By using multiple AWS environments and zones, ITV can feel confident that its live streams will continue to run even in the event of failures, knowing that there is flexibility through automation to recover and maintain service.
Whether it’s an award-winning drama, an animated series, or a good documentary, we all enjoy watching and being entertained by TV shows and movies. And the rise of streaming services in recent years means that we have more ways to watch than ever before.
Most of us don’t think much about how our favorite shows and movies are delivered to us. But we certainly notice if something isn’t quite right. As a leader in media and entertainment, ITV is on a mission to deliver a reliable, consistent viewing experience across all devices so that customers can watch whenever and wherever they want to.
Demand for live streaming continues to be popular, and ITV is a company that continuously invests in being at the forefront of streaming and video technology. With ITV’s latest opportunity to refresh the live streaming environment to meet and exceed viewer expectations, the company recently pushed the boundary of live video processing.
Instead of replacing a hardware platform in a data center, ITV took on the challenge to move its live video processing platform to the cloud, where software and services run on a global network of servers instead of on local computers. The company wanted to tackle the challenges of latency, synchronization, multiple cloud zones, codified video profiles, and device support to maintain the range of destinations that it streams to. Moving its live media processing to the cloud would help ITV meet consumer expectations of quality and reliability. The company selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its cloud service provider to meet these challenges.
Many companies worldwide still host live video processing within physical data centers, using hardware encoders in central locations. This requires an ongoing maintenance process for upgrades and constrains the ability to be flexible to scale. By moving to a cloud-based solution on AWS, ITV can automatically adjust compute resources to maintain performance. This means that when demand is low, resources are decommissioned in an automated process, reducing any continuous costs. During peak times, ITV can quickly add resources to meet the increased demand.
Availability and performance are more critical now than ever. A failure within a data center poses a risk to the viewing experience. By using multiple AWS environments and zones, ITV can feel confident that its live streams will continue to run even in the event of failures, knowing that there is flexibility through automation to recover and maintain service. Implementing proactive monitoring by using more AWS solutions has also helped ITV spot problems before customers are affected, making a more rapid recovery possible.
Using AWS in its media processing, ITV now has a flexible base to innovate on and has recently been using artificial intelligence technologies to dynamically adjust picture quality. This not only gives customers a better viewing experience but also reduces the company’s carbon footprint. ITV’s video teams are working on many new challenges to improve viewer experience over the coming months, and working alongside AWS continues to open more avenues to scale.
