Peacock creates quality fan viewing experience for iconic sporting events

Providers of media services offered directly to viewers through the Internet, also known as over-the-top (OTT) providers, continue to enter the market in force. Consumers can now access their preferred content anytime, anywhere, and on any screen. To keep pace with emerging platforms and growing customer expectations, broadcasters must innovate.

Cloud computing has a central role to play in broadcast innovation. Cloud solutions offer the agility, scalability, and reliability broadcasters need to deliver high-quality, personalized content wherever customers want it.

In a webinar titled Elevate viewer experiences with broadcast innovation, industry leaders discussed how cloud solutions address broadcasting opportunities and challenges. Hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), OTT providers also showed how they are using solutions available in AWS Marketplace to achieve their business goals. Professionals from NBCUniversal, a multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate, and Harmonic, a provider of video streaming solutions, joined me to talk about how to innovate broadcasting in the cloud.

In this post, I will summarize the contents of the Elevate viewer experiences with broadcast innovation webinar.

The cloud and AI bring innovation for broadcasters

The shift from traditional on-premises infrastructure to modern cloud infrastructure provides opportunities for broadcasters to expand and innovate. Cloud computing brings quality, scale, and efficiency, especially in the areas of live remote production, broadcast playout, and distribution.

During the webinar, participants pointed out that technology will converge in areas where artificial intelligence (AI) helps provide a personalized, curated experience. Broadcasters are moving towards incorporating data from multiple sources in order to enhance content rapidly. AI and analytics will continue to be key elements of smart content discovery for audiences.

Peacock teams up with Harmonic to stream Beijing 2022 and FIFA World Cup 2022

Peacock is an OTT streaming service offering both video on demand and live streaming. The service began in July 2020 and is known for streaming iconic sporting events with large fan bases, as well as movies, TV shows, and original content.

According to Naman Diwaker, Senior Director of Video Software Engineering for NBCUniversal and guest webinar speaker, Peacock is a customer-first platform. Diwaker says:

“There are four pillars that we focus on. These are quality, resiliency, scalability, and stability.”

To strengthen these four pillars for the rigors of high-profile live sports streaming, Peacock teamed up with Harmonic.

Harmonic handles all Peacock’s streaming workflows in a single SaaS

Peacock employs VOS360, a SaaS video streaming platform from Harmonic, to handle all its streaming and broadcast workflows. Running on AWS and available in AWS Marketplace, VOS360 unifies the entire media processing chain from ingest and asset acquisition to delivery.

“Peacock is using VOS360 to stream some of the most-watched live events,” emphasizes Jean Macher, Harmonic’s Senior Director of SaaS Solutions. To pull this off, Peacock and Harmonic collaborated closely to create Live Event Manager, an orchestration engine that manages all Peacock events on the VOS360 platform. This enables Peacock to set up events in advance and ensure their visibility to customers.

When an event starts, VOS360 ingests Peacock’s live video into synchronized clusters deployed on two different AWS Regions. VOS360 provides Peacock resiliency and geo-redundancy by transcoding and packaging video on both Regions – and outputting the origin from both Regions.

Peacock then uses a multi content delivery network (CDN) to signal and deliver the two synchronized origins to its platform. This multi-CDN strategy helps Peacock deliver content with optimal delivery paths.

Ongoing iterations, enhancements, and collaboration continuously improve the Peacock customer experience

Through its partnership with Harmonic, Peacock has improved all areas of the customer experience:

• Video quality – Working with Harmonic, Peacock improved the quality of single live events (SLEs) that far surpasses its legacy solution. The media company can now provide video in full high definition at 60 frames per second (1080p60).
• Resiliency – Harmonic’s synchronized VOS360 clusters deployed on AWS East1 and West2 offer Peacock seamless failover with geo-redundancy.
• Scale – Using VOS360 on AWS, Peacock can spin services up and down dynamically. Whether running a niche or multi-million concurrent viewer event, the streaming service can adapt and maintain proper function.
• Stability – Peacock has successfully handled extreme customer volumes and high-profile events such as Sunday Night Football, World Cup FIFA, and the Olympics. Additionally, it can manage numerous live events occurring simultaneously.

Further enhancing the customer experience, Peacock and Harmonic are delivering unique features to Peacock’s live sports audience. One of these features is rewind functionality. Another is SLE Binge, which seamlessly transitions viewers from one live event that is ending to another.

As Naman Diwaker asserts, the work is never done.

“We created iterative approaches to deliver features and optimization on an ongoing basis. We want to make sure we are providing the best experience to the customer – and then continue to reiterate upon it.”

Peacock’s ability to continuously experiment and innovate is supported by cloud-native solutions such as VOS360 and the AWS cloud they run on.

About AWS Marketplace and next steps

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software, services, and data. AWS Marketplace offers quick, easy, and secure deployment, flexible consumption and contract models, and streamlined procurement and billing operations. More than 330,000 organizations large and small use AWS Marketplace monthly to accelerate digital transformation and improve efficiencies across their enterprises.

Independent research from Forrester estimates it takes half the time to find, buy, and deploy a solution through AWS Marketplace compared to other sales channels.

To learn more about broadcasting solutions in AWS Marketplace, visit Media & Entertainment Solutions in AWS Marketplace.

Watch Elevate viewer experiences with broadcast innovation to learn more about how broadcasters are embracing cloud innovation. This webinar features insights and predictions from broadcast industry leaders and additional AWS Marketplace customer success stories.

About the author

Peter Riordan is the Global Strategy Leader, Broadcast at AWS, where he works with many customers and partners around the world at various points in their cloud journey. Prior to joining AWS in 2019, Peter has worked for large media industry leading companies, starting in production roles, before moving into executive leadership positions. He brings a wealth of operational and technology experience to each engagement, which helps to accelerate adoption and innovation.