Intro: And I believe that connectivity will change this. The flight time is not equal to the live event time — what to do with that? You are interested in a live event that happened in the US, and you are flying from Europe and you want to really catch up the game. News which are just critical or really important for people to see, even if they are on board of an aircraft. You can even pause the channel when nobody is watching. You can really hook up live events to your aircraft. And I think this will change the consumption of content in the entertainment system in the future. This will change it quite significantly.

Stefanie Schuster: You're listening to LOADED — Talking Software for Connected Aircraft. My name is Stefanie Schuster, and I'm here with Ralph Wagner.

Ralph Wagner: Hi.

Stefanie Schuster: Today's topic goes into in-flight entertainment, and a topic which is now more often coming up with better connectivity, which is live streaming. What is your view on live streaming right now? What does it mean for aviation?

Ralph Wagner: I think it changes a lot for the entertainment section. Having a look at the content — typical content is VOD content. Today, in-flight entertainment is about Hollywood, the content catalogues, etc. That's the typical association you have. Live TV is kind of — you have some channels on some aircraft, in some regions it's more used, in some it's not. So that is a very, let's say, niche thing today. And I believe that connectivity will change this.

Stefanie Schuster: There are currently also different technologies out there. The more traditional live streaming which was non-IP, and then starting with streaming over IP with GEO connectivity, and now with LEO connectivity as well.

Ralph Wagner: Yes. I do remember the times like ten years ago with Inmarsat, for example — when they were thinking about launching the GX, they were thinking very early on live TV. So they were thinking about live TV over IP, I think even before the first satellite was in space. The connectivity is connected to live TV as a technology. And I think the LEO side of it brings the needed bandwidth and the needed interaction to offer live TV at a really different scale.

Stefanie Schuster: Before we go into what live TV, or more broadly live streaming, means and how to define it as a product for aviation — let's talk maybe still about the combination of the different connectivity options, which is a topic that follows us. What to do with the mixed fleet? What to do with LEO and GEO if you have that across your fleet?

Ralph Wagner: From the technology side, the live TV part on the GEO side is another tech — how do you get the stream from the ground to the aircraft? This is a different technology for how you would do that. You have one stream that you do, and then you redistribute the stream within the aircraft with multiple streams to your devices. So this is one technique. And if you do this over LEO, you do it with a different technology than with GEO. But for the consumer device within the aircraft, it's a very similar way how you redistribute the signal to the different, let's say, seatbacks. The difference is for sure the latency. The latency is the part where all the user interactions you might have in mind — you need to think a bit differently about it. In fleets where you have GEO and LEO in one antenna mixed, you probably will not see any difference. But when you have GEO only, you need to think a little bit differently around the interaction.

Stefanie Schuster: And interaction means playback — for example, jumping back in the stream, pausing, resuming, switching channels. The user interactions.

Ralph Wagner: Yeah, picture-in-picture, things like that. If you want to do this dynamically, the latency can be something you need to take care of — where in LEO, either with a GEO with it, or as a pure stream, it's less of an issue technically.

Stefanie Schuster: Let's go into the topic of what the aviation-specific topics around live streaming are. One topic we already touched on was that live streaming means different types of content. Traditionally it was live TV channels — getting CNN on board of the aircraft. It moves right now, from my point of view, much more strongly into live events as well, which was maybe just harder to get on board of an aircraft in the past. But right now, with the new streaming options, that becomes a topic to think about, and maybe even a distinguishing factor when it comes to the content strategy.

Ralph Wagner: I would say that the possibility to basically hook up a channel at any point in time, stream for some period of time, and then close it and do the right interaction before and after the event — and do this really without a big planning ahead — I think that is the thing that is coming, and that allows you to have by far more valuable content. I believe that all the sports content, also news content, that you can broadcast at any point in time to your aircraft will provide you a different type of value than you have with traditional channels. And this is something that, from my perspective, will change the landscape. You have two pressure points — you have the pressure point for streamers coming into the aircraft because of LEO, so you get the typical VOD content. You get more of such content beside the entertainment or IFE side on the one hand; but on the other hand, you can really hook up live events to your aircraft. So from that side, I think you have an advantage now also as an airline to look at such content as real valuable content…

Stefanie Schuster: The third addition is maybe FAST channels — what we know from the OTT world: free ad-supported TV. So basically creating playlists out of VOD assets, putting ads in between, and streaming that as a linear channel might be an additional content type coming into the aircraft.

Ralph Wagner: Exactly. As well as the combination of live and VOD — when we're talking about catch-up, when we're talking about that you record the stream and then create VOD assets out of it. I think all of these new technology options will have their place in the future in the IFE space. And from that perspective, it's important to think about, as an airline, when you have live events — what does this mean to an airline, how to set them up, what they need to consider, because I think live events is not the same on the ground as in the aircraft.

Stefanie Schuster: If you want to do it well, then you need good ground management. What kind of metadata do you have around the live event? Where do you want to show it? How to notify passengers, maybe even about it — in an ideal way, personalized. Which event might be interesting for whom? But okay, maybe not today, not tomorrow. So ground management, ground operations can already prepare for having the possibility to get live events on short notice, manage the metadata and the assignment for the UI/UX. Where it should show up, in which collections, how to promote it and to whom, and also how to embed it into the UX. So if that live event starts, maybe you want to show before already some placeholder, you want to show some notification — this will come up. You might want to show some content. You mentioned VOD connected to live, so you might want to show some content which is related to this live event. Just — you still have half an hour left, so you can maybe watch something that's related to it. So on the ground you can already prepare the management side for it, and then you use OTT streaming technology.

Ralph Wagner: Right. It's actually a typical OTT streaming tech you're using to deliver it. Exactly — CDN networks you have in place. And then also the difference of how you stream to personal devices of passengers, into an app, or how you stream to a seatback screen is different. And advertising is into it — exactly. How do you plan your advertising around it? That is an important part. It's also important: the rolling DVR. Basically, how far can you go back? Because the event does not start with your flight. I think this is a very typical aviation thing you need to consider, because I am not coming into an aircraft at exactly the point in time when the event starts. So I need to have a good management of how can I go back in time, how far can I go back in time. It also needs to be considered when you purchase the licenses — how far can you go back in time? It's by far more things to consider than just if you have your news channel 24/7.

Stefanie Schuster: I think that's a really interesting point, a very aviation-specific one. The flight time is not equal to the live event time. What to do with that? You mentioned already the rolling DVR window — maybe even a longer one, because you might want to jump back even further than you would on the ground.

Ralph Wagner: You need, for example, to understand when the event started. So when you have your timeline, you need to understand where on your timeline you need to jump to when your event started. It's metadata, like you said. On the ground you need to prepare that. So your ground management processing needs to understand how to visualize a point in time where I, as a passenger, when I enter, when I sit down, and then when I see, “oh, there is a live event going on,” and I would like to jump to the start of this live event — you have to make it very easy for me to understand where this starting point is. Or highlights, right?

Stefanie Schuster: Just to catch up. You want to start where it is right now, but you want to see the highlights before.

Ralph Wagner: Exactly. So you need to have the management system on the ground that allows you to actually put in these cue points so that you can jump to such markers. I think that is something very important for aviation, because you do not have the timing — you don't have the overlapping timing.

Stefanie Schuster: Maybe even the different time zones — to make it even more interesting.

Ralph Wagner: Exactly. You have different time zones. You are interested in a live event that happened in the US, and you are flying from Europe and you want to really catch up the game. And this is something that I believe is an important thing — as well as interruptions. You also have interruptions, I think, in any aircraft more often.

Stefanie Schuster: Yeah, more often than you can get some food.

Ralph Wagner: You have some announcement. How do you interact with a stream when you need to stop, when you need to go back where the interruption happened, etc.? For a live event you need to think about such interactions, such markers, such possibilities to jump back in time. And for sure, also, if you want to record the video.

Stefanie Schuster: DVR — there are also different options to handle that topic. We already talked about jumping back, so having a rolling DVR window where you define it should be 12 hours, 24 hours — how long can you jump back in time. Or you go for a real catch-up option where you create out of the live stream VOD assets, which you can then use again like a library, like an archive, like just adding to the content if the licensing rights are there. This is obviously always a topic.

Ralph Wagner: What about licensing rights? Let's go to the licensing rights. What do we know about licensing rights?

Stefanie Schuster: In the past, or traditionally, I would say a lot was licensed through aggregators — DirecTV, Dish. There was also a lot channel-based, what we discussed before. I think right now there are also more direct partnerships, local partnerships. There are licensing rights specifically for — licensing content from IMG for streaming the World Cup. So this is something where airlines know where to go to get the rights and have it available on the aircraft.

Ralph Wagner: So here we are actually further than in the VOD space. In VOD there is this discussion around: do you have the rights as a streamer to stream something in the aircraft and so on? In live, there are already the rights set — there are in-flight rights and there are rights to stream. Yeah.

Stefanie Schuster: I mean, on the ground, it's much more about geographics.

Ralph Wagner: Yes. You have blackout areas, exactly.

Stefanie Schuster: But yeah, one topic which I guess will come up more often here is also getting the licensing rights for different routes, for different parts of your fleet — because it goes again into your content strategy. Maybe you don't want to show the same live event, the same channel, on all aircraft. Maybe you have passengers flying into one region and they are interested in this specific event. So again, it goes into on-ground management — having the possibility to assign content to routes, to parts of the fleet. But obviously all the licensing rights.

Ralph Wagner: Yes, it's also very tied to that you are able to basically hook up a channel in a fast way, put the metadata into it, and then basically assign it to certain routes, to certain regions. To be able to easily do that, so that for the next 24 hours you can just do it — and after the 24 hours you're basically shut down again.

Stefanie Schuster: Continue-where-you-left-off might be a topic as well. Across flights — you start watching a channel or a live event on one flight, then you have a layover, and you start on the next flight. Airlines starting with continue-where-you-left-off, also for VOD, but for live events it could also really be interesting.

Ralph Wagner: Absolutely. If you have live events, then it's really super critical to be able to do that — to be able to, when I switch my flight, that I can just continue where I left off, you remember where I was. But this goes into the discussion we already had about personalization, etc., in the last podcast. I think the combination of this with continue-where-you-left-off, and understanding what I'm interested in and what I watched on the last flight, is crucial.

Stefanie Schuster: And multi-language, I would say, is one more topic. Like for VOD already, but for the live events, live channels also need to care for having different languages, different subtitles available.

Ralph Wagner: That's right. And from the licensing side, if you're looking at who is actually offering the licenses — how do you see the ingest part? Do you think that the airline has different partners where the content is coming from? Because live events can be quite scattered. If you go niche — if you think about a podcaster, if you think about whatever — it's quite a distributed area. How do you think this will develop?

Stefanie Schuster: Well, ideally you have an infrastructure that allows ingest from different sources. That's always a question of who adapts to whom. So if you have one ingest infrastructure, do you get all the different partners to adapt to that? Or do you need an ingest infrastructure which is just flexible enough to adapt to whatever you're getting? But definitely for live events, if you go more for maybe even niche content, local content, to distinguish, to have added value in your in-flight product compared to people just using their own subscriptions and browsing on their personal devices — if you want to distinguish, you might go for very specific content. And then it's about ingesting from different sources, not anymore just from one.

Ralph Wagner: So we will see in the future actually more distributors, and the airlines have more possibilities to actually get content and source content from. Probably also regional — live events can be very, very regional. It's not like typical Hollywood content, I would say. Technically you need to prepare that you are able to do this and get your content from different sources.

Stefanie Schuster: We talked now a lot about live events, rather with the context, for example, sports — but we mentioned in the beginning also news, which could be something also very short notice if you, as an airline, want to allow your passengers to watch right now. News which are just critical or really important for people to see, even if they are on board of an aircraft. For that you need it very, very short notice — like an infrastructure that supports such ingests.

Ralph Wagner: Absolutely. It increases the attraction, and it also contributes to a strategy that you might have in mind regarding advertising, so that you also get your value for your ad content. It is basically also connected to the events themselves — even when, within the event stream, it might be something where you can't go into with advertising, at least not within the stream. Maybe with overlays. But before and after, you definitely have the chance to basically ingest your own advertising content, your own inventory. And with this, it also contributes to your income as an airline. So I think all of this is a very, very interesting part. And I think this will change the consumption of content in the entertainment system in the future. This will change it quite significantly — what content you are able to watch on board, and what the airline is able to source for you.

Stefanie Schuster: One topic we haven't touched on yet is edge caching. Streaming live content on board of the aircraft via the OTT infrastructure is the one part. For part of the fleet there might be a server available where you can edge cache.

Ralph Wagner: Let's round that up on the tech side. We touched the ground side. You need a structure where you can ingest different channels, preferably in a short period of time. Hook them up. You need a metadata management where you can actually put your metadata into it. And then you need a CDN for streaming so that you reach your aircraft. Especially having a LEO distribution, you have a lot of uplinks, so you need a CDN network to support that. Very similar to if you stream directly from the ground VOD content, and then you basically stream to the aircraft. Now — you certainly can, if you have a server on board, edge cache on board. So you stream a channel, a live event, only one time to an aircraft, and then you redistribute it. You can even pause the channel when nobody is watching, especially if you have a super-low latency. That's not a problem — to pause the channels, you can detect that, so you're not streaming them at that moment. When the first one watches, you stream, you cache; the second one starts watching, he gets the same content, it's already there. There are then all the technical specifics when you are going back in time. There's a question you need technically to ensure when you go back in time, that you can distinguish between: is it in the cache, is it not in the cache, so go to the ground. So I think that is supporting the infrastructure and supporting that you use your bandwidth in the best possible way. But you for sure can also stream directly. You can stream the channels, let's say, directly to passenger devices or even to seatback screens, if you do not have the server available. Certainly if it's available — like our statement is always — if you have the edge cache possibility, do it. It's just more resilient, etc. But if you don't have it available, you can stream directly. You can stream directly to personal devices. In case you have LEO connectivity, that's not a problem. That is all fine. And I think it's still a good setup. You cannot do everything that you can do with the caching, but other than that — viable in both ways.

Stefanie Schuster: Okay, let's wrap it up. What's the conclusion? What to take away from this?

Ralph Wagner: My takeaway is really on the content. The content demands a really different way of how you're dealing with a passenger. How do you actually interact with a passenger? How do you need to think about that he wants to jump back, that he's pausing, that the flight does not start when the event starts? I think that would be my part where I would say that is an important thinking away from the channel thinking. So what does a live event, and an interaction in the live event, mean?

Stefanie Schuster: Keeping the time context in mind.

Ralph Wagner: Keeping the time context in mind, keeping in mind that I'm probably often interrupted while I'm sitting — with meals, with somebody wanting to go to toiletry, to stand up, etc. It's something where I need to think about how I interact with the stream, what I need technically to support that. What would be your takeaway?

Stefanie Schuster: Well, I think one other interesting point is the content strategy. So having not only anymore the traditional live channels, but thinking more around specific live content that might differentiate my IFE offering from whatever the passenger can do on their own device with their own subscriptions, and considering more strongly events — which can mean sports content, news content — and, yeah, supporting this real-time setup the passenger would expect if they are connected.