The 2015 Streamingmedia West conference is currently underway at the Huntington Beach Hyatt conference center, CA (Nov 17th – 18th). There is a lot of interesting things that are happening in the world of streaming media from cheaper cameras to stream with, to broadcast strategies via cloud on any number of user devices to fully automated workflow on the production side. The turnaround time from shoot to stream is reducing at a dramatic rate. At the same time, the financial resources required to set up and produce good content is dramatically declining.

“The Consumer is ready before we are”

In relative terms, streaming media and related companies are not that old. Companies such as ustream and wowza media are becoming established in this area. One key takeaway from me from this conference is that all the different ecosystem partners, whether they are the camera manufacturers, or the production workflow developers, everybody felt that the consumer is ready before they are. In 2010, the average US customer consumed about 842MB in media on their monthly Smartphone devices. That number has grown to an astounding 3.2GB in 2010. The appetite for consuming video content has evolved exponentially and the streaming industry is rapidly catching up. I wonder if this same dynamics is going to play out in the virtual reality world. With several headgears and devices available in 2016, is the industry on part in being able to deliver the right content to these customers?

“The best products are often produced when there are constraints”

As Internet giants such as Facebook and Netflix are pouring millions of dollars into research and development to meet the consumer need, there is a parallel revolution that is happening at companies with limited resources. Companies are continously figuring out ways to optimize content delivery. In the past, what used to cost a few hundred thousand dollars at least can be easily accomplished by a blackmagicdesign Ursa 4K that costs less than $5000. There is even a 4k camera that is available for $995 from blackmagicdesign that can help you shoot 4k content that is studio quality. It is very clear that as Virtual reality evolves over the next year; cameras and other equipment are going to drop in prices. Even with the pricing constraint that exists today, one can clearly see a lot of companies working to produce good VR Content. It will be good to remember, that the best Metallica album was perhaps produced when the band was living in a one bedroom flat off sunset blvd. Creative content with mass appeal can and will be produced in spite of any prevailing constraints that developers are facing.

“Think about Periscope for VR”

Streaming VR is coming and coming very soon with some attractive economics. If you are able to set up a 6/12 rig Gopro camera, you can very easily shoot professional quality 360 video, collect it via Magewell cards, author it real-time via Vahana VR 1.0 or video-stitch and start streaming it to your audience who can then consume it via oculus Rift or their Gear VR devices. One company that is at the forefronts of streaming VR content is the French company video-stitch.com. They have recently opened an office in SanFrancisco. I spoke with the COO, Axel Piran and he was really excited about the future of streaming VR. Infact, Video-Stitch is demoing how they can get a gear up and running in 5 minutes and stream live VR content! It was amazing. The other company that had some excellent set up to show was shinobi systems. With a box priced under $19k, the platform has capabilities to record VR video, 4k video, or regular 1080p content, provides options to stitch via VAHANA VR and instantly stream 360 videos. One box, no cable clutter, no mess. The box and the monitors are small enough to carry and set up as well to get production quality VR captured and distributed.

 

“Analytics Capabilities”

Since streaming media is new, companies are still trying to figure out how consumer behavior can be captured and insightful information can be made available to content producers that are actionable. One company that is making sense out of all the streaming data is Streamlyzer. They are providing a superior platform that provides you with high value analytics on streaming. It shows how and where to maximize revenue, increase engagement and reach. I can clearly see this play out in the VR content world. As new monetization strategies are being discussed and developed, there needs to be an analytics platform that can provide metrics around advertising impressions or other engagement metrics as the customer interacts with the VR content.

“Get excited because it is coming and it is Happening as we speak”

The progress that I saw at the streaming media conference was mind blowing. As these companies think large scale VR Content deployment and streaming capabilities it will open up a lot of opportunities to showcase virtual reality content and create value for customers.