Highlights:

  • Akamai’s new capabilities, introduced at NAB 2023, will help operators monetize video streaming content by lowering and predicting operating expenses.
  • The most exciting new feature is Akamai’s improved support for the Consumer Technology Association’s CMCD protocol, which allows device-based media players to submit playback data to Akamai and other CDNs.

Akamai Technologies Inc., a cloud services and content delivery network provider, recently announced new video streaming features, which it claims will help operators deliver enhanced quality and more customized content to viewers.

The new features Akamai announced at NAB 2023, the annual National Association of Broadcasters conference, will enable providers to realize lower and more predictable operational costs, thereby enhancing their capacity to monetize video streaming content.

Akamai announced that its new services are now accessible via Akamai Connected Cloud, a newly launched, immensely distributed edge and cloud platform for content delivery and development that aims to provide viewers with low latency and high-performance experiences.

The most exciting new feature is Akamai’s improved support for the Consumer Technology Association’s CMCD protocol, which allows device-based media players to submit playback data to Akamai and other CDNs. Akamai may employ CMCD to intelligently pre-fetch content, minimizing buffering and improving video startup times. Another benefit is that video streaming companies obtain more solid metrics of the video quality of their users, which helps with reporting and analysis.

According to Jon Alexander, Akamai’s Vice President of Product Management, Akamai Cloud delivers computing capabilities unique in their ability to support cost control, the gamut of development, and viewer experiences. He said, “We’re giving OTT operators a host of powerful new cloud computing functions, scaling them across our global platform and backing them with Akamai content delivery and security services.”

The new cloud services are being presented with extended use cases for the company’s EdgeWorkers serverless solution, which covers rights management, content personalization, and video streaming security demands.

They include new manifest and playlist editing tools that reduce storage needs and expenses for operators while improving user performance. EdgeWorkers can use these capabilities to dynamically modify manifest file characteristics such as resolution filtering, bitrate ordering, and subtitles at the periphery, closer to observers.

Meanwhile, the new program replacement functionality allows operators to deploy more flexible and quicker pre-delivery content stitching for both live and on-demand television. To meet requirements such as rights limitations, companies can insert content into video streams based on parameters such as the user’s geolocation and time of day.

A/B content watermarking consistent with the new DASH Industry Forum specification allows operators to identify and combat live and on-demand piracy.

Finally, Akamai revealed many new media workflow partner solutions certified as compatible with Akamai Connected Cloud. Ateme SA provides video compression and distribution, Capella Systems LLC provides software-based video-on-demand transcoding, encoding, and packaging, and LiveKit provides interactive live streaming and video conferencing.