CommScope launched HomeVista on Monday at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2022 in Philadelphia, a portfolio that allows service providers using streaming technologies to simplify and accelerate the introduction of new video services.  

According to CommScope, HomeVista solutions allows service providers to deliver video services that offer streaming services and live TV with an individualized user experience, introduce streamer services to the market faster, and reduce development costs by avoiding fully customized solutions. 

HomeVista also uses open-source software like AndroidTV and RDK to deliver streaming applications that may include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, YouTube. The RDK-based HomeVista includes AppCloud from ActiveVideo, which gives operators the ability to deliver the latest OTT content and applications. 

“Our service provider customers are looking to us to offer next-generation solutions that combine top tier OTT applications with their streamed TV services to take their subscribers’ viewing experience to the next level,” CommScope Home Networks president Joe Chow in a press release. “Our HomeVista portfolio enables our service provider customers to bring streaming video services to market faster than ever before.”

HomeVista also lets service providers customize the consumer experience through the installation of their own TV app, customizable splash screen, RCU and streamer case. CommScope Home Networks Professional Services also can provide additional customization on the HomeVista platform. ■

In a highly competitive market for subscription video-on-demand streaming services, Paramount Plus has key advantage in that it also taps into the larger ViacomCBS linear kingdom -- not only are the crown jewels of the CBS broadcast network available to stream on Paramount Plus, but also current series episodes from ViacomCBS cable networks including Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, MTV and The Smithsonian Channel. 

And now, Paramount Plus is trying to further organize all that content to further good use, creating 18 curated live-linear channels, themed around such popular franchises as Star Trek, PAW Patrol and Survivor, as well as genre topics including "Kids & Family Fun," "Crime & Justice" and "Reality TV: Competitions." (A full list of the 18 new live channels is below.)

Creating a pay TV-like grid of live-linear networks isn't a new thing -- Roku launched its Live Channel Guide over a year ago, sensing that some streaming consumers pined for the old days of mindlessly channel surfing. On the SVOD level, however, Paramount Plus seems to out in front on this. 

“Even in the era of on-demand, there is clearly a strong consumer appetite for reimagined linear channels that provide effortless, lean-back entertainment,” said Tom Ryan, president and CEO of ViacomCBS Streaming, and the co-founder of Pluto TV who knows a thing or two about live-linear channels. 

“Inspired and informed by the winning model Pluto TV pioneered and popularized, these highly curated channels underscore the power of our unified streaming organization and serve as a product differentiator in the SVOD space, by offering subscribers yet another way to experience and discover programming on Paramount Plus," Ryan added.

ViacomCBS said it ended the third quarter with 47 million streaming subscribers, up around 29 million year-over-year. The conglomerate is still offering prospective Paramount Plus signups a month of free service, before dinging their credit cards with a $4.99 monthly charge for the partially ad-supported Paramount Plus, or a $9.99 charge for the ad-free version. 

Here are the 18 new live-linear channels (descriptions courtesy of ViacomCBS):

> 24/7 Laughs — A destination for feel-good, laugh-out-loud content from popular series such as Hot in Cleveland, Reno 911 and Tosh.O.

> Adult Animation — Genre-defining series such as Beavis and Butt-Head, Celebrity Deathmatch and Daria. 

> All Day Drama — The best in drama, including everything from Evil and The Twilight Zone to Touched By an Angel and The Guardian. 

> Animation Favorites — Beloved kids’ animated series, such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Rugrats, Spongebob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents.

> Black Voices — A celebration of Black voices and stories with a collection of popular series such as Chappelle's Show, Key & Peele, The Game and The Neighborhood. 

> Crime & Justice — Primetime procedurals such as Bull, Blue Bloods, CSI: Miami, MacGeyver, Seal Team and The Good Wife. 

> History & Undiscovered — A curated selection for historians from the Smithsonian Channel, including Sacred Sites, Secrets, America's Hidden Stories and Secrets Unlocked.  

> Kids & Family Fun — A destination for the whole family to enjoy favorites such as Henry Danger, iCarly, The Thundermans and Zoey 101.

> Nostalgic Hits — A playlist featuring episodes from iconic series, including Beverly Hills 90210, Cheers, Frasier, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Wings. 

> PAW Patrol — Home to all things PAW Patrol, including PAW Patrol: Live at Home!, PAW Patrol: The Movie, and, of course, the original series that started it all

> Preschool Corner — Parent-approved programming for pint-sized viewers such as Blue's Clues, Bubble Guppies, Dora the Explorer, PAW Patrol and Peppa Pig. 

> Reality TV: Competition — A collection of reality TV’s most popular series, including Ink Master, Rupaul's Drag Race and Survivor.

> Reality TV: Shores — Hours of content from the fist-pumping franchise, including episodes from Jersey Shore, Jersey Shore Family Vacation and Floribama Shore. 

> SpongeBob Universe — Home to all things Bikini Bottom, the channel will feature episodes from SpongeBob SquarePants and Kamp Koral: SpongeBobs Under Years, as well as popular SpongeBob movies

> Star Trek — A destination for Star Trek fans, featuring popular originals such as Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, plus iconic series such as Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

> Survivor — Featuring 40 seasons of the long-running reality series

> The Challenge — The best moments from the hit-reality series, including The Challenge and The Challenge: All Stars. 

> TV Classics — A curated selection of timeless series such as I Love Lucy, The Love Boat and The Twilight Zone. 

Amazon has announced the addition of IMDb TV and Xumo to the Amazon Fire TV live channel guide, giving Fire TV users access to more than 400 live-streamed channels, half of them free.

Amazon also added the Amazon news app to its live-streamed lineup, with the Plex app “coming soon." Channels and content from these apps will now appear on the “Live” tab within the Fire TV OS, as well as in “On Now” rows, and the Universal Channel Guide for customers that have downloaded the app.

Amazon Fire TV’s live-streamed channel guide now features content from nearly 20 programming providers, including subscription sources like YouTube TV, Sling TV, Philo and Amazon Prime Video, but also free ad-supported outlets like Tubi and Pluto TV. 

Voice commands via Amazon Alexa technology have also been added to the Fire TV interface so that users can surface live shows by speaking commands such as, “Alexa, play Good Morning America” or “Alexa, play the Seahawks game.”

Live TV programs will now appear in the “App Peek” feature of the recently upgraded Fire TV user interface. For example, if a user hovers over Pluto TV in the main navigation, live TV options will surface, and they can quickly navigate to the game or news program. App Peeks are currently available on Fire TV Stick (third generation and above) and Fire TV Stick Lite. Support for additional Fire TV devices is coming this later in March, Amazon said. 

“We’ve always taken a content-forward approach when designing Fire TV,” said Sandeep Gupta, VP & GM of Amazon Fire TV, in a statement. “When you turn on your TV, you’re going to see shows, movies, and sports—not just rows of apps. This philosophy extends to our approach to live content. We’re continuing to invest heavily in Live TV and so are our content partners. We’re expanding that today with the addition of new integrations, Alexa capabilities, and enhanced content discovery mechanisms.”

Amazon Fire TV now touts 50 million active users. And it’s not alone in developing mechanisms to organize, surface and encourage use of live TV channels. Roku has aggressively invested in its Live TV Channel Guide for more than a year. 

One of the biggest unheralded trends in the industry last year was the growth in live streaming. 

While streaming of live programming, particularly news and sports, is nothing new, the trend is notable because streaming has long been dominated by on-demand viewing at services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Now, major platforms like Roku, Peacock and others are paying more attention to the development of linear channels, a move that could have major implications for the way companies monetize streaming content.

While the pandemic sidelined live sports for much of the year, news organizations reported record results in 2020. “What we saw in the last year was people looking for lifesaving information from trusted news sources,” noted Christy Tanner, executive VP and GM of CBS News Digital. 

That produced record traffic for all the major news organizations. The CBSN 24-hour streaming news service, for example, racked up a record 28.5 million streams and 19.5 million unique viewers on Election Day (Nov. 3) and then beat that mark with 40.9 million streams and 27.9 million unique viewers on Nov. 4. 

In addition to the pandemic and the election driving viewer interest, Porter Berry, VP and editor and chief of Fox News Digital, noted that “with 5G and phones and tablets becoming more and more a place to go for news and information, video has become more and more important.”

That helped fuel record-breaking digital audiences for election coverage, with video starts on Nov. 4 jumping 167%, page views rising 249% and time spent viewping up a whopping 312% compared to post-election traffic in 2016, according to Adobe Analytics and Apple News. 

CNN also had a record-breaking year, with an average of 215 million monthly unique visitors globally in the first 10 months of 2020, up from 162 million in 2019, and 163 million unique visitors in the U.S., according to Comscore. 

“2020 was a year like no other for us,” noted Wendy Brundige, senior VP of global video at CNN. “We had a lot of growth this year on our TV app with people wanting to watch on their connected TV devices.” 

Whether news channels can continue these record-breaking patterns into 2021 is an open question, given the once in a lifetime stories that drove traffic in 2020. 

But there is little doubt that interest in live streaming and offering linear TV channels in a variety of genres is likely to accelerate this year. 

Chris Berend, executive VP of digital for NBC News Group, also reported record-setting traffic in 2020. It hopes to  build on that by continuing to work closely with the NBCUniversal direct-to-consumer Peacock service to develop channels and content, he said. 

In 2020, NBCU launched the “Today All Day” streaming product on Peacock and added a number of special NBC News productions to the platform. “Peacock is a critical part of our streaming future for news programming,” Berend said. “It is very much the sun in our solar system.”

Others stressed that the trend goes beyond news into entertainment programming and ad-supported linear channels.

Scott Rosenberg, Roku senior VP and general manager of the platform business, cited the growth in live streaming as one of the key trends Roku hopes to capitalize on in 2021. 

“On the Roku Channel, we now have over 130 linear channels that are presented in a grid-like fashion like an EPG,” or electronic program guide, Rosenberg said. “Many folks expected that viewership would switch to pure on-demand viewing, but many viewers are looking for that lean-back experience. So we are seeing that paradigm is being recreated in streaming.” 

Such channels are also a key part of the push to increase advertising revenue. “We think that advertising has been and will be a central funding model for the TV ecosystem,” Rosenberg said. “TV ad dollars are already reflowing towards streaming.”

Rick Cordella, executive VP and chief revenue officer for Peacock, also stressed that live linear TV channels are a central part of the strategy for the direct-to-consumer offering. “We have channels like NBC News Now, NBC Sports, etc., in a bunch of different categories that provide the linear experience of the multichannel universe that doesn’t really have much of a place on other premium video providers,” Cordella said. 

These linear channels have proved particularly popular among cord-cutters, he said, and having linear channels helps freshen up the service. “Because the content is constantly being updated, it feels more vibrant than other SVODs where what I saw last week is what I’ll see this week,” he said. 

Google announced enhancements to its search engine this week to give viewers more information on live TV programming.

In the United States now, when a viewer enters a particular keyword for MLB and NBA games into the Google Search Engine (i.e. “where to watch the Clippers game”), the information available has been expanded to cover a larger variety of viewing options. 

“You can also find live TV options by searching for the individual team or game,” Google wrote in an online blog. “For example, if you search for ‘Dodgers game,’ you’ll see all of our usual game day features like live scores, top stories, and standings, but you’ll now see a new ‘Live on’ button, which shows the live TV options in your area.”

Google said this feature currently includes a variety of cable and network channels, and will be expanded to more digital streaming options soon.

Google is also enhancing its recommendations for finding programming on linear TV by adding carousels of live content from cable and broadcast providers.

“When you search for things like ‘what to watch’ or ‘good shows to watch’ on mobile, you’ll now have visibility into both streaming and live TV shows,” Google said. “Our ‘On TV now’ carousel shows you programming across multiple channels that’s currently airing, while ‘On TV later’ shows you recommendations for future programming.”

This story was originally published in Next TV sibling publication TV Technology.

Plex, the streaming platform for hard-core computer geeks aiming for the mainstream Netflix market, is joining the live-streaming trend, announcing the addition of more than 80 live, linear channels to its platform.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Plex is an outlier in the OTT business, combining a media server solution long popular with tech enthusiasts with a growing free ad-supported streaming service. 

In July, the platform added a new “Live TV on Plex” feature to its viewing options, with users able to stream linear channels including Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Tastemade, fubo Sports Network, Toon Goggles and Revry, just to name a few. 

The live channels add to an already established OTA feature that enables users to build a pay TV-like live/linear programming grid, complete with DVR. 

“Combining the new Live TV service with the over-the-air TV and DVR feature, Plex offers the most comprehensive and least expensive streaming TV service in the world,” Keith Valory, CEO of Plex, said.

Plex is following a business trend: Roku is also stacking around 120 licensed live, linear streaming channels with customer over-the-air antenna feeds, creating a grid that looks like your average Dish
Network guide. 

“Two of the most important factors for an enjoyable streaming experience are easily being able to find something of interest to watch, and being able to watch it from any device you choose,” Valory added. “Plex offers consumers across the globe a simple-yet-powerful platform for access to all types of content that can be streamed from all types of devices.”  

Plex’s core monetized offering is its media server technology. Plex allows users who store all their digital entertainment — music, illegally and quasi-legally ripped movies from DVDs, podcasts, etc. — on a personal computer or portable hard drive, accessing this content from a wide variety of digital devices. It charges $5 a month for the ability to gain this access via iOS and Android mobile devices.

There are plenty of media server solutions on the market that do the same things, but Plex has been lauded for the way it takes all your content and presents it in a contextualized way that would make Netflix proud. 

Adding live, linear streaming channels and an AVOD service, as well as music streaming service Tidal, achieves Plex’s goal of adding to its users’ personal media collections and making the platform an all-in-one media solution for users.

Plex is joining the live-streaming trend, announcing the addition of more than 80 live/linear channels to its platform.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Plex is an outlier in the OTT business, combining a popular media servicer solution with a growing AVOD offering. 

Starting Thursday, the new Live TV on Plex featuring adds to the viewing options, with users able to stream linear channels including Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Tastemade, fubo Sports Network, Toon Goggles and Revry, just to name a few. 

As messily coordinated press strategies go, Cinedigm announced separately that it has made a deal with Plex, which includes eight of Cinedigm’s free, ad-supported channels worldwide: The Bob Ross Channel, Comedy Dynamics, Bambu, Docurama, CONtv, Dove Channel, CONtv Anime and Whistle Sports. 

Also read: Cinedigm Streaming Free Linear Channels on Plex

The live channels add to an already established OTA feature that enables users to build a pay TV-like live/linear programming grid, complete with DVR. 

“Combining the new Live TV service with the over-the-air TV and DVR feature, Plex offers the most comprehensive and least expensive streaming TV service in the world,” said Keith Valory, CEO of Plex, in a statement.

Plex is following a business trend: Roku, which is stacking around 120 licensed live/linear streaming channels with its customer’s OTA antenna feed and creating a grid that looks like your average Dish Network guide. 

“Two of the most important factors for an enjoyable streaming experience are easily being able to find something of interest to watch, and being able to watch it from any device you choose,” Valory added. “Plex offers consumers across the globe a simple yet powerful platform for access to all types of content that can be streamed from all types of devices.”  

Plex’s core, monetized offering is a media server technology. Plex allows users who store all their digital entertainment—music, illegally and quasi-legally ripped movies from DVDs, podcasts, etc.—on a personal computer or portable hard drive, accessing this content from a wide variety of devices. It charges $5 a month for the ability to gain this access via iOS and Android mobile devices.

There are plenty of media server solutions on the market that do the same things, but Plex has been lauded for the way it takes your all your content and presents it in contextualized way that would make Netflix proud. 

Adding live/linear streaming channels, an AVOD service, as well as music streaming service Tidal, achieves Plex’s goal of adding to its users personal media collections and making the platform an all-in-one media solution for users. 

On Tuesday nights at 9 o’clock on Bounce TV, Tamela and David Mann play a fictional married couple in the original sitcom Mann & Wife, recently back for a third season.

Starting this Tuesday (April 4), the Manns are also starring in a new unscripted series about their real lives, The Manns, at 8 p.m. on basic-cable network TV One.

The gospel-singing duo — stars of the play, movie and TBS TV-series versions of Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, though as father and daughter, not husband and wife — told The Wire that in a perfect world, the shows would be scheduled on different nights. They’re confident, though, that viewers looking for good, family-themed television will find and watch both series.

David Mann even coined the tagline of “The Manns’ Takeover on Tuesday Nights” for the two-hour block of Mann family programming on two different African-American focused networks.

Tamela Mann said she likes the authenticity of doing the reality series because it allows her to be in a more relaxed, family element, whereas David Mann said both the scripted show and the docuseries offer viewers family-friendly content that counters some of the more salacious programming from cable networks.

TV producers “offered ratchet, so viewers now expect to see ratchet,” David Mann said, using a term website Urban Dictionary defines as, in part, diva behavior. “But there’s an audience for family programming.”

The March 28 return of Mann & Wife — in which the two play a newly married couple with a blended family of children from different marriages — drew nearly 450,000 viewers to become the most-watched original sitcom telecast in Bounce TV’s short history, the multicast network said, citing Nielsen.

TV One, in announcing The Manns series in February, called the Manns “a great modern-day example of a family that works together, plays together and prays together.” (A previous reality series about the family, It’s a Mann’s World, aired on BET in 2015 and 2016.)

Tamela and David said that, despite their busy TV schedules, their marriage and family remain their top priority. “We put God first, then our marriage and family — everything else follows that,” said Tamela, who will appear on TV One on Sunday, April 9, as part of the network’s taped coverage of the gospel music-themed Stellar Awards ceremony, where she took home six awards.
— R. Thomas Umstead

For Charter, Job Creation Starts At the Home Office
Charter Communications’s plans to keep adding thousands of employees, following last year’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, earned chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge a March 24 visit with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Many of those thousands of jobs are to be at call centers. But the second-biggest U.S. cable operator also has been adding corporate-office jobs across the country, including its headquarters in downtown Stamford, Conn.

Sources tell The Wire Charter is starting to look for additional office space in Stamford to expand into — preferably in a building Charter could actually put its name on.

Rutledge moved Charter’s HQ to Stamford from St. Louis in late 2012, after receiving incentives from the state of Connecticut pegged to creating jobs there. Charter shares the 15-floor building at 400 Atlantic St. with other tenants, and continues to move into additional space there, but doesn’t own the building and can’t stick its brand on it prominently.

Charter wouldn’t comment, and sources said nothing was happening imminently along the lines of expanding the company’s footprint in its new hometown.
— Kent Gibbons

‘Simpsons’ Showrunner Tries Some New Tricks to Keep a Classic Current
More than 600 episodes into its run, Fox’s The Simpsons remains keen to try some new things to keep the show current, showrunner Al Jean says. It was a year ago that The Simpsons featured Homer live at the end of an episode, with viewers tweeting questions and comments his way. The show will give the next live honors to Bart at Comic-Con, Jean reports.

“We’ll have Bart animated live on the screen as he answers questions from people who are there,” Jean told The Wire and other outlets during a Fox call.

The show remains “adaptable” to new technological developments, the showrunner said, and “people want to work with us because of who we are.”

The Sunday, April 2, episode touched on current events just a bit, as Mr. Burns, disappointed with how Yale operates, decides to open a for-profit university. His professors have more star power than anything one might have found at Trump University. Jason Alexander was tasked with assembling teachers, and came up with Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings, financial wiz Suze Orman, scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson and screenwriting teacher Robert McKee.

“The topic is a really good one and Mr. Burns is the perfect guy to run [a for-profit university],” said Jean, who adds that the idea was mostly in motion before President Donald Trump was called on to defend his own for-profit university.

Asked if the president might tweet about the episode, Jean seemed to think it unlikely, but said he’d be “honored” if it happened.

The Simpsons crew will note a special anniversary on April 16, marking 30 years since The Simpsons shorts first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show.

As season 28 winds down, Jean said The Simpsons is going strong. “I know we’ll go through 30 seasons, but I wouldn’t say that’s the end,” he said. “As long as the cast is willing and the economics work, it’ll go on.”
— Michael Malone

This article was updated on April 3 to correct the time that The Manns airs on TV One. It airs at 8 p.m., not 10 p.m.

Related: Syfy Finds a New Playground in VR

Video games remain the big content draw at this still-nascent stage of the virtual reality market, but VR’s capacity to support a small-but-growing batch of live events has enabled producers and networks to experiment with and create the kind of high-quality experiences that can help it break into the mainstream.

Today’s big challenge: To figure out how much to invest in live productions as the VR market tries to scale up, build and establish best practices and overcome such technical hurdles as bandwidth and latency.

“At a high level, I don’t think there’s ever been more interest in [live] VR as there is today,” Brad Allen, executive chairman of NextVR, a live VR specialist that recently inked a five-year deal with Fox Sports, said. “The live part, and really feeling transported to an event, that’s something really special.”

Of recent note, NextVR teamed with NBC Sports Group to produce live VR coverage of the Kentucky Derby that relied on seven specialized cameras. Five were placed trackside to capture an uninterrupted view of the race (including one adjacent to the owners’ suites), and two cameras were stationed in the paddock area to cover the horses as they headed to the starting gate.

PRIMING THE PIPELINE

Fox Sports, which has produced a handful of live VR productions over the last year with partner NextVR, including the 2015 U.S. Open golf tournament, has some bigger plans in the works for this year’s Open, set to start June 13.

In addition to having a larger presence (last year, Fox’s VR experience for event was limited to a somewhat closed audience), the plan is to “add more interactivity,” Michael Davies, senior vice president of field and technical operations at Fox Sports, said.

Fox Sports is still ironing out those details, but the plan does include an option that will allow VR users to move around the course, alongside some short-form, companion pieces.

“We believe that short-form is something that’s going to be super-important for VR and have that … sort of orbit around the live nucleus of the production,” Davies said.

Live VR isn’t the domain of sports TV giants alone. The Pennsylvania Cable Network, the statewide public-affairs channel that reaches about 3.3 million Keystone State homes, dipped its toes into the virtual waters on May 28 with a live 360-degree video feed from the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) Track and Field Championships.

PCN, in partnership with VR production specialist Greenfish Labs, streamed the event live via its YouTube channel using a special camera perched outside the track at Shippensburg University.

“It’s not to compete with the standard coverage,” Corianne Schrim, PCN’s digital content manager, said. “It just enhances it.”

More than 1,700 people watched the live feed, according to Joel Bechtel, PCN’s vice president of marketing and brand development.

Part of the idea was to reach a younger audience with a stream that could be viewed and manipulated on YouTube and also accessible on VR mobile headsets, Bechtel said.

“The ability to do this live is relatively new,” Bechtel said. While the track event was PCN’s first experience with VR, the network is considering something similar for the Pennsylvania Farm Show, an event that typically draws more than 500,000 people, next January.

One challenge ahead for live VR is keeping that content engine fed in a way that will keep viewers coming back.

“The fact of the matter is there’s a finite amount of content out there for VR,” Davies said. “Getting fresh content for VR is going to be difficult, but I think that’s where sports is able to come in and continually refresh the need for new and exciting content for these early adopters.”

Allen agreed. “An issue always is whether there’s enough compelling content to keep people’s interest in VR,” he said.

In addition to deals with partners like Fox Sports, NextVR will also look to keep that content pipeline primed thanks to an agreement with LiveNation, which produces more than 25,000 concerts and other live events per year (but not all in VR, of course).

FROM ‘WOW’ TO ‘WATCH’

“There’s a calendar of events for the first time [for VR], as opposed to all the one-off stuff,” Allen said. “We talk about it going from ‘wow’ to ‘watch.’ ”

Another signficant hurdle faced by live VR productions is having enough bandwidth to support the streams, which require more data than traditional 2D streams.

The good news, Davies said, is that solid connections are usually available in most professional venues, noting that the Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa., site of this year’s U.S. Open, “has gobs of bandwidth there.”

But the questions that surround potential data limitations are among the reasons why Fox Sports’s early VR productions use a 180-degree field of view. New compression schemes, Davies said, will concentrate the pixels where the viewer is looking and “generalize” them outside the viewer’s gaze.

“There are arguments that 180 [degrees] is OK for most sports, and you wouldn’t be wrong,” he said. “But the full immersive experience of being somewhere where you can look in all directions is something that we’re definitely looking forward to, as well, from a production standpoint.” NextVR has been tackling the bandwidth issue since 2009, as it was founded on a stereoscopic compression technology originally used for 3DTV that has since been applied to VR.

NextVR’s platform is able to stream VR at speeds from 4 Megabits per second to 8 Mbps, Allen said. “We’re working on getting that even lower.”

And live VR’s tech challenges aren’t just about pushing out bits. Perhaps more important is providing a VR stream with adequate latency.

“VR takes bandwidth to a whole new scale,” Loudon Blair, corporate strategy officer at Ciena, a top networking supplier, said, noting that some camera rigs could require 100 Gigabits per second of contribution bandwidth.

THE LATENCY EFFECT

But latency is also key. That’s because even small delays in routing the round-trip signal can have a major adverse effect on the VR experience, potentially causing motion sickness for the viewer.

While that’s not as much of an issue with VR content that is downloaded locally, it can be a major problem if the content is being streamed and the latency and bandwidth capabilities aren’t at optimal levels.

The trend to help solve that is moving more computing toward the edge of the network, Blair said.

“It’s an ecosystem challenge,” he said. “It’s not something that an individual company can solve.”

comScore, moving into the TV market, said that the amount of time viewers spent watching was up 7% in fourth-quarter 2015.

comScore’s 2015 Cross-Platform Future in Focus report said that in viewing households, 1,004 hours were spent watching live TV, up from 936 hours a year ago. Time spent watching programs on DVRs up to 15 days after they originally aired also rose, to 356 hours from 332 hours.

“The availability of more viewing options appealing to a wider array of tastes, in addition to the continued expansion of premium, original, scripted programming on cable networks, has likely contributed to this effect,” the comScore report said.

Earlier this year, comScore, which specialized in measuring Web usage, acquired Rentrak, which uses set-top box data to gauge TV viewing.

Among millennials, time spent viewing live TV has been eclipsed by use of desktop computers and mobile devices. Live TV still accounts for 47% of time spent.

“It’s possible that digital share of time spent among 25-54 year-olds might also soon surpass live TV," the report said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Live sports and news event programming  have been huge ratings plays for cable networks  this year, from ESPN’s cable record-setting  audience for the Jan. 12 Ohio State-Oregon  College Football Playoff National Championship  game to Fox News Channel’s stunning performance for its Republican Presidential Debate on Aug. 6.

Three other networks this week are  looking to tap into the excitement and unpredictability  of live programming with  specials that, if successful, could usher in a  new era of live entertainment fare on cable  beyond awards shows.

National Geographic Channel kicked things off  Sunday (Oct. 25) with Brain Surgery Live, featuring a  renowned surgical team performing a deep brain stimulation  surgery on an awake patient in real time. The neurological  procedure — performed on a retired Navy chief  petty officer who suffers from tremors due to the early  onset of Parkinson’s disease — was billed as the first live  telecast of its kind, acknowledging the remarkable technological  achievements in the medical field.

Catering to viewers looking for thrills and chills during  Halloween week, A&E on Monday (Oct.  26) digs up a special that will test the limits  of fear among three participants who have  volunteered to be buried alive, live. A&E is  marketing the special, Fear: Buried Alive, as  more of a psychological experiment testing  — and hopefully conquering — fear itself,  but many viewers will undoubtedly tune in  to see how long it will take for the contestants  to freak out within the constraints of  a sealed, underground coffin.

On Halloween Eve, Destination America  follows suit with the first-ever live telecast  of an exorcism when it goes to the  house that inspired the 1970s horror film The Exorcist  to investigate paranormal activity.Exorcism: Live even  brings an interactive element: Viewers can access multiple  live camera feeds set up around the house online at  DestinationAmerica.com/ExorcismLive.

While these shows aren’t expected to generate the  20 million to 30 million viewers that some live cable news  and sports events have already done this year, the specials  will shed some light on whether the mix of live and entertainment  programming can generate big audiences.