There is One Stand Out OTT Video Delivery Standard - HTTP Live Streaming

If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to look at HTTP Live Streaming. HTTP Live Streaming is one of those protocols that comes along and makes so much sense you find yourself asking why hasn’t this been done sooner. It solves a problem that besets all device vendors equally, e.g. how to enable website and content owners to easily get video to devices. The problem is there is no current universal solution that works across all devices. Currently still web services on the Open Internet have to selectively match video delivery mechanism to device type. This situation is intolerable in today’s media rich world. More and more businesses and services want to deliver video and don’t want to have to go through a straightjacket service like YouTube or Vimeo to do so. Nor do they wish to have to pay video hosting fees for ad-hoc low volume video serving. HTTP Live Streaming is a massive contribution to solving this problem.

Indeed HTTP Live Streaming makes so much sense I suspect adoption has only been slow because the parties that should really have been most interested haven’t bothered to look out of fear it is an Apple proprietary protocol and part of an Apple strategic play that will in some way disadvantage them. If that’s you, it’s time to look again. Like webkit before it (which has been adopted by Chrome), it has been put forward for standardisation and, when you look at the details, it is a true candidate for such. There is nothing about it that is inherently Apple-ish or iOS-ish other than the fact Apple have implemented it first because they needed a practical solution - so if you fear a strategic disadvantage - you have already suffered it and it isn’t about to get less if you fail to act on this protocol.

Here are some points to consider:

- It is already implemented by Apple on iPhone and iPad and OS X and has been proven to be a highly effective protocol for video delivery

- It is being adopted by Android in Honeycombe

- It is being adopted by MS through Silverlight and there is an MS supplied IIS plugin called Live Smooth Streaming - this is a slight variant but both Apple and MS are inputting and co-operating on the standardisation process

- It is being subject to ISO standardisation and will be published as the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) protocol

- It’s easily implemented on Apache and IIS Webservers

- It has the best chance of getting video through corporate firewalls because everything is delivered using HTTP

- It is codec agnostic providing simply a transport technology solution - so the problem of multiple video formats, whilst remaining can relatively easily be solved through throwing storage space at it and encoding in multiple formats. Though this isn't ideal it's an easy solution and much better than the current situation and won't require completely different delivery mechanisms to be employed to most effectively target all devices

- It supports a very simple and effective mechanism which allows the client to adapt the video rate to match changing network conditions - so it’s great for mobile devices

- It is elegant and simple, and much more efficient than might at first be thought

- Professional tools required to use it are readily available at no charge

- It allows all-comers to serve video without any specialist video kit and as such is IMO the perfect OTT video transport standard

- It supports the delivery of video with DRM yet still rather cleverly supports the insertion of interstitials without the need for re-buffering video content at the transition from the interstitial to the main video content (this is a not-inconsiderable problem to have solved)

- With regard to the above point, interstitials can be selectively targeted per client whilst fault tolerance and load balancing can still be supported through manipulating the open and easy to parse manifest file

- The standard and tools are open enough and the protocol straightforward enough, a reasonably skilled web developer can customise how it works (again through the manifest file) and learn most of how it works in a morning

- It supports Live Event Streaming and as well as the streaming of Archived Events

- Since it is codec agnostic - it leaves the whole .h264 v WebM debate untouched (which is a good thing or it would never get universal buy in)

- THERE IS NO OTHER STREAMED VIDEO TRANSPORT SOLUTION THAT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL BECOME UNIVERSAL TO ALL PLATFORMS/DEVICES AND THAT IS SO EASY FOR THE CONTENT OWNER TO IMPLEMENT - unless you include straightforward video file download - which I don't

If you ask the question, “how do I get this video viewable on as many devices as possible?” It stands out as the obvious easiest to implement solution outside of the above mentioned YouTube and Vimeo straightjacket style solutions where you lose full control of your IP. The only reservation is that it isn't quite universally a live option as yet.

Anyone looking at OTT service delivery has to know all about this protocol. Now it will be available on Android and Windows as well as iOS it seems unavoidable anything other than universal adoption can result. I would suggest now is the last opportunity to make a bet on this protocol succeeding before it becomes totally blindingly obvious to the world it will do so.

Paul Lancefield on Twitter