Quanteec, a global provider of video delivery technology for broadcasters, will showcase its next-gen peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming solutions at IBC2024 in Amsterdam. The company’s technology is designed to greatly reduce CDN use in live streaming, with an average energy saving of 40-50% and a minimum cost saving of 25%.
The Need for Sustainable Streaming Solutions
The company designed its P2P delivery solution with sustainability as an essential metric. The software uses the existing capacity in viewer devices to resend a stream to other viewers with no noticeable impact to user experiences. The result is that peaks in viewership, that might be associated with major live events, don’t have to rely on CDN capacity. In fact, transmission becomes easier as more users log on to the broadcast. This contrasts sharply with traditional CDN use in which streaming capacity has to be signed off before an event, in anticipation of the expected peak traffic, plus some overprovisioning as a failsafe.
Revolutionizing Live Streaming with P2P Technology
“We want to show broadcasters – especially the sustainability champions – that delivering big events to large numbers of viewers can be done in a better, cheaper, and greener way,” said Daniel Négru, Quanteec co-founder and CEO. “Quanteec was launched in 2021 to address two problems with streaming live events – how to handle traffic peaks without deploying more and more servers and how to make streaming more sustainable.” “From the beginning, we put sustainability in our DNA. We were always asking ourselves how much power our technology consumes, compared with the other solutions. How do we improve the handling of traffic peaks, while also lowering the energy consumption? It turned out the solution we came up with was also cheaper.”
Energy Savings and Cost Reductions
Major broadcasters are implementing Quanteec this year in anticipation of massive viewing numbers for this summer’s major sporting events. This will allow them to prepare for large audience peaks and save energy by using already existing devices with unused delivery capacity, not to mention substantial cost savings on CDNs.
Key Highlights at IBC2024
Key Highlights at IBC2024 Will Include:
Streaming Big Sports Events
This year sees a summer of non-stop, world-class sports events. A 2021 study from Grabyo showed 79% of sports fans prefer to watch sports through streaming. At IBC2024, Quanteec will demonstrate how its technology is helping leading broadcasters stream some of the world’s biggest sporting events at lower costs and with significantly less environmental impact using peer-to-peer technology.
Ultra-low Latency
Latency has proven to be a big challenge in past P2P-based live streaming solutions with latency being a normal result of passing video across multiple peers. But Quanteec’s technology has cut the span of time it takes to send video between viewers to milliseconds. The company will showcase how it is able to achieve less than 2 second overall latency using P2P streaming, allowing broadcasters to simply configure the P2P technology for ultra-low-latency live streaming.
Sustainability Metrics
Measurement is an essential component in making sustainability progress. Quanteec offers monitoring tools that enable broadcasters to track energy savings by reducing reliance on the traditional CDN model. At IBC2024, the company will demo how content owners can track energy savings and environmental impact across each event, client, and even down to the viewer during each stream in real-time. Quanteec will also showcase plug-ins and data that broadcasters can deploy to allow individual viewers to track and engage with their own energy footprint, increasing user engagement and inviting viewers to be collaborators in sustainable practice.
In-Stadium Streaming
Live sports events are becoming a multimedia experience with top stadiums in the U.S. and Europe adopting 6 GHz Wi-Fi and 5G technology as ways to provide digital content directly to fan devices. This content is usually streamed from a CDN outside the stadium. Quanteec, in partnership with Videon Labs, will demonstrate the ability to produce and stream live content to audiences entirely from within the stadium using Videon LiveEdge 2Go solution and Quanteec P2P tech, enabling fast and simple deployment and eliminating the need to provision – or pay for – external CDNs.
IBC Accelerator Project 2024: Ecoflow Initiative
IBC Accelerator Project 2024 – Energy-Conserving Optimization for Future-Ready Low-Impact Online Workflows (Ecoflow): Quanteec is also a contributor to Ecoflow, one of this year’s IBC Accelerator projects experimental initiatives, which pushes the boundaries of what is possible in broadcast. Ecoflow tackles the environmental impact of broadcast by developing metrics for energy consumption at major steps along the video delivery supply chain. The Ecoflow project is supported by the BBC, ITV, EBU, and Netherland’s RTL.
Its proof-of-concept objectives include:
- Demonstrating that the industry can measure delivery workloads.
- Enabling broadcasters to implement, test, use, and compare energy saving features.
- Explaining the state-of-play for preferred measurement guidance.
Quanteec’s Journey and Achievements
Founded in 2021, Quanteec is pioneering next-generation video streaming solutions. Renowned for its peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, Quanteec optimizes video distribution at three levels: continuously improving streaming efficiency, significantly reducing operational costs, and minimizing environmental impact.
The company has received multiple awards, including the “Product of the Year” at NAB 2023 in Las Vegas, the world’s leading media technology show, and more recently, the Special Jury Prize at the prestigious Tech For Future 2024 competition, reaffirming its leadership in sustainable video streaming technologies.
