DEV Community: Setplex

SETPLEX ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF NORA 3.0 MIDDLEWARE

Setplex — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:12:00 +0000

In the face of rapidly evolving consumer preferences and increasing competition, Nora 3.0 has been purpose-built to empower operators with unparalleled flexibility to manage, distribute and monetize their video service.

Launched at NAB 2024 in Las Vegas, Nora 3.0 encapsulates a comprehensive suite of features designed to elevate the OTT experience for operators and viewers alike, ensuring a future-proof, seamless and enriched content delivery.

The cornerstone of Nora 3.0 is its flexible monetization capability. This allows operators to maximize revenues through hybrid combinations of SVOD, AVOD, TVOD (incl. PPV) and FAST models, catering to diverse market dynamics in different territories simultaneously.

Beyond monetization, Nora 3.0 delivers both live and VOD streaming across multiple platforms and devices, complete with catch-up and rewind features, which significantly enhances content accessibility and viewer satisfaction. The platform's sophisticated content management system drives content categorization and discovery, and enables the creation of revenue-boosting add-ons. This is supported by the integration of a shopping cart and subscriber portal ensuring a frictionless purchase experience.

Read more about Nora 3.0 in a full press release or in the article Introducing Nora 3.0

Find out more information about Nora 3.0.
Download the Nora 3.0 spec sheet.
Book a Demo.

An Interview with Setplex’s New Senior Vice President of Business Development

Setplex — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 15:17:30 +0000

At Setplex, we’re so excited to have recently brought on Karl Tempest-Mitchell as our Senior Vice President of Business Development. Karl will kick things off at this year’s IBC show in Amsterdam where, among other things, Setplex will be demonstrating our latest generation user interface along with our enhanced recommendation engine, making content discovery more targeted and accurate. We spent a little time with Karl to get his motivation for joining the Setplex team, his vision for the growth and evolution of Setplex, his forecast of industry trends, and his expectations for IBC 2023.

Karl, is there one key trend you’re paying attention to in the OTT/IPTV space right now?

OTT/IPTV continues to grow each year, and there is no evidence to suggest that this growth will slow in the near-term. Experts from across the industry are predicting consistent development of this market as more consumers discover the wonders of OTT/IPTV.

People are now able to use OTT/IPTV as a much more efficient means of watching the content that they want when they want, without needing to sit and wait for linear TV channels to launch their favorite shows/movies, sports channels, etc. This efficiency of watching behavior is what we need to pay attention to – how to understand consumer behaviors and anticipate their needs.

What makes you excited to lead business development for Setplex?

I’m really excited to share the evolution of Setplex. With all the technology updates we’re launching, I feel like I’m coming in at the right time to introduce the world to Setplex 2.0 – the best kind of sequel!

The Setplex story itself is incredible; a relatively young company with two amazing brothers at the helm. They started their journey by launching their own OTT/IPTV solution and learned the hard way. Because they couldn’t find the technical solutions in the market that fit their needs, they built their own solution from the ground up. This is unique within our industry and it’s that knowledge of understanding the pain points of operators firsthand that gets me excited, and differentiates Setplex from the competition. Setplex comes from a completely different angle than other technology providers – they have lived the story, so they understand the pain points and have built solutions to solve them.

If you could accomplish ONE thing this year for Setplex, what would it be?

That’s simple. By the end of 2023, I want every OTT/IPTV provider, every broadcaster, every content developer and distributor to know Setplex, to understand our history, to understand our solutions and to feel the same way I do about this amazing group of people.

What’s the Setplex plan for IBC?

IBC2023 is about introducing Setplex 2.0 to the market. It’s a new beginning and we will be exposing the world to some of our great tech, including NORA which is our unique middleware and video monetization platform, Streampool (our local CDN solution), Setrix (our encoder/transcoder), our updated user interface, and our expanded recommendation engine (and one of the more important features for today’s operators advanced analytics). It will be a very exciting show, with multiple demos running and our co-founders will luckily be in attendance.

How has your experience in the industry led you to where you are today, and how do you believe it aligns with your expectations for Setplex?

I have previously held executive sales and marketing positions with several first-to-market, advanced technology providers such as Amino Communications, the company that launched the world’s first IP Set-top Box, Airties, home of the first Mesh Wi-fi System, as well as Plume (first SaaS smart home and enterprise management system), ADB (world leader in middleware, broadcast and broadband solutions) and Gamgee (a market leader in connected smart home solutions). I see Setplex joining this elite club in the OTT/IPTV sectors and beyond.

My expectations are to grow Setplex into a global leader and to become a go-to technology company across the entire sector.

Originally published at https://setplex.com on August 16, 2023.

Can your current video solution scale with you?

Setplex — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 15:14:36 +0000

Picture this: Your streaming platform has been up and running for a couple of years, and things have been going well so far. Your audience has grown, and so has your content catalog. The future looks bright.

But as time goes by, you notice a couple of minor things that might not have come up before:

A handful of customers have started inquiring about alternate payment methods, like Venmo or PayPal, which you don’t have in place yet.

You’ve grown enough to catch the attention of major distributors, but one of the agreements is on hold because a distributor isn’t yet comfortable with your current DRM.

Last month, you caught a news story about another platform expanding their reach by partnering with a dealer network, but your developers tell you that your current technology can’t support that type of integration at the moment.
During last week’s live playoff broadcast, a couple of users in rural areas groused about how “fuzzy” the game looked.
These may seem like minor issues, but they may also be the first hints of some potentially major growing pains. Subscribers increasingly expect a wide variety of payment options. Major distributors demand robust DRM. The paths to the discovery of a new platform are constantly evolving. And viewers won’t settle for low-quality feeds anymore.

There’s a good chance you have outgrown the capabilities of your current technology.

Organizations who have been through similar situations will tell you – better to address these issues a year too early rather than a year too late. Wait too long and your growth is going to be stymied. Or worse yet, you might start losing viewers and subscribers. And we all know, it’s more expensive to get subscribers than it is to keep the subscribers.

Best-in-class video solution providers are prepared to help you scale your business as it grows. Here are the elements you should be looking for to ensure the video solution you choose is scalable.

There are four things to look for in a highly scalable video solution:

Secure Technology: Look for proven global technology and studio-quality DRM. That means you’re always up and running, and distributors will have confidence in their partnership with you.
Content Delivery Network: Make sure that your CDN can handle spikes in traffic and viewership. The last thing you want is audience complaints about long buffering times, fuzzy images, or (even worse) connection failures.

Billing Management: You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay you. Find a platform that will integrate with major payment gateways, and includes multi-currency support, currency conversion, & other financial support.
Multi-Tenant Support: Partnering can be a great way to find new customers, so you’ll need a platform that can manage resellers, vouchers, distribution, and dealers/sub-dealers to grow your business & increase revenue generation.
Want to learn more? Click here to learn how Setplex delivers a global, scalable solution and see if we’re the right partner to meet your growing needs.

Originally published at https://setplex.com on July 13, 2023.

What is Streampool, and why do you need it? | Setplex

Setplex — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:18:14 +0000

Many companies struggle with video content delivery. How do you reduce costs, improve performance, and optimize your network so that you can maintain a high quality of service (QOS) for your end users?

There are several products in the market that allow you to build your own local CDN (content delivery network) to affect cost, performance, and QOS. Add Streampool to that list.

In addition;

Streampool can also act as an origin server, protecting your transcoders and allowing you to scale up.
Streampool can also act as a caching solution, load balancing high demand VOD content or live content that you want to reduce the load on origin servers.
A typical CDN is usually global and includes multiple servers that can deliver any kind of content to users around the world. But that can often mean a given CDN is serving every kind of content. That may result in one CDN client’s content generating a load imbalance on shared servers that results in other clients not always getting the optimum performance for their own content.

Streampool is Setplex’s in-house CDN, focused solely on delivering video, whether it’s live or VOD. Streampool can receive HLS, DASH, or CMAF streams, and consists of spots (or clusters) containing pools with streams. And each pool can have individual settings for ingestion (such as push, pull, or packaging) and delivery.

Streampool cluster management interface

Setplex can deploy individual Streampool spots for clients so that the edge servers are located as close as physically possible to end users. Our smart load-balancing mechanism enables seamless traffic distribution between spots based on user location (the closest spot) and performance (the least loaded spot). Streampool is also deeply integrated with Setrix TMan encoding/transcoding option that many of our clients already use. The native integration between Streampool and Setrix eliminates the challenges and labor of integrating a 3rd-party CDN.

Streampool features include:

Origin server capability
High scalability, handling increased loads, and adapting to decreased loads to save resources (i.e., load balancing capability)
Content protection, with token-based authentication, geo-blocking, and ACL (access control lists)
Automatic catch-up functionality and time-shift creation
Ingestion and delivery of live streams and VOD in HLS, DASH, or CMAF

Sproot is the Streampool management console, providing you with full control of the configuration, monitoring, and reporting for all your spots.

And, of course, with Streampool, you’ll receive access to detailed, real-time statistics such as number of streams, traffic, errors, and number of viewers, in order to manage your business.

Want to learn more about why Setplex’s custom CDN powered by Streampool is quickly becoming a favorite of growing content and video providers? Reach out, and we can help you learn why Streampool is right for you.

Article "What is Streampool": originally published at Setplex Blog on June 20, 2023.

What should customers look for in an end-to-end streaming provider when planning to launch an OTT channel?

Setplex — Mon, 22 May 2023 09:27:15 +0000

Business goals related to the launch of an OTT channel may vary from company to company, but there are some things every OTT channel needs. With so many technology providers offering different services, it’s sometimes hard to define those features you shouldn’t have to live without.

Here are the six essentials:

Stability and Reliability

First, and maybe most importantly, any OTT provider should be able to demonstrate a track record of successful launches and long-term stability. While many companies are looking for a reasonably priced platform, sacrificing the stability of an experienced technology provider in exchange for saving a few dollars will greatly increase the likelihood of having to quickly repeat the process of finding a provider, and likely cost more in the long run.

Scalable Infrastructure

As your needs grow, you should be looking for companies with the infrastructure to grow with you. There’s nothing more frustrating than implementing a technology solution only to realize you quickly need to find a new provider as your audience grows and your needs change. Does your provider have a top-tier CDN solution that will reach your customers across any platform? Can it perform on mobile devices and deliver 4k video to smart TVs? Thinking one step ahead can help you avoid the pain of changing OTT partners.

Evolving Technology Platform

As consumer needs change, our technologies must change. Any modern platform should be ready to adapt to new formats, devices, and codecs, which means that it’s essential to find a vendor that will “future-proof” your channel. Any OTT provider should support the latest codecs, formats, and technologies, but the ideal partner will also be thinking about the future.

Customer Experience

Naturally, your subscribers expect a great viewing experience. The right partner doesn’t simply understand the back-end technology – they ALSO understand subtle elements consumers expect. Don’t overlook a well-built recommendation engine, which will help customers discover new content, thus extending watch times and their loyalty.

Flexible Monetization Models

Today’s OTT platforms need to support multiple business models. You may start with an ad-based model, but later shift to subscriptions. Or you may offer both subscriptions and VOD. Look for a partner that has multiple monetization tools available, one that supports “freemium” models, hybrids, rentals, and pay-per-view.

Content Security

Of course, you want to protect your investment, whether it’s original or licensed content. To keep your content from being pirated or copied, find a partner that has implemented studio-quality DRM (digital rights management). That will give you peace of mind for your own content, while showing potential licensors that their content will be in good hands.

Ultimately, you’re looking for a partner that wants to see you achieve (if not surpass) your business objectives. That kind of partner will make sure that all the elements mentioned above are working for you to help grow your business.

OTT Apps: White-Label or Build Your Own?

Setplex — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 09:27:09 +0000

Launching a successful IPTV/OTT video streaming service means considering numerous variables.

Building your OTT service comes at a cost. From a financial standpoint, a content provider needs budgets for marketing, content creation, and operational costs. Naturally, it can take a substantial amount of time to create a successful video streaming service.

One possible shortcut is to find a white-label solution. The right one can save you time and also help your OTT video streaming business stay profitable.

But let’s explore the ins and outs of OTT apps, what they offer, and how you can build your own OTT application.

What is an OTT App?

An OTT app, or over-the-top application, delivers video content to end-users’ devices, including smartphones, tablets, and Smart TVs, via the internet, rather than more traditional transmission methods like cable or satellite.

Viewers can watch videos and live streams on any of their preferred devices whenever and wherever they choose, thanks to OTT apps.

OTT applications solve the problems of both a business and a consumer: viewers want to watch their favorite videos anytime, anywhere they want, while businesses reach more people through OTT apps.

What are the Benefits of OTT Apps?
Though OTT apps certainly come at a cost, these days they’re an essential part of a successful streaming platform. Here are just a few of the benefits:

By offering your video content on multiple devices, you enable your audiences to consume more of it. For instance, customers can view videos on the go, regardless of their location.

Content consumption increases as viewers watch videos whenever it’s convenient for them or whenever they are in the mood for it. And ultimately, people view more videos and stay longer on the platform. And that’s thanks to OTT applications.

Launching an OTT app attracts new customers who are looking for video streaming services to subscribe to.

Who should have a video streaming service? Basically, businesses of any size interested in finding audiences for content, such as (but not limited to):

Large media organizations which substantial catalogs
Medium-sized production companies
Small businesses with specialized content

Customers are switching to OTT video streaming platforms for more interesting, engaging, and personalized content than they see on traditional broadcast platforms.

OTT apps are a revenue-generating and user-attracting supplement to your video streaming website and a smart way of reaching a bigger audience.

The more powerful OTT solutions offer tools that allow for personalization of a user experience, such as recommendation engines. These provide relevant recommendations based on an individual’s viewing history, which naturally encourages them to watch more content. This way, you can not only establish a deeper relationship with a viewer, but also get a valuable insight into a viewer’s preferences and interests.

How to Create an OTT App and its benefits you can read in the full article about white label ott app on the Setplex blog.

Contact Setplex to monetize your content from the very beginning.

Originally published at https://setplex.com/blog/ on January 27, 2023.

6 Essential Tips to Optimize Your OTT Platform Strategy in 2023 [Updated]

Setplex — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:47:28 +0000

Creating an OTT platform is not enough. It is essential to continue improving it to meet market demands and stand out from the competition. In this article, we share a few tips (and trends) you need to consider when optimizing and updating the OTT content strategy on your platform in 2023.

Tip 1: Pay Attention to User Experience
Tip 2: Know How You Will Scale
Tip 3: Ditch the Legacy System
Tip 4: Track OTT Trends
Tip 5: Target All the Right OTT Devices
Tip 6: In-Cloud or On-Premise?

Tip 1: Pay Attention to the User Experience

Sure, content is an incredibly important part of your OTT strategy, but if no one can find it, then it’s useless, and you’ll have churn. A great UI/UX helps customers to find exactly what they want – a highly engaging OTT experience.

OTT service providers experience huge competition across the global markets. They all seek higher ‘stickiness’ – engagement of potential users. Even Netflix is not immune to less-than-stellar service at times.

Multiple factors influence the user’s experience in OTT streaming. OTT optimization refers to:

Speed of ‘Launching’ the OTT service
Locating content quickly through browsing
Great search function
Browsing content easily
The smooth running of playing content
Low-quality OTT streaming
High-demand of users

Absorbing a high demand of users requires elasticity, high availability, and flexibility. Your OTT streaming platform should be able to provide the same response time and quality to the initial thousand users to the hundreds of thousands that specific content or situation might generate at a peak time.

Tip 2: Know How You Will Scale

You plan to succeed, right? Then you must plan to scale. Add this tip into your OTT business plan.

In recent years and especially during these past months, there has been a surge in IPTV and VOD streaming services. This has been a challenge for many MSO/ISP service providers and telecom operators who have to keep the same level of quality and reliance on the service, regardless of how many subscribers are on at once.

This has stretched the capacity of existing OTT streaming platforms and surfaced new challenges in terms of the elasticity of the OTT system architectures to accommodate new users by keeping the same levels of quality and high availability.

Tip 3: Ditch the Legacy System

Many ‘top-of-the-line’ OTT streaming services rely on ancient legacy systems created over 10-15 years ago or more. These legacy systems, although often stable, are hard to maintain and adapt to the new cloud-oriented technologies and architectures, such as microservices and Kubernetes.

Legacy system vs modern system for OTT platform
Legacy systems, while initially enticing because they seem to do so much, can be very costly on the back end. And many legacy systems have different pieces of software glued together, making it difficult to adapt and change to the needs of their customers. Maybe, this is what stops you from becoming the best OTT solution.

By the way, Setplex has always continually created features and functionality, and our software can be customized to your needs.

Other 3 tips you can read in the full article about OTT strategy on the Setplex blog.

How to Create a Streaming App in 2023? Complete Guide | Setplex

Setplex — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 12:26:33 +0000

In 2020, the global OTT market size was estimated at $38,77 billion. The researchers predicted that it would grow to $139 billion in 2028. According to their estimations, the OTT market CARG will be 17.7%.

What influences the growth? Internet penetration, Smart TVs, smartphones, 5G infrastructure, and original content are going to boost the market and expand its capabilities.

If you are still not sure whether to build a video streaming app or not, let’s dive deeper into the industry overview.

Video Streaming Industry Overview

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online video streaming services like Netflix and HBO became more popular than ever. The pandemic ended, but these services are still on the rise. Such a demand occurred due to high-quality images, availability on different platforms, and advanced internet infrastructure.

Depending on the platform, the market is segmented into smartphones, laptops, tablets, Smart TVs, and others. As researchers say, there is a demand for Smart TVs with features and functions across the world, and it is increasing. The smartphone market share dominated the OTT market in 2019 and is expected to prevail due to 5G and new smartphone models. The adoption of tablets and laptops is growing as well.

The multi-platform capabilities are profitable for content creators. The more devices you can reach, the more revenue you will generate.

Inspired to create your streaming app?

Streaming is a method of delivery when live or recorded content is transmitted through the Internet to an end user’s device. A streaming application is software that allows viewers to access content without downloading it on a device.

Types of Streaming Applications

The format of video streaming can vary. When you decide to build a streaming app with Setplex or another online video hosting platform, you should define what type of video streaming application you want.

VOD stands for Video-On-Demand streaming. The video content is stored on servers. Thanks to that, viewers can request a video at any time. The video will be delivered to the user’s device via the Internet.

VOD streaming makes it possible for people to watch videos without downloading them on gadgets or buying CDs and DVDs. VOD services are equipped with features that allow viewers to watch videos however they want — pause, resume and rewind. What viewers like about VOD services the most is that they can binge-watch content as long as they want.

Popular examples of VOD:

When you are creating a live-streaming app, you should be ready for tough competition. There are Twitch, Periscope, Livestream, Clubhouse, and giant social media services with built-in live streaming functionality — Instagram Live, Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and Twitter Live. If you want to be in the same row as they are, you need to come up with unique features or concepts.

The live streaming app transmits videos in real-time, without being recorded and stored like VOD content. The viewers receive the content at the same time as it is being created.

The term also refers to multicast streaming — the content creator, or the streamer, sends information to many viewers simultaneously.

The majority of VOD streaming services offer content that viewers cannot find on television. When consumers cut the cable or satellite television cord, they stop watching their favorite TV shows and series.

That’s the reason why huge companies like Hulu or YouTube TV added TV live broadcasting plans to their services. People can still watch their favorite shows, and they don’t need cable anymore. Viewers use an internet connection, which is much easier, cheaper, and more flexible.

The concept of audio streaming is similar to VOD streaming. Such services also offer a library of music content that people can access whenever they want.

Consumers can listen to music or podcasts without downloading them on their devices. Music streaming app development is less complicated, and audio records require less space on servers.

Examples of audio streaming apps are Spotify and Apple Music.

How to Create a Streaming App Like Netflix in 5 Steps you can read in a full article on Setplex blog

Start Building Your Apps Today.

Take your IPTV/OTT platform to the next level with the support of the Setplex team. You’re ready for your platform to take off. Have an expert call you today to see how quickly your apps can launch and your service grow. Contact Setplex.

Originally published at https://setplex.com/blog/ on November 23, 2022.

Key Considerations for IPTV/OTT Business Plan | Setplex

Setplex — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:54:10 +0000

Video streaming, whether it’s free, ad-supported, or subscriber-based, is a growing market. According to Digital TV Research, global media revenue from OTT is expected to reach $224 billion in 2027. While SVOD revenues will climb to a whopping $136 billion, AVOD revenues are set to reach $70 billion by 2027.

Today, video streaming can benefit nearly every industry, from entertainment to education, fitness, music, and religion. Platforms such as Disney+ and Paramount+ have taken the OTT market by storm and are perfect examples of how to do it right.

When developing your IPTV/OTT business plan, first consider how you will create, launch, monetize, and differentiate your platform. Choosing the right provider and content delivery network (CDN) is key to launching a successful platform, while monetization and analytics are crucial to growing your user base and revenue.

Choose the Right IPTV/OTT Solution

To deliver a seamless IPTV/OTT experience, there are many moving parts to consider including hardware, software, middleware, transcoding, CDN, security, apps, analytics, and UI/UX. While this can seem overwhelming, OTT providers such as Setplex can provide an all-in-one solution for operators who are looking to start or upgrade their platform and reach a wider audience.

As an end-to-end OTT solution, Setplex provides all the components needed to deliver a complete IPTV solution, including encoding/transcoding, content and user management, CDN, ad monetization, and analytics. Setplex’s NORA Middleware ™, utilizing a microservices-oriented architecture, incorporates all the latest technologies to make Setplex’s platform fault-tolerant and highly scalable. NORA™ is ideal for Tier-one operators that need to support millions of subscribers as well as startups experiencing hyper-growth that require high availability [CS1] to support their OTT/IPTV business operations.

Understand Your Costs

It’s important to fully understand each of the company OTT operational costs, which typically include middleware fees, app fees, storage costs, DRM fees, and the largest variable cost — CDN fees.

Content delivery network fees are based on subscriber connection speed and average time watched per day. For example, if an average subscriber watches two hours of video per day at an average connection speed of 3 Mbps, the amount of bandwidth consumed is about 2.575 GB. Over 30 days, that is about 77.25 GB. or .08 TB. At a cost of .02/GB, you can estimate to pay about $1.55 per subscriber monthly in CDN fees.

Beware of OTT companies that offer low middleware or app costs but have CDN charges of .06 /GB, as you will end up paying a lot more at the pump, even if you are not being charged ‘per subscriber’ fees. In this scenario, CDN fees will eat up your profit as your platform becomes more popular.

In order to manage your expenses and revenue, it’s important to choose an IPTV/OTT company who will deliver your content to your audience’s geographic region with a standard rate commitment to minimize costs as your service scales. In general, the more you commit to in terms of TB per month, the lower the cost per TB.

For Recommendation about Content Monetization and Analytics you can read a full article on Setplex blog

Nora Middleware Platform and Recommendation Engine: A Deeper Dive

Setplex — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 10:01:17 +0000

Setplex’s Nora Middleware.

Meet NORA: Setplex’s next generation Middleware Software. Cloud Native or On Prem, our microservice-oriented architecture allows us to scale on demand to meet the increasing needs of both enterprises looking to deliver OTT/IPTV globally and new streaming services that expect rapid growth.

Microservice-oriented architecture design

A microservice-oriented architecture (MOA) incurs additional complexity in exchange for more flexibility. In a monolithic application, all the parts are in one box, so to speak. Therefore, you can declare dependencies ‘in-code’ and not worry too much about deployment issues. All the parts ship together at deployment time.

With an MOA, all the parts are distributed ‘across’ the network. Thus, you have to architect the microservices to work ‘in unison’, but at the same time, independently, to get the overall application up and running. The wiring involves identifying the network’s microservice(s) and enabling authorized access to all the microservices that make up the MOA. The task includes providing credentials so the MOA can access each particular microservice and adjusting firewall and router settings at the physical level of the application’s operation.

As stated above, microservices offer more flexibility in terms of maintenance and upgrade, but that flexibility comes with the price of more complexity.

Load Balancing

Load balancing is a core strategy to create efficiencies in deploying an MOA.

Load balancing refers to efficiently distributing incoming network traffic across a group of backend servers, also known as a server farm or server pool.

A load balancer acts as the “traffic cop” sitting in front of your servers, routing client requests across all servers capable of fulfilling those requests in a manner that maximizes speed, capacity utilization and ensures that no single server is overtasked, which could degrade performance. If a single server goes down, the load balancer redirects traffic to the remaining online servers. When a new server is added to the server group, the load balancer automatically begins sending requests to it.

Load balancing can be performed at various layers in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model for networking.

Layer 7 load balancing, which Setplex utilizes, is more CPU‑intensive than packet‑based Layer 4 load balancing, with the benefit of rarely causing degraded performance on a modern server. Layer 7 load balancing enables the load balancer to make smarter load‑balancing decisions, resulting in overall system optimization.

Session Storage

Session Storage is a great solution in which you do not store client sessions in the application itself, but in Session Storage. With that in place, we can open a session on any chosen node and all other system nodes will check client requests with the stored session and make changes independently. And microservices, made with 12-factor principles in mind, are completely stateless, which means they hold no data, so all the shared data has to be stored and fetched from outside of the application.

Kubernetes

The complexities introduced by an MOA model require the use of container orchestration.

Fortunately, the complexities of creating, deploying, and supporting an MOA have revealed design patterns that have become well known over the years. In turn, these patterns have been used to create orchestration frameworks that are well suited to supporting MOAs. Probably the best known of these orchestration frameworks is Kubernetes, also known as K8s.

Kubernetes (K8s) is quite a technical achievement. Despite its complexity, this type of orchestration framework is necessary to run an MOA at scale. An MOA has many moving parts, and any one of them can fail at any time; therefore, to run a microservices-oriented application reliably, you need to incur the complexity of an orchestration framework.

K8s Architecture

Kubernetes (K8s) is the most widely used container orchestration tool. It is maintained by the community, orchestrates most of the microservices on the market and actually manages many cloud services.

The benefits offered by Kubernetes – and orchestration tools in general – include the following:

High availability: applications have no downtime and are always accessible to the user.
Self-healing. When a container fails or is unhealthy, Kubernetes replaces it automatically to maintain a desired state configuration and the overall health of the application.
Declarative configuration management and version control. Kubernetes configurations are stored in YAML formatted files that can be version controlled with source control software, such as Git. The configurations can be applied to create or update resources.
Multi-cloud and bare metal. Kubernetes enables IT teams to choose a cloud platform onto which to put workloads, such as Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, AWS or bare metal, so that they can avoid vendor lock-in.
Service discovering and load balancing. Kubernetes exposes containers in pods, or groups of pods, using DNS or IP addresses so that other microservices can consume those resources.
Scalability. When faced with high demand or an increase in load, Kubernetes horizontally scales the number of containers that run a microservice to avoid performance issues.
Zero downtime. Kubernetes deployments create additional pods with a newly released image without destroying the existing containers, to ensure no downtime. Once the new containers are up and healthy, teams can roll out updates and delete old containers. If new containers fail, IT teams can roll back changes with minimal downtime.

With all of the above, K8s provides us a simple solution for supporting a very important feature of our system: the ability to be cloud agnostic, with the possibility of being deployed on private, public or even hybrid cloud solutions, as well as the ability to support any on-premise solutions.

For Recommendation Engine you can read a full article on Setplex blog

Join Setplex at IBC Show 2022

Setplex — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 12:02:00 +0000

If you’re a content provider looking for an end-to-end IPTV/OTT platform, and the best in OTT middleware and white label app creation, stop by our booth at the convention!

On September 9-13 2022, Setplex will join other innovators, digital pioneers, and content experts at IBC Show 2022 at the RAI Convention and Exhibition Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Why Visit Setplex?

We are pioneers in the IPTV/OTT industry. In an ever-evolving streaming world, Setplex maintains its leadership in IPTV/OTT software. We scale with you. Our goal is to constantly innovate, delivering best-in-class software, with the highest quality user experience.

We’re in the business of technological innovation, creating groundbreaking IPTV/OTT systems that transform how end users consume content and interact with all kinds of media.

Book a Meeting with Setplex
Or stop by Booth #5.A75

About the IBC

The International Broadcasting Convention, commonly known as IBC, is Europe’s largest Technology, Entertainment, and Media show.

IBC Show’s unparalleled exhibition and conference encompass the very latest developments in broadcasting, IPTV, mobile TV, R&D (research and development), and digital signage making it essential for everyone’s understanding of the industry and its future.

IBC Show 2022 includes technological exhibitions and attractions, dynamic thought leadership sessions, workshops and training sessions for content creators and designers, and a number of other events that help content and technology leaders explore innovative possibilities, make valuable connections, learn from industry leaders, and enjoy the best content technology (and Amsterdam, Netherlands) have to offer.

Originally published at Setplex Blog

Streaming services are still around us.

Setplex — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 08:45:51 +0000

Simplicity and convenience are becoming the main factors in the consumption of media content.
Having lost access to theaters and cinemas due to the pandemic, viewers have switched to watching video content at home. Streaming services have completely changed the user experience: most moviegoers prefer to watch premieres online.

Moreover, streaming services have ceased to be entertainment only for young people. People aged 55 and over made up more than a quarter of the streaming audience.
When choosing a device and platform for consuming media content, users primarily pay attention to convenience and simplicity. Then on the range of content, and only then on the quality. All the same the main competitive advantage is content.

The process of consumption itself flows smoothly into smartphones. Although consumers have access to PCs and plasma TVs at home, many of them still opt for smartphones.

Another feature of the streaming market is that its main players are not direct competitors. For the most part, the struggle for the audience is between classic content providers (cinema and TV) and new ones (video streaming), while in digital channels, subscribers are not fixated strictly on one service.

For example, some paid Netflix users have a subscription to Disney + and Hulu, in Amazon Prime in parallel. Each service has its strengths.

But despite this, an overabundance of content and the ever-growing demands of subscribers still force video services to look for new ways to attract and retain an audience: independently engage in the creation of films and series, improve the technological basis of services, and so on. The fight is for those statistical two hours that the average subscriber is willing to spend watching videos every day.

The growing demands of the audience make it necessary to look for an individual approach to various social, demographic and age groups, which differ greatly both in their tastes and in patterns of content consumption. And here new analytical tools come to the rescue, aimed at studying the interests of the viewer using OTT analytics.
The abundance of content, even within a single platform, makes the quality of the recommender system extremely important. All video services are constantly looking for ways to improve it, since it is it that primarily affects the effectiveness of viewer retention.

By studying the preferences of different audiences, some services expect to use this knowledge even to personalize trailers in the future. People of all ages, nationalities and tastes will see movie ads tailored to their preferences. Services are not just showing content, they are finding new ways to captivate viewers and immerse them in the world of the movie.

Streaming giants are trying to increase the reach of the audience around the world and start talking to each viewer in his language - and conquer the planet.
It seems that the practice of releasing subtitles in as many languages as possible does not really justify itself: after all, Indians, Brazilians or Albanians would rather watch their albanian TV ( or if you like it original “tv shqiptare”) and watch characters that they understand under understandable conditions, rather than guessing the motives of English-speaking characters.