Sunil Nair, Chief Operating Officer, ALTBalaji
What's the biggest technology challenge you face in adding (or boosting) your online and/or streaming video elements?
“I wouldn’t say it is a technological limitation, but more of a challenge when we speak about CDN cloud providers. It takes a little time for any new content to be readily available in the cache across the globe. Due to this, we see consumers face certain amounts of latency for that duration. In our bid to overcome this, we are collaborating with the likes of Amazon and some of the industry’s best CDNs to solve this challenge efficiently, thereby providing content that is readily available all the time.”
Is there any one particular technology that has made a radical difference to the way you operate? What is it?
“The basic fundamental component for any OTT platform is to operate in its full capacity of its content ingestion pipeline. This particular technological piece includes multiple smaller components such as content transcoding, content encrypting and packaging which is now available out of the box. This has made it easy for many OTT platforms to go-live within minutes. At ALTBalaji, we use Xstream Mediamaker – a Denmark-based VOD solution provider – and have built components around this core product to ensure that our audience globally get seamless access to our shows. Our CDN provider is Amazon Web Services and we have been experimenting a lot around the Simple Serverless Video-On-Demand service using AWS Lambda.”
What do you wish broadcast/streaming tech vendors would do (or say or offer) for you that they aren't doing now?
“Due to the rapid advancements in technology that are now available to Indian consumers at affordable prices, OTT streaming isn’t just restricted to a mobile phone, but also across a wide variety of connected TVs and STBs. These audiences are now able to watch 4K content on their connected devices and can abandon a service that cannot do so in an easy manner. At the lower end of the consumer pyramid, even though there has been tremendous progress in streaming techn...
Sunil Nair, Chief Operating Officer, ALTBalaji
What's the biggest technology challenge you face in adding (or boosting) your online and/or streaming video elements?
“I wouldn’t say it is a technological limitation, but more of a challenge when we speak about CDN cloud providers. It takes a little time for any new content to be readily available in the cache across the globe. Due to this, we see consumers face certain amounts of latency for that duration. In our bid to overcome this, we are collaborating with the likes of Amazon and some of the industry’s best CDNs to solve this challenge efficiently, thereby providing content that is readily available all the time.”
Is there any one particular technology that has made a radical difference to the way you operate? What is it?
“The basic fundamental component for any OTT platform is to operate in its full capacity of its content ingestion pipeline. This particular technological piece includes multiple smaller components such as content transcoding, content encrypting and packaging which is now available out of the box. This has made it easy for many OTT platforms to go-live within minutes. At ALTBalaji, we use Xstream Mediamaker – a Denmark-based VOD solution provider – and have built components around this core product to ensure that our audience globally get seamless access to our shows. Our CDN provider is Amazon Web Services and we have been experimenting a lot around the Simple Serverless Video-On-Demand service using AWS Lambda.”
What do you wish broadcast/streaming tech vendors would do (or say or offer) for you that they aren't doing now?
“Due to the rapid advancements in technology that are now available to Indian consumers at affordable prices, OTT streaming isn’t just restricted to a mobile phone, but also across a wide variety of connected TVs and STBs. These audiences are now able to watch 4K content on their connected devices and can abandon a service that cannot do so in an easy manner. At the lower end of the consumer pyramid, even though there has been tremendous progress in streaming technology, hurdles like bandwidth limitation, latency and the mix of low-end phones continues to prevent consumers from a seamless video streaming experience. Such is the nature of the OTT industry, that one generally finds multiple vendors working on various components and platforms, which then needs to be integrated to deliver a smooth experience for the end-user. The challenge for us now, is to ensure that the quality of the product remains gold standard, as well as adhere to the top-end practices when it comes to providing the best solutions and services.”
What's at the top of your tech wish list for 2019?
“First and foremost, I’d like to see content discovery using one’s voice as an input being enabled and implemented successfully. Offering recommendations and personalising the user experience goes a long way towards catering to the profiles and tastes of the viewers and winning their loyalty. Increasingly, with content being consumed in multiple languages across India, as much as double the size of the English-speaking population, it is the need of the hour for an Indic language interface to be built. Using a hyper-local CDN will actually solve the last mile content delivery challenges for tier two and three cities in the country. Lastly, with customer support forming a crucial part of relations between the service provider and consumers, moving parts of customer support to AI-led chatbots will prove immensely helpful in the long run.”
Published in ContentAsia Issue Six 2019, 4 November 2019