First and foremost if you want your own Internet TV Channel (OTT platform) you absolutely must have a CDN. A CDN Stands for “Content Distribution Network” and it is a large geographically dispersed network of high speed servers.
There are a few different types of CDN’s. There are standard CDN’s for just delivering websites like a hosting company and then there are video CDN’s that are specifically optimized for delivery high quality video streams and video on demand content.
The Internet is nothing more than a collection of data centers connecting users to the data they want to access. When web servers are located in just one single location it makes it much harder to handle multiple requests for the same data and creates a heavy workload for those servers. To solve this CDN’s were created and load balancer’s deployed. A load balancer looks at the incoming traffic and then disperses it to an available server closest to the users location.
A video CDN has specialized servers that accelerate video delivery though a process called caching, which stores content temporary on several servers through the CDN (servers spread throughout the globe). When a viewer requests to view a video the servers nearest the viewers location delivers the video. This allows the viewer to get the least amount of buffering and the most amount of video playback.
The size of a CDN can vary greatly depending on the many factors including the content volume and the number of viewers serviced.
Without a CDN you can not deliver high quality video simultaneously to multiple (hundreds or thousands ) of viewers. A CDN benefits the viewers greatly because they expect their video to play anywhere, anytime and on any device. When a viewers views content via a CDN they get to enjoy faster streaming rates and much better reliability as well as mobile device detection.
A video CDN must be able to support both VOD and streaming as well as other features that a network owner or OTT operator might need such as: The ability to broadcasts simultaneously to social media, ability to record live broadcasts, ability to create and schedule playlists, ability to offer multiple and adaptive bit-rates, integrate dynamic add insertion and much more.
So in essence a video CDN at its core is the ability to deliver video to thousands of simultaneous viewers of your network across the globe with value added features listed above.
A CDN gives you the ability to deploy your video content in a professional manner that drives customer loyalty and dependability instead of standard hosting which could only server one or two viewers at at a time.
At TvStartup we have our CDN geographically spread in key locations throughout the globe to give your network the dependability and readability that your viewers would expect from a professional internet TV network.
We specialize is video delivery with key features that make owning and operating your own video platform easy. Our “Channel Manager” is our core product built on top of our CDN that allows you to broadcast live, schedule and create playlists, broadcast simultaneously to social media, record live broadcasts automatically and much more. Click here to learn more about our channel manager.
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