Interview with Alex Beach Head of Media and Broadcast Market Development ST Engineering iDirect

	Alex Beach

Herndon, Va., April 12, 2024--Alex Beach Head of Media and Broadcast Market Development ST Engineering iDirect spoke to satellitemarkets.com on the changing video market and OTT solutions.

The Over the Top (OTT) space has changed dramatically in the last few years, can you give us an overview of the changes in the market and how ST Engineering iDirect is responding to these changes?

OTT refers to Over-The-Top and it is an internet-based video consumption model. It’s has been developing over the last decade or so. I think what we saw during the pandemic was that there was an increase in overall viewing consumption of premium video content. But in addition, there are many more video focused applications that mimic an OTT  experience and in some cases a delivery model. The pandemic kind of accelerated the growth of certain adjacent video centric business models such as video conferencing, digital education or virtual education, corporate training models, social media, etc. Basically, we see video as a cross vertical application. OTT is much more of a premium content model for entertainment. We see that a lot of our customers support OTT distribution. Virtual education, bringing primary broadcast video services to unconnected regions, we think these are  hugely important. It brings a great service not only for entertainment but also for public health messaging, public broadcasting, things of that nature that we definitely see as kind of adjacencies to the OTT market. OTT helped build these adjacencies over the last few years, specially especially during the pandemic. So our focus is looking at those other those adjacencies to OTT and we’re excited about what we’re seeing in the next few years.

What are ST Engineering iDirect’s offerings for OTT solutions? 

We have a joint solution called SKYflow. It’s a DVB native IP over satellite distribution that can be used for an OTT model. It’s a joint solution with four other partners: EasyBroadcast, EKT, EZDRM and Quadrille who was acquired end of last year by Inverto.

With this joint solution, we have the ability to provide OTT solutions as well as those kind of adjacent video-centric applications such as virtual education, corporate training, video conferencing, content management, content processing, watermarking, transcoding, encoding, encryption for security reasons, digital rights management. With SKYflow, we can support customers’ needs in a white label context. Their desire to either create their own brand-new subscription platform or if it’s a Free Advertising-supported Streaming Television (FAST) platform, completely ad supported, we can do that through the solution or we can manage content for education. So whether that is a video lecture for university or whether that is, flat content such as PDFs or jpegs or other text-based files, we can support management distribution of any kind of file of that nature. 

What applications (ie. distance learning, corporate training etc.) are demanding OTT solutions and how is ST Engineering iDirect’s SKYflow solution enabling these applications?

All of the applications such as distance learning, corporate training, video conferencing and the like, are demanding an OTT-type solution. So what are we doing to enable these applications? Well, this is the SKYflow solution again. It’s an end-to-end model and technology that takes the content, whether it’s a file-based source or if it’s a broadcast source, we can take that and run it through all the processing requirements. Then we can drop it off on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) drop-off point where we can send it over a satellite link in a multicast carrier.

That can then be at the down at the receive site turned into a unicast and ABR stack which then can be streamed to different handheld and mobile devices, whether it’s mobile phones, tablets or  laptops that could be connected to VVS anything of that nature. So SKYflow can support a premium entertainment OTT type model as well as distance learning, corporate training, video conferencing.

How do you see the OTT market going forward? 

Well, if we’re talking about OTT, the model,  for video entertainment, I  think there will continue to be growth in the FAST market, which is growing in  North America and other regions globally. I’m convinced that will continue to be to be the case for the coming years. What it does is it allows repurposing of older content or less utilized content to be monetized and or provided to a niche audience, should that exist. And it’s relatively low cost.

“...There will be continued demand for video content  regardless of the application and we will be there to support distribution in regions that are missing connectivity....”

I think FAST platforms will continue to grow on a global basis if we’re talking about the video applications that leverage OTT technology. Our focus is going to be more than only on media and broadcast, it’s more about focusing on the cross vertical nature of video.We know that video constitutes most of the internet traffic globally. We are focusing on that because while a good chunk of that will be the entertainment-based OTT type content, the OTT model. Another good size of that portion is roughly 50% will be the non-entertainment type of video. 

As we continue to grow as a connected global society, it is easier to reach people now than it ever was before. That doesn’t mean that everyone is reachable However the price of  mobile devices keeps coming down. People can access signals much more easily than they could several years ago, so that will continue to move forward. There will be continued demand for video content regardless of the application and  we will be there to support distribution in regions that are missing connectivity.