Top Three Broadcasting Trends from NAB 2016 (Video Blog)

After two days at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, a few common themes came to light. To explain what they are and how they impact the industry, Ryan Jespersen from Wowza interviewed Charlie Good, Wowza CTO and cofounder. Though the first trend may not be a surprise (virtual reality), the other two might not be what you expect. 

Full Transcript

Charlie Good (CG): I’ll start off by what I’m seeing here. It’s VR [virtual reality] everywhere. You just see VR cameras, VR gear setups, both complicated and simple. It’s kind of unbelievable how much virtual reality you see.

We’re showing a little bit here in the show. We have a Giroptic camera, and a setup from VideoStitch. I kind of believe that VR is gonna stick. It feels like something that’s better than things like 3D. There seems to be a market for it. So I really think VR is gonna be an interesting thing, both for Wowza and the industry as a whole.

I also think virtual reality is gonna push frame sizes. They’re talking about 4K video now, but I believe that VR will drive us earlier to 8K and even beyond that to get the quality that you need for that 360 viewing of the world around you.

I was blown away by the whole concept and the reality that is, virtual reality.

All of that can be done through the Wowza Streaming Engine. It’s kinda cool. It’s a pass-through for us, so we can work with the different camera manufactures and player technologies. We enable you to take that virtual reality and give it reach. To get it out to your audience, and make sure it reaches mobile devices and desktop players and set-top boxes, if they come in the future with virtual reality and virtual reality headsets, and make sure we give you the reach you need with that technology.

Another thing that I think is interesting is, I think the HTTP streaming that has been the newer technologies used in our industry has left a hole for low-latency streaming. I really believe that the higher latency HTTP streaming isn’t really applicable for a lot of the things like entertainment, gaming and even things as low latency as video chat, that is needed in the industry.

You look at things like WebRTC, which we’re right now in private preview with, we think these technologies are going to be important to drive more of those low-latency use cases. That’s something we’re showing here at the show today and it’s clear that low latency is something that a lot of people around us, as they come to the booth, are talking about.

The third thing that has been interesting at the show and that we’re excited about is the whole idea of ad insertion. I think that’s becoming more important as people try to monetize their content. We started to do a lot with ad insertion and we’re going to continue to push the envelope on that. But I think it’s important for folks that want to figure out how to make money off their content to find great ways to insert ads into their content and again, give you reach with us that add content across the different places that you could stream your content.

That’s it! That’s what I heard at NAB, and think these are all the interesting things happening in the industry and with Wowza.

Interviewer, Ryan Jespersen: DASH isn’t quite as big maybe in the U.S. as it is in Europe. What are you seeing with DASH with that maturing as protocol? Is that something that’s being brought up at the show?

CG: We’re hearing a lot of questions about DASH. I think people are starting to trial DASH and we’re starting to fill out our functionality around DASH. I think it will be an important protocol in the future when you talk about, again, that idea of reach. Trying to reach as many set-top boxes and TVs and mobile devices as you can. I think DASH is an important component of that. So we’ll continue to innovate there, and we see continued adoption in that space.