As Viewing Hours & New Subscriptions Surge from Stay-at-Home Orders, MediaMelon’s Content-Aware QoE Solution Cuts Telecine’s Bandwidth Consumption & Costs, Delivers High-Quality Viewing Experience

MediaMelon, a pioneer in content-aware streaming, today announced Brazil’s Telecine streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) cinema hub has deployed its SmartPlay OTT streaming optimization platform to deliver a better video Quality of Experience (QoE) with lower content delivery costs despite an unprecedented surge in new subscribers and viewing hours.

With the coronavirus pandemic driving a 30% jump in VOD consumption, Telecine, a joint venture between Globo and Hollywood Studios Paramount, MGM, Universal and Fox, has seen its video plays triple and new subscriber trials nearly quadruple. As more people stay home from work and school, the added streaming traffic is adding substantial bandwidth costs for providers. Bandwidth bottlenecks also impact the viewing experience, causing videos to start slow, pause unexpectedly and pixellate when bandwidth runs thin.

With SmartPlay, Telecine has solved those problems, lowering the bandwidth needed to carry its streams by 42%, improving visual quality and reducing streaming interruptions (buffering) by 50%. The significant QoE improvements have enabled Telecine to deliver unprecedented content quality and reliability to viewers, while taking on nearly 400% more new trial subscribers without a corresponding increase in bandwidth/CDN costs.

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“SmartPlay has allowed us to mitigate last-mile bandwidth and infrastructure limitations to deliver better QoE to new and existing subscribers, manage our costs and improve margins even under these extreme conditions,” said Fabio Lima, Product Manager with Telecine. “We understand that a good, uninterrupted video experience helps convert trials to paid subscriptions as a result of the elevated quality and value of the service.”

Part of the MediaMelon OTT Video Intelligence Platform, SmartPlay is the only content-aware streaming intelligence solution that delivers analytics that act, dynamically adjusting streaming bitrate to deliver the best possible QoE. This maximizes quality with minimal bandwidth for each viewer, eliminates buffering interruptions and lowers overall bandwidth consumption up to 45%.

SmartPlay is based on MediaMelon’s QBR® technology. Built with AI technologies and backed by 25 issued patents, QBR rapidly analyzes encoded content to understand content complexity and computes visual quality at different possible bitrates. It then uses that information to guide standard video players on Smart TVs, mobile phones and on the web, to improve on current Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) decisioning process. A key advantage is that it works with existing encoded video libraries, and requires no changes to the encoders, CDNs, networks or video players –  streaming services can quickly adopt this solution.

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“SmartPlay is a simple, cloud-based solution that allows streaming service providers to improve the viewing experience and lower bandwidth consumption and cost with no change to existing infrastructure. Unlike other analytics that just measure and alert, SmartPlay actually solves the problem,” said MediaMelon CEO Kumar Subramanian. “We’re extremely pleased to be on board with Telecine to help optimize viewer experience and business operations during this critical time.”

MediaMelon’s complete suite of OTT optimization solutions also includes SmartSight Analytics, a real-time predictive analytics solution that enables OTT providers to gain deep insight into video usage, viewer engagement, streaming quality and advertising performance, all on a single platform.

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