This article was published on September 17, 2012

TNW at IBC: The future of live streaming and whether quality trumps speed for broadcasting


TNW at IBC: The future of live streaming and whether quality trumps speed for broadcasting

The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) took place last week in Amsterdam. Throughout the event, The Next Web streamed live interviews with industry players with the help of LiveU.

We conducted a panel discussion about the future of streaming with Ronen Artman, LiveU‘s VP Marketing, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, editor of Streaming Media magazine and Stan Walbert, project manager at MultiCAM Systems, to get a sense of where the industry standards are today and what lies ahead.

The panel agreed that live streaming technology development has been accelerated in recent years, bringing amazing tools to more people. “The cycle of innovation keeps almost doubling,” says Schumacher Rasmussen. “We see things streamed live today that were unimaginable even two years ago.”

Walbert agrees that the business has become easier and more popular, “We began in 2000 and it was pretty difficult at that time. Now we have ADSL, Fiber and 3G, so it’s a better environment for developing streaming.”

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Live streaming has become such a natural part of the Internet landscape that it is no longer only a method for large corporations which can afford the equipment and technologies to do so. “We see a lot more organisations, not just broadcasters working with live streaming,” says Ronen. “Video is seen as one of the magnets that draws people to a site.”

Streaming live content in quality is no mean feat, but the standards of acceptable content has been lowered somewhat by user-generated content. As Shumacher-Rasmuissen points out, the material streamed from citizen reporters during the Arab Spring highlighted the sense that consumers were willing to forsake the quality of a live stream so long as they are able to watch in real-time.

Check out the video to find out what our panelists make of the future and what they would like to see in the coming years when it comes to streaming material for audiences around the world.

You can find more of our video coverage and catch up with the future of broadcasting from IBC here.

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