It is difficult to build an efficient method for controlling bandwidth utilization in OTT infrastructure, to avoid buffering or other streaming errors.
For streaming TV and movies, OTT (Over-The-Top) platforms are becoming more and more popular. although OTT providers have impacted the traditional television industry by allowing users to access their preferred content without subscribing to cable or satellite TV.
This growing popularity of the OTT platform is not without any bugs, the OTT operators face some challenges in building an OTT infrastructure. These challenges are-
Content Creation and Device Compatibility
During the times of OTT building, the IPTV service providers were struggling with limited device compatibility issues. The content that these providers were streaming was specifically for the proprietary set-top box installed by home users.
But with the evolution of OTT and multiscreen TV, content distribution networks are needed to develop their OTT infrastructure to deliver the same content on multiple versions, making it compatible with a wide devices variety such as set-top boxes, connected TVs, laptops, smartphones, game consoles, etc.
Since each of these devices has a unique media format, video resolution, and DRM requirements, content creators or network distributors must select a packager and origin server with the ability to instantly generate all the necessary media streams for the range of devices.
Storage Problems
One of the most worrisome things for all OTT operators is storage. There are a number of technologies available that help OTT infrastructure streamline and optimize the storage of literally millions of hours of content.
As a viewer submits a request for a given media file feature allows the origin server package to be a relevant version on the fly in order to align with the user’s playback devices.
This feature of the OTT infrastructure eliminates the requirement of producing content copies for all playback devices beforehand, freeing up the storage infrastructure. However, a corresponding cache technology maintains the copies of the most requested files on servers close to large concentrations of users which keeps the usage of bandwidth under control.
OTT content-maintaining capability automatically strikes the right balance between the storage and bandwidth efficiency of the OTT infrastructure.
Experience presents that it usually caches files for no more than a few minutes, even for very popular content.
Quality User Experience
In OTT infrastructure, the quality user experience goes beyond the offering of the relevant video resolution and DRM scheme to user devices which also comprises managing the multilingual content along with the subtitles, even in the non-Latin alphabets.
The legal concerns could also be relevant, in every region where the services are to be deployed. Therefore, OTT operators need to opt for the relevant technologies that serve all these aspects while building their distribution infrastructure.
Scalability Insights
In order to build a robust OTT infrastructure, scalability is one of the most important concerns. TV content distributed over (Internet Protocol television) IPTV networks needs one individual stream for every single viewer which applies even when users are watching the same program on different devices.
Millions of streams must still be transmitted across the network even when millions of homes are watching a live sporting event. To ensure that files and live streams are accessible close to where many viewers are placed, operators will need to distribute cache resources across their network.
The CDN (content delivery network) will be useful in monitoring network traffic and planning any necessary performance improvement in advance thanks to a significant network capacity planning feature.
For the audience in any market, OTT has opened up new opportunities for content delivery. The ability to watch their favorite material whenever and wherever they want is given to viewers.
In this OTT market, there are still a significant amount of challenges to overcome, but there are also a significant number of opportunities that will emerge.
