Amazon Prime scored record sign-ups from its exclusive online video coverage of Premier League football matches in the United Kingdom. The retailer had secured a package of 20 exclusive matches. It is the first time that the ‘televised’ Premier League matches were not on a traditional television channel. Could Amazon become a serious competitor to Sky and BT Sport?
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One of the challenges for professional video contribution and distribution over packet-based networks is that they are inherently unreliable and the standard transmission control protocols were not designed for video. RIST, or Reliable Internet Stream Transport, is an emerging protocol that aims to provide low-latency live video transport over unmanaged networks. The RIST Forum is a growing group of technical experts from across the broadcast industry that promote the use of the protocol for video transport over internet connections.
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Netflix added over 15 major new pay-television partners in 2019. It has over 100 major partnership deals with operators, giving it access to more than 300 million homes that pay for television services. For television service providers it may be preferable to keep subscribers on their platform, ideally with a single billing relationship on which they may receive commission.
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Programming from the United States unsurprisingly dominates video on demand services in Europe. European film and television programming accounts for around a quarter of titles on online video subscription services in Europe and those from the United Kingdom account for up to half of that, new research suggests.
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The DVB Project has published its first targeted advertising specification. The specification is the first piece of technical work of the DVB Targeted Advertising ecosystem to be published. It represents the first time that experts in broadcast advertising have come together to provide guidance on using existing advertising technology within linear broadcast.
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In 2025 there will be 8.9 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, including 7.4 billion smartphones. With only 13 million 5G subscriptions at the end of 2019, mostly in China and South Korea, Ericsson forecasts that by the end of 2025 there will be 2.6 billion, with networks covering 65% of the world population, carrying 45% of mobile data traffic. That would make it the fastest developing mobile communication technology ever to have been rolled out globally.
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