One Year In: Driving Zixi Forward with the Three Ps – Pricing, Partners, and Politics

One Year In: Driving Zixi Forward with the Three Ps – Pricing, Partners, and Politics

Marc Aldrich, CEO, Zixi

Nearly a year into my role as CEO of Zixi, I’ve spent much of this time listening—listening to customers, partners, and the broader industry. From that, three priorities have guided our path forward: Pricing, Partners, and Politics. Each has been central to repositioning Zixi as the leading enabler of live video delivery over IP.

Pricing: Simplifying Engagement, Driving Outcomes

When I joined, customers praised our technology but found our business model complex. Pricing and packaging weren’t always clear, making it harder for organizations to engage fully with us.

We’ve since simplified our offerings into straightforward solutions aligned with real-world use cases—from sports broadcasters regionalizing feeds, to cloud playout providers scaling globally, to enterprises delivering corporate video. This shift ensures pricing is predictable, transparent, and aligned to business outcomes—with clear metrics such as per event, per channel, or per affiliate/station.

This clarity doesn’t just make invoices simpler—it enables deeper partnerships. Customers now start conversations not with “what does it cost?” but with “what can we achieve together?”

At IBC, we’ll showcase how technology innovation underpins this work: zero latency frame thinning, expanded encoding, and a mobile contribution app. These features solve problems in practical ways—and our new pricing ensures customers know exactly how to leverage them.

Partners: Building an Ecosystem for Shared Success

Zixi has always had strong relationships, but they weren’t always structured for mutual success. Over the past year, we’ve reinvigorated our partner ecosystem with a focus on interoperability and joint value creation.

Today, partners are not add-ons but multipliers of impact. Whether through interoperability with Harmonic, co-innovation with Amagi, or service delivery with Uplynk and Encompass, our aim is the same: reduce friction for customers and drive measurable outcomes.

The industry is moving away from siloed, proprietary workflows. Customers demand seamless interoperability—and Zixi enables it. Supporting 13 different protocols, including SRT, RIST, HLS, and our own, Zixi is the connective tissue powering the future of IP video delivery.

The results are clear: faster feature velocity, stronger solutions, and deeper trust with customers who increasingly view us as a long-term business partner.

Politics: Preparing for a Changing Landscape

Technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum—the political and regulatory environment is reshaping the industry.

The upcoming sunset of C-band satellite spectrum is accelerating the shift to IP delivery. At the same time, the U.S. administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is investing heavily in broadband infrastructure, opening new markets but also increasing scrutiny on how video is transported, monitored, and monetized.

Zixi is positioned to be the bridge from satellite to IP—helping customers transition smoothly while ensuring compliance and efficiency. We support existing standards like SCTE 224, SCTE 35, and ESAM, while also innovating with tools like POIS (Placement Opportunity Information Service) to unlock new monetization opportunities.

Our approach is not about lobbying but about aligning technology with real-world frameworks, so customers are prepared for what’s next.

 Looking Ahead: Enabling the IP Era

Across Pricing, Partners, and Politics, the common thread is clear: Zixi enables the industry’s transition to IP.

At IBC we’ll demonstrate this mission in action:

  • Zero latency frame thinning for smoother streaming.
  • Modernized Broadcaster interface and ESNI management tools.
  • A mobile contribution app that turns any device into a Zixi encoder.
  • Integration with Time Addressable Media Store for fast live clipping.

These aren’t just features—they signal a clear direction: Zixi as the platform of choice for delivering live, high-value video anywhere in the world.

  Year One Reflections

A year ago, Zixi had world-class technology but untapped potential in how it was positioned. Today, through the Three Ps, we’ve simplified engagement, rebuilt partnerships, and aligned with the realities shaping our industry.

The journey is ongoing, but the path is clear. With transparent pricing, a reinvigorated ecosystem, and forward-looking strategies, Zixi isn’t just adapting to the future of media distribution—we’re helping define it in close alignment with our customers and partners.

 

Yukuan: Leading the Visual Frontier, Where Every Detail Comes to Light

Yukuan: Leading the Visual Frontier, Where Every Detail Comes to Light

Sarah Xing, Business Development Director, Yukuan

A Leader in Professional Audio-Video Fiber Optic Transceivers and video compression and transmission Solutions.

In today’s rapidly evolving broadcasting and new media industry, ultra-high-definition, low-latency, and highly reliable video transmission have become core demands. As a globally leading provider of video compression and transmission products and solutions, Yukuan Technology, founded in 2010, has consistently remained at the forefront of technology, offering global clients a complete value-chain service from signal processing to network transmission.

Profound Technical Expertise, Forging a Comprehensive Product Portfolio.

Yukuan’s core advantage stems from its relentless pursuit of cutting-edge technologies. We have a deep presence in the professional audio-video field, with a product line covering every aspect of video processing:

Codec Technology: Comprehensive support for standards from MPEG-2, H.264 to the latest 4K HEVC/H.265, meeting various bandwidth and quality requirements from standard definition to ultra-high definition.

Transmission and Conversion: Providing professional DVB to IP gateways, ASI/IP converters and redundancy switches, perfectly bridging traditional broadcasting and modern IP networks.

Streaming and Secure Transmission: Codecs integrated with advanced protocols like SRT, ensuring secure, stable, and low-latency transmission for internet live streaming.

Integrated Platforms: Offering complete headend system (DTV/IPTV/OTT) solutions including 4K IRD, IP encoder, decoder, multiplexers, modulators, transcoders and IP multiviewers.

It is within this powerful and mature technological ecosystem that Yukuan’s fiber optic transmission products have been developed and nurtured, becoming a critical component in the company’s solutions for achieving high-quality long-distance transmission.

Focus on the Core: Yukuan Professional Audio-Video Fiber Optic Transceivers—The “Highway” for Lossless Transmission.

In high-end application scenarios such as broadcast television, live events, remote production, security surveillance, and conference systems, the industry faces the common challenge of how to transmit lossless, uncompressed, and delay-free audio-video signals over long distances with high fidelity. Leveraging its profound technical accumulation, Yukuan has launched a series of high-performance audio-video fiber optic transceivers (Video/Audio Fiber Optic Extenders), providing the optimal solution.

Core Advantages of Yukuan Fiber Optic Transceivers:

  1. Exceptional Picture Quality, Lossless Transmission: Utilizing advanced fiber optic transmission technology, it effectively avoids issues like signal attenuation, electromagnetic interference (EMI), and radio frequency interference (RFI) common in traditional copper cable transmission. This ensures video and audio signals are transmitted over long distances with the highest fidelity, resulting in sharp, clear images and true color reproduction.
  2. Ultra-Low Latency, Real-Time Synchronization: For scenarios extremely sensitive to timing, such as live broadcasts and sports event transmissions, Yukuan’s transceivers achieve zero latency, guaranteeing perfect audio-video synchronization and meeting high-end production demands.
  3. Long Distance, Stable and Reliable: Single-mode fiber transmission can reach hundred kilometers or even farther, easily solving long-distance transmission challenges across large venues, between cities, or spanning campuses. Designed to industrial-grade standards, they ensure 7×24 hours of uninterrupted stable operation, safeguarding critical services from disruption.
  4. High Integration and Security: The products often integrate the transmission capability for video, audio, data, and control signals (e.g., RS-485/422) into one unit, simplifying system cabling. The inherent anti-interference and anti-eavesdropping properties of fiber optics also provide a natural barrier for signal security.
  5. Seamless Integration with Overall Solutions: Yukuan fiber optic transceivers are not isolated products. They can seamlessly collaborate with other Yukuan products like encoders, decoders, and IP gateways to form an end-to-end efficient workflow from signal acquisition, processing, long-distance transmission to distribution and broadcasting, providing clients with a one-stop solution.

Yukuan audio-video fiber optic transceivers are widely used in:

* Broadcast Live Events: Connecting outside broadcast (OB) vans to studio centers, transmitting raw camera signals.

* Remote Production (REMI): Centralizing audio-video signals from multiple remote locations to a production center.

* Large Events and Sports: Building transmission networks between different camera positions, large screens, and control rooms within venues.

* Defense and Security: Enabling secure transmission of high-definition video from front-line monitoring points to command centers.

* Healthcare and Education: Used for high-reliability audio-visual transmission in surgical broadcasts and remote teaching.

Yukuan is not merely a product manufacturer but a trusted industry partner. We deeply understand the challenges our clients face at every stage of video transmission. Our fiber optic transceiver products are precisely crafted based on this understanding and backed by comprehensive technical strength, serving as a solid foundation for building future-proof video systems.

Choosing Yukuan means choosing exceptional quality, innovative technology, and global service support. Let us connect your future with fiber optics and deliver every frame perfectly.

XroadMedia – Cutting Through The Noise: How Media Services Can Personalize Smarter, Not Harder

XroadMedia – Cutting Through The Noise: How Media Services Can Personalize Smarter, Not Harder

Tom Dvorak, XroadMedia

As new members of IABM, we wanted to share our thoughts on some of the big challenges affecting the industry and why personalization is no longer seen as a bonus feature but a necessity. As technology becomes more accessible, as well as the opportunities it brings, it can also raise questions about privacy, sustainability and scalability.

A Saturated Market Needs Personalization

In such a crowded market, it’s more important than ever to cut through the noise to keep users’ attention. With so many options available, content alone is not enough, a service needs to be able to keep users returning to their platform.

Today personalization is mission-critical, but many operators struggle to get it done well. Similarly, efficiency and scalability are no longer “nice to have”, they are the essential foundation for engagement, retention and long-term revenue growth – key ingredients for service providers to maximize their ROI.

Today’s Personalization Challenges

When it comes to introducing personalization, some systems introduce friction rather than solving it. A major issue is that the majority of solutions are black boxes that provide little transparency into how recommendations are made or how models behave. This lack of visibility limits flexibility and makes it difficult for operators to understand or optimize the system. For the end user, transparency is critical to build trust with the service, which is essential for them to allow recommendations and personalization in the first place. Modern personalization solutions should be able to honor GDPR and similar privacy laws to enable the end user to always understand which data about them is stored and used by the service provider. Last but not least, data transparency also helps to make personalization more accessible for the end user, for example, by explaining why certain content is recommended to them and which particular attributes are relevant.

Some systems also require continuous retraining of machine learning models to remain effective. Although they might be functional, they are still not efficient and usually expensive. They often result in unpredictable infrastructure costs, especially around compute and storage, which adds operational complexity that teams aren’t always equipped to manage.

Scalability and real-time responsiveness are additional pain points. Systems that aren’t built for real-time decisions at scale can’t deliver the timely, context-aware experiences users expect.

Latency, performance bottlenecks and rigid data pipelines quickly become barriers to success. Only real-time solutions allow for an experience users demand, particularly when it comes to navigating user interfaces and interacting with short-form video services or apps.

On top of this, traditional personalization engines are heavily reliant on the quality of metadata. Inconsistent or sparse metadata can severely limit the system’s performance, leaving valuable content undiscovered. Other solutions solely rely on user data (i.e. collaborative filtering), where new users or new assets in a content catalog are left behind, which is particularly challenging for service providers to acquire new subscribers and convert them into loyal users, as well as effectively monetize newly acquired content.

Finally, there’s the issue of vendor lock-in. Some solution providers are tied to a specific cloud vendor and often force teams into infrastructure decisions that may not align with broader business goals, like sustainability, increasing flexibility, lowering costs and making it harder to pivot if needed.

Personalization Should be Efficient and Scalable

To be efficient and scalable, personalization systems need to be agnostic. Whether built in-house or with a third party, a solution needs to be flexible and coherent within the current ecosystem. Moving away from legacy systems, but having infrastructure that is agnostic to reduce the sprawl across systems, reducing the workload, the costs and the impact on the environment.

Equally important is real-time personalization. Delivering relevant experiences at the exact moment they matter requires systems that can respond instantly to user signals. But real-time doesn’t have to mean fully autonomous. In the time of AI, it’s important to get the balance between tools and teams. The most effective teams are those that strike the right balance of AI automation with human oversight and curation. AI brings speed and scale, while human input ensures quality, context and brand alignment. When both work in tandem, teams can move faster without sacrificing control or results.

To tie it all together, a modular “toolbox” architecture provides the foundation for long-term agility. Instead of rigid, one-size-fits-all platforms, this approach allows teams to choose the tools that best suit their goals, integrate them easily and evolve over time. It’s a setup designed not just for launch, but for continuous iteration and optimization.

Engagement, Monetization and Agility

When users engage, they stay. When they stay, it’s guaranteed revenues. Services must keep viewers engaged with tailored content to their interests and watching history, bringing them back with personalized notifications and maintaining their attention even during ad breaks, with relevant paid content. Agile, scalable personalization systems empower media platforms to pivot fast, monetize effectively and continuously optimize the user journey without overloading internal teams or budgets. It is important for service providers to show the user that they understand and value them at every touchpoint the user has with their service. When done properly and in a transparent manner, it delivers real impact for both, the user and the service provider alike.

The Future is Bright and Personalized

We’re in a world where personalization is expected, it’s not a case of ‘if’ but ‘how’ services should be personalizing their user experiences. As privacy regulations tighten and users grow more conscious of their data, the future of personalization must be transparent and respectful. AI will continue to play a critical role, but not in isolation. Human control is key to ensuring ethical, responsible personalization that aligns with both user expectations and business goals.

Personalization isn’t just a feature, it’s a mindset powering the next generation of media success. The platforms that scale it efficiently, without compromising on speed, privacy or flexibility, will be the ones to lead the market and move it forward.

Wowza – Mobile Justice and Jotto: Real-Time Civic Engagement Powered by Video

Wowza – Mobile Justice and Jotto: Real-Time Civic Engagement Powered by Video

When individuals reach for their smartphones during a tense moment, they’re often doing more than capturing a clip – they’re attempting to make their voices heard. The Mobile Justice app, originally developed by Quadrant 2 and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and powered by Wowza, has evolved into something larger, more inclusive, and more impactful, illustrating how streaming tech can be repurposed as a civic tool.

From ACLU Roots to Civic Platform

The ACLU originally launched Mobile Justice to give citizens a way to safely document law enforcement encounters. Deployed across multiple states, the app became a vital tool for preserving evidence, especially in situations where footage might otherwise be lost or erased.

Quadrant 2, the creator of Mobile Justice, recognized that the app’s core value could extend further. By enabling communities not only to capture video but also to contribute voice, text, and multimedia inputs, they saw the opportunity to move beyond incident reporting to real-time civic engagement. This realization led to the creation of Jotto.

Founded to create platforms that connect communities with decision-makers, Quadrant 2 builds civic technology for advocacy groups, political campaigns, and live event organizers. Jotto was designed to capture diverse citizen inputs, process them in real time, and deliver structured insights that leaders can act on. It retains a strong public service angle—capturing the voice of communities and amplifying marginalized perspectives—while also proving valuable in corporate and live event environments.

By connecting Mobile Justice to Jotto, Quadrant 2 gave the app a new purpose: rather than being tied to one association, any organization or group can be the recipient of an actionable stream of civic intelligence.

“Video accounts for the vast majority of internet traffic today, but its value in civic life is still largely underutilized,” said Krish Kumar, CEO of Wowza. “With Mobile Justice and Jotto, we’re showing how streaming infrastructure can go beyond entertainment—becoming a tool for empowerment, accountability, and stronger communities.”

Jotto: Real-Time Feedback Meets Actionable Insight

Jotto is built to make sense of unstructured, multimedia contributions from large groups of people. With Wowza Streaming Engine and Stream Recorders handling the capture and delivery of live video streams, Jotto receives citizen contributions securely and without interruption. From there, the platform organizes and analyzes responses to detect sentiment, highlight recurring issues, and provide dashboards of community trends.

“Wowza’s streaming and recording technologies were instrumental in transforming unfiltered feedback into actionable intelligence—fast, accurate, and scalable,” said Barry Owen, Chief Solutions Architect at Wowza. “For projects like Mobile Justice, where trust and immediacy are everything, the infrastructure has to be rock solid.”

This capability has proven particularly valuable in situations where time matters. Rather than sifting through hours of raw footage, advocacy groups and policymakers can immediately see patterns and themes emerging from contributions.

Real-World Impact

The impact of the Mobile Justice and Jotto partnership has been significant:

  • Civic accountability: Communities now have a safe, secure way to document law enforcement encounters, preserving vital evidence and reducing the risk of erasure.
  • Engagement: Jotto has boosted response rates by as much as 50%, helping organizations better understand and respond to public concerns.
  • Policy shaping: Insights generated from citizen contributions have been used to inform debates at both local and national levels.
  • Safety and trust: Because Wowza technology can operate in disconnected or restricted environments, sensitive recordings are not dependent on unreliable networks or third-party platforms – critical in high-risk situations.

“By integrating Stream Recorders with Jotto’s engine, we turn raw input into insights—quickly and at scale,” added Barry Owen. “It’s about making sure people’s contributions don’t just vanish into the ether but become part of a larger story.”

The Technology That Makes It Possible

At the heart of the workflow is Wowza Streaming Engine, a proven backbone for capturing and delivering live streams from mobile devices. Its ability to run in the cloud, on-premise, or at the edge makes it ideal for unpredictable civic applications.

Stream Recorders complement this by securely storing every stream for review or evidentiary use. The combination of live delivery with secure storage provides both immediacy and accountability – a dual requirement for civic use cases like Mobile Justice.

For Jotto, the key is adding structure to these inputs. Its analysis layer categorizes and interprets contributions, turning them into dashboards that advocacy groups, lawyers, or policymakers can use to identify patterns—whether recurring issues in policing, community responses to new laws, or emerging themes at civic gatherings.

“Without this type of workflow, organizations are left with hours of video they cannot process,” said Krish Kumar. “With Jotto, the information becomes visible, patterns emerge, and leaders can act faster and with greater confidence.”

Expanding Beyond Justice

While Mobile Justice was born out of a need for accountability in policing, the combination of Wowza and Jotto has already found broader applications:

  • Elections: Campaigns are using it to capture voter sentiment at rallies and town halls.
  • Corporate engagement: Businesses are deploying it at conferences and events to gather feedback in real time.
  • Education: Universities and schools are exploring it as a way to understand student engagement and improve campus life.

The common thread is the ability to turn raw contributions into insights that can shape decisions.

A Model for Civic Technology

The story of Mobile Justice and Jotto illustrates that the greatest innovations in media are not always technical – they are human. By giving individuals the ability to safely record their experiences and ensuring those recordings can be transformed into meaningful insights, the platform bridges the gap between citizen voices and institutional action.

The Mobile Justice app, rooted in the ACLU’s original commitment to protecting civil liberties, has grown into something larger with Jotto and Wowza. It is no longer just a way to record incidents – it is a system that ensures those recordings become part of a wider, actionable conversation. With Wowza providing the infrastructure, Jotto delivering the intelligence, and communities driving the use, Mobile Justice is a powerful example of video being used not simply to inform, but to empower.

Wohler Technologies – The Monitoring Plane

Wohler Technologies – The Monitoring Plane

Wohler Technologies have been creating products and technologies for monitoring of broadcast signals for 40+ years now. We listen to our customers and innovate on their behalf to help solve their problems. In our recent conversations with customers, they guided us to provide them with “monitoring solutions” rather than singular monitoring products. Based on our research we propose the notion of a “The Monitoring Plane”.

With the evolution of infrastructure, broadcast facilities are now starting to resemble a mix between traditional broadcast and IT infrastructure. The advent of IP technologies like ST 2110 and AoIP like AES67, Dante and Ravenna, coupled with software centric signal processing both on-premise as well as in the Cloud is accelerating this trend.

The “Data Plane”:

Broadcast facilities started with Analog Audio and Composite Video technologies, that were complemented over time with digital baseband signals like 3G SDI for high-definition video and 16 channels of PCM audio, coupled with formats like MADI and AES3. That evolution has now entered the packetized transport-over-IP era, with the introduction of ST2110, ST2022-6/7 and AoIP technologies. While there is a transition towards use of the newer IP technologies, baseband continues to coexist. From a high-level perspective, the fabric through which signals flow could be identified as a “heterogeneous Data Plane”,

The “Control Plane”:

This complex fabric of “data” (signal) transport across broadcast facilities has at its core, switchers, peripherals, encoders and decoders that process signals pre or post switching. This core is now also evolving with IP technologies, enabling the use of tools that achieve routing and control in software hosted locally or in the Cloud.

Software applications hosted in the Cloud require signals to be uplinked into the Cloud for processing and potentially downlinked back to on-premise locations prior to distribution. Orchestration, switching and processing functions across these workflows, with data flows across the Data Plane could broadly be viewed as the “Control Plane”.

This perspective suggests the need to define a “Monitoring Plane”.

 

What is “The Monitoring Plane”?

In order to get a better understanding, it would be useful to view the data fabric and various points across that fabric that need to be monitored as “the monitoring plane”.

The Monitoring Plane perspective helps us realize a well-defined and structured approach that is valuable in designing a system that caters to the needs of operators, managers and executives in the broadcast industry, enabling them to meet KPA’s and related predetermined standards for QOS and QOE.

What are attributes of The Monitoring Plane?

“The Monitoring Plane” on the lines of “Control” and “Data” planes, needs a set of attributes to be effective. We separate monitoring into the two broad areas: “signals to monitor”, and “unified operator interfaces for monitoring”. The following attributes help define The Monitoring Plane:

  • Signal Agnostic: Visual representation of monitored signals should be consistent and independent of signal type, baseband or IP, compressed or uncompressed.
  • Location Agnostic: Data flow can span local facilities, remote trucks (OBV’s), Cloud infrastructure and also on-premise equipment. Ideally The Monitoring Plane should be able to provide monitoring independent of signal or operator location.
  • Consistent Media Analysis: View video and listen to audio signals being monitored across a heterogenous fabric in a predictable way, focusing attention on the signal being monitored rather than specific monitoring tools and mapping signals across those tools to obtain a consistent view.
  • Audio Loudness: Monitor parameters like audio loudness across signal types. Provide a visual representation of audio loudness to diagnose audio level problems signals across varying underlying data fabrics, and potentially across broadcasters and service providers, as they link signals with each other as the occasion may demand.
  • Signal Metadata: Visual representation of signal metadata. This might mean video and audio format, CC information in the VANC section of an SDI signal, or IP packet losses and delays for a ST2110 signal.
  • Automated Alerting: Move in the direction of “monitoring-by-exception”, drawing operator attention towards monitoring only when there is an exception that demands their attention.
  • Vendor Agnostic: Use open industry standards to monitor signals, without having to resort to vendor specific applications, avoiding vendor lock-in.
  • Open Standards: The Monitoring Plane is not something that any single industry vendor can hope to solve single handedly. It is therefore important to collaborate across vendors and solution providers, with a shared goal of solving customer problems.

 

 Wohler’s Approach:

Having done some groundwork researching the problem, we implemented the generalized set of attributes described above, as a starting point.

MAVRIC: Advanced Cloud-based Remote Monitoring

Wohler recently launched “MAVRIC”, which is an abbreviation for “Multichannel, Audio and Video Remote Indication and Control”. MAVRIC was awarded the “Best of Show” at IBC 2024, as a recognition of the fact that it breaks new ground in the area of broadcast signal monitoring.

MAVRIC provides for three core function, Remote Monitoring, Automated Alerting and Integrated Conferencing. MAVRIC uses a simple architecture, where our in-rack gear supplemented by openGear monitor-on-a-card hardware are used to realize “probes”. These “probes” connect into our Cloud-based remote monitoring application that is accessed using a standard web browser.  Probes stream encoded audio and video into the Cloud, enabling operators to see live video and listen to audio from the probes from anywhere in the world. Probes can also be configured to trigger alerts upon occurrence of predetermined error conditions in the monitored signals. Media streaming infrastructure for MAVRIC can be deployed on-premise, should the customer require media signals to remain in-network.

An Android/iOS mobile app supplements MAVRIC. Alerts for preconfigured conditions are paged to the mobile app, helping customers realize a true “monitoring-by-exception” paradigm. The mobile app also includes a built in “conferencing” function so operator groups can connect “in-context” to resolve problems as they occur. The system is secure, configurable and horizontally scalable to grow as per customer requirements.

 

NEW. MPEG SRT Monitoring.

Complementing our baseband and IP products is the new iVAM2-MPEG hardware monitor launching at IBC2025, providing MPEG SRT, H.264, HEVC (H.265) with AAC, Dolby Digital+ and MP3 audio monitoring.

Vubiquity – How the European Accessibility Act Can Help Streamline Media Operations for Efficiency

Vubiquity – How the European Accessibility Act Can Help Streamline Media Operations for Efficiency

Sonia Hunt, SVP, Worldwide Marketing & Communications, Vubiquity

 For some, the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which began phased enforcement in June 2025, is seen as yet another regulatory hurdle. However, reality presents something far more valuable. It’s a strategic opportunity to modernize your systems and workflows and become far more efficient. By treating accessibility as part of the workflow strategy, not an afterthought, businesses can accelerate readiness, reduce risk, and strengthen long-term resilience across their media supply chain. The result could and should be a much more efficient and ideally profitable media operation.

Accessibility as a Driver of Business and Technical Resilience

Resilience in media operations isn’t just about recovering from a disaster; it’s about ensuring that your content and systems are adaptable, interoperable, and built for scale. Accessibility plays a central role in that strategy, and at the heart of that strategy is content readiness.

At face value, many media companies with disparate content catalogs will face steep challenges aligning with the EAA regulations. However, embracing AI here can be a real game-changer. Rather than manually auditing, tagging, or retrofitting content/metadata, you can leverage AI to turn accessibility from what was a bottleneck into something more of a profit machine.

Applying AI to Operationalize Accessibility

At Vubiquity, we see AI not as a silver bullet, but as a technology for identifying and resolving accessibility gaps across massive libraries. Our Catalog Intelligence platform uses machine learning and natural language processing to detect missing captions, subtitles, transcripts, or audio descriptions. It has user-friendly tools that enable you to easily transform unstructured media assets into structured, rights-aware, and globally ready content.

For example, AI can generate multilingual subtitles at scale, suggest culturally relevant alt text, or preemptively flag UI components that don’t meet screen reader standards. When combined with human oversight, these capabilities allow you to focus on strategy and delivery.

What’s important to note here is that we built Catalog Intelligence on our own expertise. The tools are therefore purpose-built for media. In other words, media workflows, compliance and other nuanced yet critical industry know-how are baked in.

This type of smart automation reduces compliance costs, accelerates time to market, and strengthens your overall content operation by aligning metadata with distribution requirements. This type of transparency and control across your archives/libraries will enable you to unlock broader revenue opportunities. For example, low-hanging fruit in the form of older and underutilized yet highly valuable IP can easily be repurposed and relicensed.

A Roadmap for Readiness

Resilience doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built through early planning, thoughtful partnerships, and smart use of technology. Here is how Vubiquity is working with its customers and partners:

  • Conduct a comprehensive accessibility audit: Assess content libraries, platforms, and metadata systems to identify gaps.
  • Modernize localization pipelines: Integrate accessibility elements, including subtitles, audio descriptions, alt text into core production workflows.
  • Leverage AI safely for automation: Use AI to automate compliance checks, accelerate adaptation, and reduce human workload at scale.
  • Align for interoperability: Ensure systems and formats align with global distribution requirements, not just EU compliance.

Future-Ready Means Inclusive by Design

The EAA reflects a larger industry shift toward inclusive, standardized content ecosystems. Those who treat it as a future-facing opportunity, rather than a distant obligation, will be better positioned to navigate platform evolution, regulatory scrutiny, and rising consumer expectations.

At Vubiquity, we believe that accessibility is foundational to content readiness. With the right tools and partners, you can transform compliance into capability AND a competitive advantage.

Viaccess-Orca – The 5 Pillars of Video Streaming Efficiency: How to Launch Faster, Scale Smarter, and Spend Wiser

Viaccess-Orca – The 5 Pillars of Video Streaming Efficiency: How to Launch Faster, Scale Smarter, and Spend Wiser

Alain Nochimowski, Chief Technology Officer at Viaccess-Orca

For today’s streaming services, operational efficiency is a key differentiator — not in bitrates or compression, but in how platforms are architected, deployed, and scaled. As cloud infrastructure and AI-enriched processes become increasingly pervasive, the competitive focus is shifting from feature innovation to optimizing total cost of ownership (TCO) and building resilient, scalable systems. According to Gitnux, over 83% of streaming providers plan to expand their AI capabilities within two years, aiming not only to enhance viewer analytics but also to reduce operational overhead, such as cutting content moderation times by up to 60%. The ability to manage peak-time upscaling, meet SLAs, and industrialize workflows is now central to sustainable growth.

This shift marks the decline of feature overload. OTT providers are moving away from novelty-driven development and toward platforms that are operationally sound and adaptable to rapid change. Operational efficiency is no longer just a technical goal — it’s a strategic imperative. This requires service providers to rely on vendors proficient with the most modern software development & deployment processes.

  1. Automation & Modern Deployment

Automating operational processes plays a critical role in improving the speed, reliability, and consistency of streaming platform maintenance. It reduces costs, enables frequent upgrades, and shortens time-to-market, helping platforms respond quickly to user needs and competitive pressures. Just as importantly, automation helps eliminate human error and reduces bottlenecks caused by specialized configuration knowledge, making systems more resilient and easier to scale.

Modern deployment strategies like canary and blue-green rollouts enable incremental releases that minimize risk and ensure service continuity. Canary updates target small user groups, while blue-green setups allow seamless switching between old and new environments. These methods reduce human error and support testing in production — essential for high-availability platforms.

At the heart of these practices is the need to manage software with enterprise-grade rigor. Automation powered by modern Software Delivery LifeCycle (SDLC) frameworks and CI/CD pipelines standardizes deployment, scaling, and maintenance tasks, reducing configuration bottlenecks and freeing engineering teams to focus on innovation. This foundation equips streaming providers to iterate rapidly and deliver new features with confidence.

  1. Adoption of Cloud-Native Architecture

Cloud-native technologies like containers, Kubernetes, and managed services are now standard for building scalable, flexible streaming platforms. Rooted in open-source principles, they support interoperability and evolving cloud architectures. This enables deployment across public clouds, private data centers, or hybrid setups with minimal friction.

Portability makes future migration or hybrid scaling easier, providing the flexibility necessary for handling peak demand — such as live sports — where infrastructure needs can spike. Cloud-native systems scale dynamically, avoiding overprovisioning and maintaining performance under pressure, while helping providers optimize resource use across environments.

  1. Architectural Balance: Monoliths vs. Microservices

The architectural debate between monoliths and microservices is often framed as a binary choice, but in practice, the most effective streaming platforms adopt a balanced, context-driven approach. Monolithic systems can offer stability and optimized internal flows, making them suitable for tightly coupled high-throughput functions that benefit from centralized control. However, they also come with significant drawbacks: large, intertwined codebases are harder to maintain, slower to evolve, and less conducive to innovation — making them more costly over time.

Microservices, by contrast, offer greater specialization and agility. They allow teams to develop, test, and deploy features independently, which can significantly reduce time-to-market. This is particularly valuable when different business models coexist. For example, transactional and subscription-based content serve distinct audiences and follow different dynamics. Yet microservices also introduce complexity, which can lead to inefficiencies if not carefully managed. A pragmatic hybrid architecture that supports legacy systems while enabling modular evolution often provides the best of both worlds.

Modular architectures support isolated feature updates, reducing testing and accelerating delivery. It also enables granular scalability: instead of scaling the entire platform, providers can scale only the services that are experiencing increased demand, thereby optimizing infrastructure costs. Such architectural adaptability allows platforms to evolve incrementally and respond to changing needs without disruptive overhauls. 

  1. Managing Technical Debt

Technical debt refers to the long-term cost of quick fixes, outdated code, or architectural shortcuts that make future development more challenging. Like financial debt, it accrues interest, which is the extra time and effort required to make changes due to existing flaws. Refactoring takes time upfront but saves time later.

In streaming environments, technical debt can manifest as security vulnerabilities (e.g., CVEs), or non-compliance with evolving regulations like NIS2 (to which certain European operators may be subject). Left unmanaged, it can hinder agility, increase risk, and limit the adoption of new technologies. This challenge is amplified by the growing reliance on third-party (often open-source) software, which creates a complex web of dependencies. Treating technical debt as an ongoing responsibility helps ensure platforms remain adaptable, secure, and ready for future growth.

  1. Optimizing the Bill of Material (BOM)

Efficiency in streaming platforms extends beyond software architecture, encompassing the entire ecosystem of hardware, infrastructure, and operational components. The Bill of Material (BOM) represents the full cost structure of a platform, including not just the applicable software itself but also servers, networking equipment, cloud services, and increasingly, third-party software components. Viewing the BOM holistically helps organizations understand true ownership costs and identify opportunities for optimization.

To meet expectations for operational efficiency, infrastructure planning must be tightly integrated with software roadmaps. This means evaluating how each component –physical or virtual – is used over time and ensures resources are neither overprovisioned nor underutilized. Strategic planning reduces redundancy and prepares systems for demand spikes. When treated as a strategic asset, the BOM becomes a foundation for smarter investment decisions and more adaptable platforms.

Looking Ahead: A Pragmatic Path to Efficiency

Efficiency will continue to shape the success of streaming platforms. Providers are embracing gradual, evidence-based improvements over sweeping changes, evaluating technologies based on context rather than trendiness.

AI is increasingly accelerating these transformations — streamlining deployment, enhancing observability, and optimizing resource use across the Software Development Lifecycle. As these capabilities mature, providers will iterate faster and adapt more confidently.

Veset – Delivering Live Events Efficiently in the Cloud

Veset – Delivering Live Events Efficiently in the Cloud

Lelde Ardava, COO, Veset

We all know that viewers today want the freedom to watch content over the internet, anytime, anywhere, and on any device. It’s also well recognised that the cloud provides broadcasters with much needed flexibility and scalability making it easier to meet these needs. However, the cloud also relies on IP, and IP networks are built on unicast data transmission, where data is sent from a single sender to a single receiver. Consequently, when broadcasters distribute content over the internet via OTT services, a separate transmission must be sent to each and every viewer that requests a stream. Conversely, with traditional broadcast distribution, a single transmission is sent to many viewers simultaneously, making it a highly efficient mode of distribution. The inability to easily and efficiently deliver a single transmission to many viewers simultaneously like in traditional broadcasting remains a challenge for cloud-based broadcasters.

While unicast works perfectly well for on-demand content, it’s problematic when it comes to live events such as sports events, awards ceremonies and music concerts, because sending high volumes of synchronous streams overloads the network, leading to poor quality and disrupted viewing. This is a challenge for broadcasters, and the problem is only going to worsen as viewer appetite for watching live events over streaming services increases. It is this need for a more efficient way to stream live events, maintain quality and prevent network overload that is driving interest in multicast, which similarly to traditional broadcast, allows a single transmission to be delivered to many viewers.

Understanding Unicast Challenges

With traditional broadcast distribution, a signal is transmitted from one source and is picked up by all receivers (in this case, TVs) within range. It doesn’t matter if ten or ten million people are watching, a single transmission is still sent. Conversely, with unicast, each viewer’s device whether that be a smartphone, tablet or smart TV, connects directly to a server to receive the requested content. For a live sports event being shown on an OTT service, the origin server sends individual streams to each viewer.

Every stream travels its own internet path, so a single server can quickly become overwhelmed by high numbers of simultaneous unicast streams which can go into the thousands or even the millions with high profile events. The Super Bowl LIX for example which was streamed by Fox’s Tubi earlier this year, reportedly reached a peak of 15.5 million concurrent streams. To manage this level of demand, prevent servers from becoming overloaded and to maintain performance, service providers use CDN’s (content delivery networks) to distribute the content across multiple servers.

However, the numbers of simultaneous streams can be so high, that even after taking various actions to ensure quality and a seamless viewing experience, broadcasters can still experience problems. Take the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson boxing match streamed by Netflix last year: the match reportedly attracted a staggering 65 million concurrent streams, however many viewers complained of poor quality, buffering and startup errors. It’s likely that these issues occurred at least in part as a result of there being such high audience numbers.

How Does Multicasting Work?

Similarly to traditional broadcast distribution, multicast also transmits from one source to multiple destinations. This enables one stream to be sent to multiple viewers simultaneously without having to duplicate it for each recipient. The process uses UDP (User Datagram Protocol), a lightweight transport protocol often chosen for live video because it can move data quickly without the delays associated with some other protocols.

Instead of creating a direct connection to every device, the source sends just one stream into the network. Routers and switches then pass that stream along only to parts of the network where someone has asked to receive it, so servers don’t have to work any harder whether there’s one viewer or thousands. Although using multicast for cloud-based broadcast operations may seem like an easy call, it’s not widely used because as mentioned, IP networks are built on unicast data transmission. Most public cloud providers don’t natively support multicasting, so it hasn’t generally been easy for broadcasters to implement. Having said that, broadcasters can now access third-party solutions that enable multicast functionality in the cloud without too much complexity.

Benefits of Multicasting in the Cloud

Unlike sending a separate unicast stream to each viewer, multicast doesn’t overwhelm the network with repeated copies of the same stream. Only the parts of the network with interested viewers receive the stream, so bandwidth is used far more efficiently. For large-scale live broadcasts, that efficiency is the real advantage. The result is lower bandwidth requirements, greater efficiency, and more consistent quality, even during times of peak traffic.

The multicast approach is particularly valuable for tier 1 and 2 broadcasters and those operating multi-channel operations because it provides an efficient way to distribute content to high numbers of viewers simultaneously without creating too much complexity. Additionally, multicasting is also highly beneficial for broadcasters that use alt-casting (alternate broadcasting), a strategy that is becoming increasingly popular as broadcasters seek to appeal to a broader audience. Popular in sports broadcasting, alt-casting lets broadcasters offer alternative coverage alongside the main event feed, such as alternative commentary aimed at a specific demographic or regional variations, all without overburdening their network. It can also be used to create additional channels for specific platforms and in different formats such as FAST channels.

Future of Live Streaming

The industry is still in the process of bridging the gap between the efficiency of traditional broadcast and the flexibility that cloud infrastructure and IP delivery provides. Multicast offers cloud-based broadcasters a way to efficiently stream live events to the masses without overloading the network or losing precious quality.  Multicast may well become part of a broader toolkit that blends efficiency with  enhanced viewing experiences, whether that means custom camera angles or supplementary commentary delivered at scale, ensuring that broadcasters can always deliver high-quality live streamed events to viewers, no matter how many are watching.

Uplynk – The Platform Powering Global Streaming at Scale

Uplynk – The Platform Powering Global Streaming at Scale

The streaming world isn’t just growing, it’s evolving fast. What started as a race to get content online has become a demand for seamless delivery, personalization at scale, and operational efficiency. In this dynamic environment, Uplynk has emerged as a quiet force behind some of the world’s most reliable streaming experiences.

Whether powering global broadcasters, sports leagues, digital-first brands, or enterprise media teams, Uplynk helps customers transition from live or on-demand content to monetized, high-quality streams without needing to build everything from scratch. With a modular platform, managed services, and a commitment to transparency, Uplynk is helping reshape how media companies manage and monetize video.

A Platform Built for Scale and Simplicity

Uplynk’s core offering is a cloud-based streaming platform designed to simplify the complexities of video workflows. It supports everything from live ingest and encoding to ad insertion, clipping, syndication, and playout, all delivered with the reliability and flexibility of 1:1 session-based streaming.

Where legacy systems rely on fragmented tools and infrastructure, Uplynk unifies the stack. Customers can plug in at any point in the workflow, using what they need without taking on the burden of integration or upkeep.

“Companies are under pressure to do more with less,” says Eric Black, CEO of Uplynk. “Our goal is to be the partner that helps them scale without the overhead whether that means automating ad monetization or helping operate a live event.”

StreamOps: Managed Services with a Hands-On Edge

While the platform is self-service, Uplynk also offers StreamOps a managed services layer that provides global 24/7 operational support, live event oversight, and proactive error monitoring. This is especially valuable for teams running high-stakes events with lean staffing.

From soccer matches in EMEA to national sports coverage in North America, StreamOps teams have helped customers manage thousands of live events, stepping in when every second counts.

“Sometimes our team is the difference between a missed ad break and a clean transition,” says Simon Shapcott. “We’re not just watching dashboards, we’re working side-by-side with our customers.”

Of course, StreamOps services are available to Uplynk SaaS customers. Uplynk also offers it as a standalone service to streamers who don’t have any Uplynk tech in their stack.

Ad Monetization Made Smarter

One of Uplynk’s standout strengths is its approach to monetization. With support for server-side ad insertion (SSAI), flexible rule sets, and per-session delivery, Uplynk helps partners unlock new revenue without compromising the viewer experience.

The SmartPlay engine handles dynamic ad decisioning, blackout rules, geo-blocking, and mid-stream feed switching, all with the session awareness required to keep streams smooth and compliant. A dashboard enables customers to track fill rates, identify error trends, debug in real time, and optimize across multiple ad servers in one convenient and neutral location.

Built for a Fragmented Ecosystem

Uplynk isn’t trying to replace everything in a media company’s workflow—it’s designed to work with it. With support for CMAF ingest, multi-CDN delivery, SCTE markers, and real-time overlays, the platform plays well with third-party tools and evolving standards.

It’s also globally scalable. Customers can stream to viewers on every continent, with automatic failover and redundancy baked into the architecture. Whether it’s a breaking news feed in Europe or a sports stream targeting Latin America, Uplynk is built to adapt.

Recent Momentum and Global Reach

Originally an early startup acquisition by Verizon, Uplynk became an independent company in 2024 with backing from Lynrock Lake. Since then, it has expanded its customer base, introduced a redesigned Studio interface, and invested in AI-driven tools, including automated subtitling and clip creation.

The company now supports more than 25,000 live events annually and delivers billions of viewing minutes each month across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms.

Uplynk’s customers range from established broadcasters and FAST channel owners to sports leagues, religious organizations, tech platforms, and corporate comms and marketing teams. While the use cases vary, the need is consistent: simplify operations, increase reliability, and drive monetization.

Looking Ahead

As streaming continues to blur the lines between broadcast and digital, Uplynk sees an opportunity. Uplynk is investing in ways that help customers automate manual processes, reach new audiences, and make smarter decisions with clearer data.

Its modular, API-friendly approach also means Uplynk can support emerging formats, from pop-up FAST channels to corporate town halls, without forcing a full platform overhaul.

“Innovation in media isn’t always about adding more complexity,” says Black. “It’s about removing friction so content can move faster, audiences grow, and teams spend time where it matters.”

Uplynk – Beyond Broadcast: How MediaTech Is Powering the Next Era of Streaming

Uplynk – Beyond Broadcast: How MediaTech Is Powering the Next Era of Streaming

Most organizations don’t consider themselves broadcasters. However, they are increasingly behaving like them.

Whether it’s a retail brand live-streaming a product launch, a religious group managing multi-site video content, or a streaming platform juggling FAST channels and VOD libraries, the demands are familiar: manage live and on-demand content, react in real time, distribute across platforms, and deliver a reliable, polished viewing experience.

Behind the scenes, these organizations face growing complexity. Content now spans live inputs, regionalized streams, blackout restrictions, ad placements, syndication rules, and multi-format delivery. It’s no longer just about publishing video. It’s about orchestrating a real-time, multi-channel operation. In many ways, streaming has begun to resemble traditional broadcasting, although with significantly more flexibility and scalability.

The Limits of Legacy Infrastructure

Broadcast isn’t going away, but the traditional model is no longer enough. The old control room full of hardware switchers, racks of routing gear, and teams of local operators was built for a different era. It served fixed schedules and centralized workflows well. But it wasn’t designed for today’s remote teams, dynamic programming, or the growing mix of live, linear, and on-demand content.

As streaming matures, the behind-the-scenes infrastructure needs to evolve. Distribution targets are fragmented. Teams are no longer in the same building or even on the same continent. And the speed of change has accelerated. A single workflow might require mixing multiple live inputs, applying regional rules, inserting midroll ads, and reacting instantly to news or delays.

The result is a growing operational burden, particularly for teams still tied to on-premises systems that weren’t designed for this level of flexibility or scale.

Enter the Virtual Control Room

The shift is already underway. Cloud-based platforms are now enabling virtual control rooms that replicate and, in many cases, improve upon the capabilities of traditional broadcast environments. Instead of managing complex and rigid hardware, teams can oversee live switching, schedule coordination, content prep, and stream publishing from a browser.

A virtual control room enables real-time reactions from anywhere in the world. Breaking news? Program delay? Schedule change? These can all be managed remotely, without requiring local operators to scramble or risking downtime.

Even more importantly, virtual control rooms support the mix of content types that today’s publishers rely on, including linear, live, and VOD, enabling seamless transitions and centralized oversight across all content. They support multiple formats, multiple outputs, and multiple business models. All without additional infrastructure. The Uplynk Streaming Platform is looking ahead to the future, helping content owners orchestrate these complex workflows with unmatched flexibility and scale.

Smarter Delivery with Audience Rules

Imagine you’re watching a live sports event. Depending on where you are, you might see different ads, hear commentary in your preferred language, or even get different content. You don’t have to do anything the system figures it out for you. That’s audience rules at work.

Modern streaming isn’t just about getting content out. It’s about delivering the right version to the right audience at the right time. That’s where audience rules come in. Think of it as an intelligent delivery system. Instead of producing ten different versions of a stream for different regions or platforms, audience rules allow you to maintain a single master feed and apply dynamic logic. Who’s watching? Where are they located? What rights apply? The system automatically serves the correct version, whether that means a different ad load, alternative commentary track, or blackout enforcement.

It’s like a playlist that adjusts itself for every listener, utilizing a single feed that branches logically based on real-time rules. This approach simplifies operations while reducing encoding, storage, and delivery costs. That’s exactly the kind of flexibility the Uplynk Platform is built to provide.

From Media to Enterprise: The Broader Opportunity

These innovations originated in the media world, but their value is increasingly being recognized across other sectors. In Enterprise AV, for example, the same core needs are emerging:

  • Live event management for all-hands meetings, product launches, or shareholder calls
  • Secure delivery across internal and/or external platforms
  • On-the-fly programming updates
  • Personalized or regionalized streams for different business units or locations

MediaTech (Streaming) platforms like Uplynk are stepping into this space, offering proven tools to organizations that previously relied on basic webinar software or disjointed AV setups. What used to be “broadcast grade” is now enterprise-ready and often essential.

As MediaTech suppliers look for new areas of growth, Enterprise AV offers a natural extension. The content stakes are high, expectations are rising, and the complexity mirrors what’s already being solved in streaming.

Building What’s Next

At Uplynk, we’re building the infrastructure to support this new reality. We’re focused on making streaming workflows lighter, smarter, and more cost-effective, while still delivering the resilience broadcasters expect.

What sets us apart is the experience behind the platform. Our team includes broadcast veterans who’ve operated control rooms and engineers who understand how to scale that reliability in a cloud-native world. That combination helps us build solutions that not only work but also make sense operationally.

Because the future of content delivery isn’t about choosing between broadcast and streaming or choosing between media and enterprise. It’s about unifying the best of those worlds: precision control, flexible infrastructure, and intelligent delivery that adapts in real time. Broadcast may be changing, but its core principles are more relevant than ever. And they’re finding new life in unexpected places.