have to think about the delivery architecture and delivery networks that cache assets regionally. You get around this latency by positioning data closer to the endpoints and thus preserving frame rates. Finally, you want to think about adaptability in reference to user interfaces. Playback engines should be able to subtly probe the connection's stability upon initiation and then choose initial bitrates that automatically keep things moving smoothly.

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming

Adaptive bitrate streaming is a process that monitors network flux in milliseconds and shifts video fidelity accordingly to avoid any interruptions. When a viewer's signal wavers, the system should seamlessly descend to a lower bitrate so the narrative keeps flowing, albeit with less detail, and ascend again as stability returns.

In practice, encoders will need to generate multiple streams per title, segmented into brief chunks that a viewer's player then reassembles on the fly, with heuristics that can match device profiles to prioritize things like battery conservation if you're dealing with a phone or immersive audio on a big stationary setup.

Device Ecosystems

Each category of device requires its own type of adjustments to unlock its full potential. Smart televisions have expansive canvases and powerful processors. These thrive on high-dynamic-range feeds. Mobile phones and tablets, conversely, tend to favor vertical orientations and energy-efficient codecs that sip data rather than gulp it in. Gaming consoles have got tremendous graphical might for those augmented reality overlays or multiplayer syncs. Dedicated sticks and boxes like those from Roku or Chromecast can upgrade legacy screens.

To tailor your offerings to the device a viewer is using, you'll need unified application layers that can abstract hardware variances and quickly query capabilities when launched so they automatically deploy on the optimized path for each device.

It's a lot to get right, and we can help. At Lightcast.com, we're your full-stack OTT solution. We give you the power to launch your brand, distribute to every kind of screen, build your apps, and monetize effectively. Get a demo today with Lightcast.com and see what we can do for you!