Move Networks and the Quality Solution

Move Networks recently announced that they will power an online video player for Discovery Communications (more from Corey). Discovery joins a growing number of networks including FOX and ABC which we wrote about last week.

I’m a big proponent of convergence leading all online video back to the living room TV. But that confluence is taking place on two fronts.

On one side are the Verizons of the world installing fiber to deliver IPTV over a closed network. On the other are those developing new codecs and technologies to leverage existing networks and deliver a broadcast-like experience over public internet.

Move Networks is focused on this latter area, improving what they call “quality of experience” for online media delivery over public networks. There has been a lot written about Move, but very little that actually goes into how the technology works.

So earlier this week, I spoke with Move’s VP of marketing Jim Ericson to get a better technical understanding of how they deliver this high quality video for some of the largest media companies in the world.

The basic technology involved is what they call simulcoding which takes a feed and simultaneously encodes it into smaller pieces called “streamlets” using multiple profiles to offer playback at multiple bitrates.

By distributing these streamlets based on end-user demand Move can distribute them over traditional servers. Doing so bypasses the high end media servers used for traditional Flash and Windows Media encoding which in turn lowers streaming costs.

But the key is in the plugin, which manages delivery, assembles and renders the stream, and offers DRM, geo-targeting, and extremely in-depth reporting. Because it puts the end-user environment in control, it can determine the best end-user experience intelligently.

And this is where the quality comes in. Move’s adaptive protocol means that the plugin can determine the best encoding profile for a user based on available bandwidth.

Because multiple profiles are encoded simultaneously the plugin switches between them midstream based on changes in bandwidth. This ensures fluidity of playback and makes it possible for example, to see HD when the capacity is there but lower quality video when someone else taps into your shared wireless connection. It also means people watch longer.

The question of P2P use has often been raised, in discussion of Move’s technology and how much upstream bandwidth is used. Ericson had this to say on the subject:

We still have some lingering concerns about peer-to-peer in general over an asymmetric network. We want to play nicely in [the CDNs] neighborhood so what we’re doing is we’re doing a LAN-limited P2P. There’s no reason for me to go back to the CDN.

The final element in Move’s technology is reporting, and again this is where having a client side plugin is a tremendous advantage. Everything viewed in a Move Networks player is tracked.

They track where viewers are, what they have watched and how long, the bitrate, and when people scrolled back or forward in a given program. All this is more reliable and specific than tracking provided by most CDNs and content management systems which make it extremely valuable to networks and advertisers.

This is where we are going with online video. Content that can be viewed in highest quality by everyone on any broadband connection regardless of connection speed.

Quality is not just valuable to viewers, it makes those viewers more valuable to advertisers. “For anybody watching the content at any time theoretically everyone could be getting a different ad” Ericson said.

And for advertisers that’s just another step closer to the Holy Grail of engagement.