The weekend arrives, and many people choose to stay at home and watch movies. The people that make this possible know that, in order to win the user over and to be among their favorite platforms, it is necessary to offer an excellent service but, how do market leaders manage to offer a flawless user experience?
This conundrum was the catalyst for our last workshop, which took place in the latest edition of CAPER, which marked the 30th anniversary of the assembly that gathers manufacturers and integrators of equipment for Argentina’s audiovisual industry.
Leo Masri, Toolbox CIO, and Diego Vidal, Toolbox Software Architect, attending the “How to improve the user experience through a local CDN.” CAPER 2018.
A good UX must mix several items, always looking for users to consume content with the best available quality, instantly and without “gaps”, anytime, from any device, within the subscription limits. And a good business for cable operators and content providers (CPs) implies an easily scalable economic transaction.
This challenge takes place in a very particular context. On the one hand, there is a large and diverse offer between traditional and online CPs (such as Youtube, including Facebook when it allows live streaming, and many others). Competition for viewing time is fierce and it is hard for CPs to find a spot in the grid of cable operators. This is the stage when it becomes necessary to use alternative distribution methods to reach audiences. On the other hand, the number of subscribers keeps growing: Latin America already surpassed 90 million pay-TV subscribers, according to a report made by BB AuditTV this year.
Facing this challenge requires investment in hardware, software and in the production of these contents. But it also requires investment in app development (web and mobile) and in solutions that allow user recognition (to establish the level of access to the content). Finally, it is necessary to manage the revenues related to the digital rights of this content (DRM).
Toolbox aims to solve these issues with scalable technology, which allows an efficient business at a cost level. In a previous post, we have already discussed the unique CDN (content delivery network) model that we propose through our Mirror solution. This solution allows us to improve the user experience and reproduce the content instantly, in its best quality and without interruptions. In order to meet this objective, Mirror resolves each of the components that must intervene to obtain the highest quality: it ensures the reduction in latency due to a physical location of the content close to the user (content downloaded on the server itself), that the content is transcoded in the format that the user requires, that it reaches a good speed, that this content is provided synchronously on multiple screens, and that the rights management of that content and the large-scale users/subscribers authentication is provided along the way.
Solving these issues with a single solution streamlines the work of cable operators and CPs, while it helps them to reduce costs and offer a more affordable service. This significantly improves the perception of our offer before our critical subscribers, earning their vote every time they choose to relax with a movie or a show.
Authors: Leo Masri, CIO, and Diego Vidal, Software Architect