Streaming to the Apple iPhone, Part 2

Livestation aggregates and streams live news channels to Apple iPhones and PCs using Wowza Media Server Pro Advanced and HTTP Live Streaming.

In last month's edition of Final Cut Pro Insider, we looked at the technical details behind Apple's HTTP Live Streaming to the Apple iPhone. As promised, here are four case studies of companies streaming to the iPhone. Three use HTTP Live Streaming, and one uses technology provided by its online video provider (OVP).

Livestation is a London-based aggregator of live news channels—including Al Jazeera, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg—which it delivers over multiple platforms, including PCs and iPhones. I spoke with CEO Matteo Berlucchi about the company's recently introduced HTTP streaming service for iPhones.

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Apple's announcement was bad news for Berlucchi because his company was one of the few that had figured out a way to stream live to the iPhone. Specifically, his company had been streaming BBC, Al Jazeera, and UEFA soccer games to the iPhone using a proxy-based proprietary technology that fooled the iPhone into thinking that the video it was playing was stored on the hard drive.

While Apple's announcement leveled the technology playing field, Berlucchi took a positive long-term view.

"Apple's technology simplified our life and lowered our costs in the short- and long-term," he says. "Every time you write software, you have to maintain and upgrade it as Apple introduces new devices or upgrades their operating systems. All these costs are gone, so we can focus on our core business, which is finding new content and new subscribers."

Looking forward, Berlucchi says he hopes that BlackBerry and Google's Android OS will adopt the same technology, which will make it even easier for content producers and aggregators like his company.

From a technology perspective, Livestation developed its own blade server-based capture and encoding solution to produce all streaming files, including those transmitted to the iPhone. Livestation uses the Wowza Media Server Pro Advanced server to manage the streaming process out to the content delivery networks that actually deliver the streams. Berlucchi says that so far, Wowza has been ideal for a small company like Livestation. Livestation is distributing a single static stream while awaiting Apple's approval of its new iPhone applications, which will adaptively distribute three streams at 80kbps, 160kbps, and 320kbps, all at 480x320 resolution and 25fps.

Though HTTP Live Streaming eliminated the need to design a custom iPhone application, Livestation plans to continue offering one in the App store. "We will charge for our services in the browser," Berlucchi says, "but the App Store gives another point of sale. It's part of our sales strategy."

Turner Sports used HTTP Live Streaming to stream coverage of the 2009 PGA Championship for iPhone users.

One of the first high-profile streaming applications for the iPhone was the 2009 PGA Championship, which was produced by Turner Sports two months after Apple released the HTTP Live Streaming technology. I spoke with Peter Scott, executive director of digital partnerships for Turner Sports, about the program.

Strategically, Scott says that Turner had initially turned to streaming video in the early 2000s as advertisers started reallocating advertising dollars from TV to the Web. Turner's web success convinced content owners such as NASCAR to approach Turner to run their online video sites, which Turner has done for several years. Turner also manages the PGA.com site in conjunction with the PGA, which is where viewers accessed the online/iPhone content from the PGA Championship.

Turner wanted to get ahead of the projected trend of advertising dollars moving to mobile applications by serving video to those platforms. Turner Sports first streamed a live feed to the iPhone from the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in July 2009, before the availability of HTTP Live Streaming from Apple. Specifically, Turner partnered with several smaller companies to produce a Windows Media Video stream that played live on the iPhone.

When planning for the PGA Championship in August, Turner wanted to use Apple's new technology, and unlike the iPhone broadcasts from the Masters Tournament and U.S. Open Championship, wanted to charge for the application. From a rights perspective, Turner's web and iPhone coverage was ancillary to the main CBS broadcast. To shoot the video, Turner sent its own camera crews to cover the event. The crews followed two groups around the course, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. One group always included Tiger Woods, while viewers voted to determine which other group Turner followed.

Turner charged $1.99 for the iPhone package, for which viewers got a constantly updated leaderboard and other stats, unlimited viewing of the Turner video feeds, access to video highlights, and the ability to set configurable alerts for each player. For example, if you're a Phil Mickelson fan (guilty as charged) you could configure an alert for each time he birdied (yeah!) or bogeyed (sigh!) a hole. Viewers who didn't want to pay the $1.99 could access a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) site with leader boards and other data, but no alerts or video.

Scott says the typical viewer was a spouse on a "honey do" mission to the grocery store or similar destination who wanted to stay updated on scores. He says that viewing was complementary to the TV and web feeds because few users who could watch on their TVs or computers would watch on their iPhones.

Turner doesn't release iPhone-specific numbers, but overall coverage numbers were impressive. For example, PGA.com's four days of coverage of the PGA Championship set a record of 206 million total page views, a 68 percent increase from 2008. In addition, nearly 5.7 million video streams were served during the third quarter on PGA.com, a 176 percent increase.

Table 1. Turner Sports' settings for its three quality levels.

From a technology perspective, Turner encoded the satellite feed from the event using Spinnaker 7000 encoders from Inlet and distributed the streams via content delivery network Akamai. Double Encore, a Denver-based mobile software development company, built the iPhone application. Turner distributed via adaptive bit rate streaming, producing and adaptively serving the three streams in Table 1.

Scott is bullish on Apple's HTTP technology, and he says he hopes the mobile market coalesces around that standard. Today, however, those seeking to access the three main markets—iPhone, Blackberry, and Android—have to develop custom applications for each. In that vein, Turner recently released 30 NBA team applications—one for each team—that are now for sale in the iTunes store, Blackberry App World, and Google Market, all for $3.99.

Scott has some advice for people considering streaming to the iPhone. "Find good technology partners, and get insights from companies who have done it before," he says. "Know what your viewers want to see. The most successful content for us has 'snackability,' so it's short and sweet, and holds the viewer over until they can watch on their computer or TV set."

AllHipHop.com uses a video player template from Kaltura that directly accesses the iPhone's media player. The website plans to use HTTP Live Streaming once Kaltura begins offering it as a service.

AllHipHop.com is a popular hip-hop website that reaches millions of unique visitors each month. The site features daily news, interviews, third-party video content, and increasing amounts of self-generated content, such as the hit show The Next 48 Hours, which follows an artist for the 48 hours leading up to the official launch of a new CD. I spoke with Derek Frempong, director of technology.

Frempong says that AllHipHop distributes up to 3 million video views a month and that his site contracted with online video platform Kaltura to deliver all streams. Though AllHipHop's mobile initiative is relatively new, it's expected to be a significant growth area because its users are mobile savvy and consume significant quantities of content on their phones.

From a workflow perspective, AllHipHop uploads one file to Kaltura and designates whether the file is targeted for general web use, mobile, or both. Kaltura then encodes the file into the required formats for each delivery mode. The website detects browsers on the fly and automatically pushes all mobile visitors to the mobile site.

The site uses a template from Kaltura that accesses the iPhone's native video player from the browser and avoids the need to produce a custom application, which works for Android phones as well as iPhones. All mobile streams have static data rates, however, and don't adjust to changing bandwidth conditions. AllHipHop will add HTTP Live Streaming and dynamic streaming once they are offered by Kaltura, which Frempong expects in the next few months.

Frempong says that not all of AllHipHop's content is posted to the mobile site and stream duration is generally limited to 5 minutes or less. Still, mobile views already comprise about 2 percent to 3 percent of total views, and Frempong says he expects that to grow quickly in the future.

Eternal Word Television Network uses Multicast's implementation of Apple's HTTP Live Streaming to distribute video.

Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is the world's largest religious media outlet, including TV, radio, Internet streaming, and streaming to iPhones. Through all of its outlets, the network reaches 150 million households in 140 countries with 24-hour-a-day programming including religious programming, movies, children's programming, and talk shows. It is the second largest Catholic website, behind the Vatican. I spoke with Jeff Burson, a senior web developer and online manager at EWTN.

Table 2. Details of EWTN's Windows Media streams for BlackBerry and other devices.

EWTN has been streaming audio and video since 1997. It went live with eight worldwide satellite feeds in 2007 and chose online video platform Multicast Media as a partner. At the time, EWTN also set up a generic mobile site (www.ewtn.mobi) distributing Windows Media audio and video streams of EWTN's live programs to Blackberry and other Windows Media-compatible phones. Those streams are still available and are produced at multiple bit rates, from 16kbps audio only to a 500kbps stream. Table 2 shows the details.

Burson says EWTN's distribution strategy is to make its content available as broadly as possible, but because it's a nonprofit, it doesn't have the funding to chase every distribution fad. Once it became apparent that the iPhone was here to stay, Burson contacted Multicast Media to set up EWTN's iPhone service. Today, it uses Multicast's implementation of Apple's HTTP Live Streaming to distribute a single 240x160 stream at 20fps with a video data rate of 200kbps and audio at 48kbps.

Burson says EWTN's Internet and iPhone audience is diverse. Some viewers watch the Internet or iPhone stream because their cable companies don't carry the EWTN broadcast channel. Others watch the iPhone stream where televisions or computers may not be accessible, such as hospital rooms or exercise rooms.