center. But for a high-quality vid- and mid-tier customers,” said he said. “Until recently, many in eo service, something more is Ian Blaine, CEO of thePlatform the business found it more cost-needed. The answer is to use a (Booth SU5402). “By providing effective to ship tapes around. content delivery network (CdN). low-cost storage and delivery But now that costs have come These smart systems overlay the options in addition to our core down, we are hitting the point Internet to provide high-quality service, we estimate that mid- where it is more cost-effective delivery of video to the viewer. size customers ... could save up to use bandwidth. This is driving They use a number of tech- to 32 percent on their total cost more interest among content niques but employ the Internet to deliver video to consumers.” owners to use CdNs to improve as the underlying carrier. A CdN also can manage overall cost efficiencies.”

A CdN replicates content to delivery via the popular Micro- Level 3 (Booth C2351) is a a network of edge servers that soft (Booth SL720) Silverlight or long-standing provider of live are local to the final delivery Adobe (Booth SL3320) Flash plat- broadcast solutions for major point. When viewers request forms, including the complexities sporting events. “The scalability video content, the CdN auto- of running digital rights manage- of the Level 3 network enables matically redirects their browser ment (dRM). This frequently is a us to easily accommodate to a suitable edge server. Not contractual obligation from the the growing global demand only does this provide load- program rights owner to discour- for premium broadcast video balancing for the servers, but age illegal file-sharing when quality,” said grant van Rooyen, the CdN can route users around a content producer streams a president of Level 3’s Content Internet congestion or outages. program to the public. Markets group.

Similar intelligent routing is used CdNs are not just for dis- James Leach, VP marketing at to replicate content as required tribution but also for contribu- Internap (Booth SL11109), reports from the content producer’s tion networks. Tom Ohanion the company will be showing a origin servers, which host the of Signiant (Booth SL14010) new breed of CdN that combines media files, to the edge servers explains how many media network optimization software, in order to meet the changing companies are looking at their servers and storage around the demands of Web viewers. networks and finding they are world, and a hybrid Internet infra-

Whether it is to deliver sub- overprovisioned. “They put structure to support on-demand scription content or to provide in OC- 3; they put in Signiant videos and live Web events. a high quality of service, a CdN technology, and they are able to At the NAB Show, you can will provide a much better view- utilize dS- 3, a big saving.” visit Tier 1 CdNs plus special-ing experience than relying on Omneon (Booth SU7217) SVP ist providers of encoding and the Internet alone. The smart Products and Markets geoff delivery services. As the Web routing also provides more effi- Stedman sees a general trend generation migrates to consume cient use of the Internet, routing of dramatically decreasing its video via the PC and mobile video around congested net- bandwidth costs. “It’s taken a devices, streaming high-quality works to underused circuits. while for the cost to get down video over the Internet is go-

You don’t have to be big to to the point that distribut- ing to be just as important to use a CdN. “We recognized that ing content as a file over the a broadcaster as operating a we could do more for smaller network is commercially viable,” transmission tower. ●

Out-of-Home Media Mobile TV Show Highlights Content Production & Post Broadcast IPTV