Austria’s ORF deploys the Bitmovin Player to stream content across diverse device types, including almost all mobile and smart TV devices, and deliver a high quality viewer experience.
Austria’s public broadcaster ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk) needs to continuously adapt to evolving market conditions and multiplatform delivery formats in order to keep its top ranking position in the Austrian broadcast and streaming market. In particular, it needs to be able to deploy and launch content on new devices and operating systems as soon as they become available to consumers.
Devices and Channels
By expanding its device reach, ORF aims to establish a broader audience across the key demographics, and increase viewer satisfaction and retention. To do this, they have implemented the Bitmovin Player, which means ORF can stream content across a diverse range of device types, including almost all mobile and smart TV devices, and deliver a high quality viewer experience as well.
Bitmovin’s technology helps to improve video streaming performance and quality on a wide array of ORF channels, including the TVthek VOD service, ORF ON for local and national news and other ORF channels with local content and for classical music.
Harald Kräuter, Chief Technology Officer at ORF
“Bitmovin’s heritage is Austrian, and our team at ORF engineering were impressed with how they have scaled up to a leader in video streaming by innovating and delivering viewing experiences to audiences worldwide. Deploying Bitmovin’s Player expands our ability to distribute our content to our viewers, no matter where they are or which devices they are using,” said Harald Kräuter, Chief Technology Officer at ORF.
“As our audience diversifies the devices and platforms that they are using, it is crucial that we stay at the forefront of those developments. The business partnership between ORF and Bitmovin comes at a time when it is extremely important to excel at online media delivery and improve viewer satisfaction and our brand reputation.”
Customisation
As well as dedicated SDKs for HTML5, Android, iOS, various Smart TVs and gaming consoles, the Bitmovin Player’s features allow users to adapt the bitrate to fit specific requirements, and play DRM protected streams, supporting Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay and others. Playlists can be created for uniterrupted transitions between streams.
Users can customise the player UI to align to their own brand and design, and build a universal UI for use on web, TV and mobile devices, showing embedded or side-loaded captions. It is possible to stream in closer to real time using low latency DASH and HLS playback, and also modify your network requests (exchange of information between a network address and an application) in real time by manipulating the manifest or segments in the stream, optimising playback.
Analytics
ORF uses Bitmovin’s real-time analytics features that identify and display potential streaming issues as they happen, giving them a chance to improve the service before the viewer’s experience is compromised. The Analytics tools include real-time operational monitoring for optimising video and ad workflows based on viewer experiences across all platforms.
It also makes benchmarks available from across different performance metrics to gain industry insights. According to Bitmovin, ORF data shows that their key performance values are above the industry median. The total startup time and video startup time, both important metrics to maximize audience engagement, were around 40% and 20% faster than the competition.
bitmovin.com
