Netflix recently encountered a  2.5 hour weekend outage (a weekend outage!), ultimately attributed to streaming issues. It was occurring just one day after the company made its new Marvel TV series Luke Cage available to stream, and loyal customers were less than pleased.

This outage, though unfortunate for Netflix, brings video quality to the forefront of industry conversation and importance, especially as we continue to see a massive shift from linear broadcast to over-the-top (OTT) streaming video. Even Google is hopping on the OTT bandwagon, with the rumored launch of its Unplugged service.

Arguably, one of the greatest challenges in this transition from linear broadcast to OTT is improving the consistency of the viewing experience, with current industry concerns around subscriber churn driving much of that conversation. This evolutionary challenge can be conquered -- providers just need to prioritize good quality or risk losing viewers to a competing service.

However, ensuring quality can be tough. There are a variety of analytics tools that take the “final inspection” approach, measuring the playback quality on the user device. Unfortunately, this approach merely identifies the defect at the same time the customer experiences it! The poor quality gets to the customer, and the best we can do with this “reactive” tool is identify apology opportunities. And some in the industry are bypassing even this basic level of monitoring, relying on social media to get their quality metrics.

Measuring the quality of the content and its preparation for downstream delivery is just as important as content distribution. Video providers must consider every part of their infrastructure, anticipate failures, and have tools and plans in place to detect and address them.

The multi-vendor streaming pipeline is complex; the first step is often identifying that there is a problem, and separating the known-good elements from the suspected ones. A proactive, end-to-end operational and behavioral correlation analytics architecture is the best insurance against failures occurring, and enables the fastest response when they do occur.

As indicated by the vast ecosystem of players in the SVOD industry, consumers now have access to hundreds of programs at their fingertips, distributed by channels and networks at a similar price from a variety of providers. Thus, quality is now of the utmost importance and a key facet of customer acquisition and retention.

End viewer quality is truly an end-to-end game, requiring strong defense (24/7/365 monitoring) and a focused offense that provides the real-time visibility required to know when there are quality issues and provide the information organizations need to address those issues in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Companies like Netflix and the future YouTube Unplugged offering from Google need to get this right to keep customers from abandoning subscriptions and pledging loyalty to the next best offering.

Kurt Michel is senior director of marketing at IneoQuest

After the launch of YouTube Red, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fairdeclared, “YouTube videos are, by and large, hot stinky garbage. But we watch them, because they are free garbage. And we love free things!”

This deliberately incendiary comment doesn’t take into account the fact that value itself is subjective, and that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. YouTube and its more than a billion users and four billion video views daily are, in many ways, proof of that. It is the viewer’s experience that video content providers like YouTube need to care about.

Despite being delivered through technology, YouTube content resonates so strongly with viewers quite simply because it speaks to aspects of the human condition. In what other single place in the real or virtual world can a person access content that can make them laugh, cry, learn or experience? To consumers, the quality of their viewing experience is just as important as what they on watching.  On YouTube and other OTT properties, just like in the real world, viewers want their experiences to be immersive.

They don’t want to wait for experiences to start or keep going. Viewers have come to expect a “broadcast quality” video experience and are usually disappointed if they don’t get one. In fact, 51% of consumers we surveyed who watch online or streaming video have experienced rage as a result poor video quality. The accessibility, continuity and quality of our experiences matter just as much as, or in many cases, perhaps more than, the content itself. 

This is why when T-Mobile launched its new Binge On program, YouTube wasn’t happy. The program prevents T-Mobile subscribers from streaming HD video and in exchange allows them to stream video from Netflix, HBO Go and a number of other services without having it count towards their data usage. As a result, YouTube’s video is being downgraded to around 480p quality. A YouTube spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, “Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent.”

And at CES 2016, Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s chief business officer, again proved the company’s commitment to quality. HeannouncedYouTube will soon support HDR videos as well. HDR improves video image quality and creates a more realistic, natural image. It also produces richer colors, improves contrast and enables viewers to see detail in dark, shadowy scenes.

At its most basic level, if a viewer can’t access the content, and have the experience when they want to, then it doesn’t exist to them. By the same token, if an online experience is constantly interrupted by buffering, stuttering, pixilation or drop-off, the value of the experience is diminished. In the worst cases, a positive experience can turn into a negative one, creating a damaging connection with the content. This is what YouTube is trying to prevent.

This paradigm extends beyond YouTube to just about every type of content or experience. No one would go to a theater to watch a movie that buffered, just as no one would read a book with pages torn out, or see a play where the lights flickered. These potentially positive experiences could turn into negative ones, and the implications for those who create the content – whether they are filmmakers, authors, playwrights or YouTube stars with iPhones – could be dire.

In the case of YouTube, to define the entirety of its offerings as garbage misses the point. The statement devalues its content, but also, to an extent, its viewers. In a way, YouTube’s value lies in making so much content so accessible. YouTube breaks down experience barriers and quality control backs this up. It gives us things we value in a way that enriches our lives. I’d hardly call that garbage.

--Diane Tarr-Smith is a strategic marketing consultant at IneoQuest Technologies, a provider of video analytics and service assurance solutions

Here’s another sampling of what else is making news as the IBC show (September 11-16) gets rolling in Amsterdam (please go here for our first IBC news roundup):

-Media data management and analytics company Mediamorph has raised a $10 million in a  Series B found led by Liberty Global Ventures, with help from  Smedvig Capital, an existing Mediamorph investor. Mediamorph, which has raised $23 million so far according to Crunchbase (Mediamorph confirmed that figure), said it expects to close the round soon, with the participation of one or two more additional investors. The latest round, “will help us invest in our data management platform and bring on key hires to further scale our business,” Rob Gardos, the recently named CEO of Mediamorph, said in a statement.

-Elliptic Technologies said it is working with CableLabs to provide a reference implementation for DLNA’s CVP-2 (Commercial Video Profile-2) specs that utilizes Elliptic’s tVault for DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol)  security system. DLNA just unveiled “VidiPath” as the consumer-facing brand and label for a certification program that will test CE video devices, including retail products, that are capable of supporting an MVPD’s full suite of services and user interface. Elliptic and CableLabs will provide a CVP-2 server reference design that uses Elliptic’s security and will facilitate client testing and the interoperability of VidiPath/CVP-2 devices.

-Cisco Systems said it’s expanding its Videoscape Virtualized Video Processing (V2P) system to virtualize and orchestrate the key functions required to deliver multiscreen video. Instead of requiring pay-TV operators to hardwire optimized gear for each type of screen, Cisco claims that its new orchestrated approach creates a common pool of hardware and software for multiscreen delivery.

-Broadcom has unleashed a family of eight hybrid satellite/terrestrial broadcast chipsets for set-top boxes that support High Efficiency Video Compression (HEVC)/H.265, a codec that is billed as 50% more bandwidth-efficient than MPEG-4/H.264. Broadcom said it’s also combining HEVC with the modulation efficiencies of DVB-S2, DVB-T2 (terrestrial standard for Europe and South Africa) , ISDB-T (terrestrial standard for Brazil, Latin America, the Philippines, Botswana and Japan) and ATSC (North America and Korea), and home-side IP connectivity using the 2.0 version of the Multimedia over Coax Alliance standard.

-IneoQuest Technologies said it has inked a deal to supply  video headend monitoring systems to Kabel Deutschland, the largest cable operator in Germany. KD’s systems connect about 8.3 million homes.

-Accedo has launched Accedo VIA, a next-gen multiscreen platform for PCs, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and gaming consoles. Accedo stitched VIA together in tandem with several tech partners, including DivX, Elemental Technologies, Movideo, MPP, NexStreaming, NXP Software, Ooyala, PayWizard, Comcast-owned thePlatform, Verimatrix, Vimond, VisualOn and Xstream.