Delivering Live in the Air

The demise of linear TV has been touted for a long time, but it has proven to be an unbeatable beast. Since the last many years, linear TV has witnessed some critical changes in business models and delivery, primarily caused by the technological shift from physical media and analog mechanisms to digital technologies.

Despite the extensive cord-cutting and viewer churn, linear TV viewership has stayed strong. If the subscription prices and advertising costs are anything to go by, ad-free TV has become even more premium in the last few years.  

The reason for viewer loyalty towards linear TV lies in the fact that most watchers want to have smooth and worry-free access to hours of entertainment. Another reason lies in the prompt nature of the medium. Viewers have access to live sporting events like football, or local news as it happens, engaging them more thoroughly. Consequently, it becomes pivotal for entertainment service providers to integrate linear TV as an option along with on-demand offerings.

The delivery of live content has its benefits and challenges when compared to VOD (video-on-demand). Although with linear TV, there aren’t different content types, the risks and expectations increase exponentially. Also, while serving live streams, you know that your viewers want the same chunks of video. Hence, the caching complexities are less as the fragments are of known size. Nevertheless, at the same time, you know that you compete here for speed and latency and work with small-size chunks and minute buffers.

On a transport vessel like aircraft or train, these challenges amplify because of the sophisticated and costly satellite networks, and the finicky nature of the technology and hardware on-board. Hence, only a Live TV solution that is data-efficient, resilient to minor disruptions can deliver the right playback experience on-board.

Delivering live channels in multiple transport scenarios and making it available to end-users, Axinom Live TV has proven to be an efficient solution for linear TV distribution. The digital solution has been developed after years of research while working with transportation customers and partners. The product takes advantage of modern video delivery technologies to ensure that a wide range of end-user devices can be used for playback using common web browsers, without the need for custom apps or plugins.

Axinom Live TV is designed to be as less demanding on on-board hardware as possible. All complex logic, including video encoding, transcoding, and packaging, is done by on-ground components. The solution utilizes only data channels for transmission.

On top of that, the customers benefit from adaptive streaming standards provided by the solution, ensuring playback on any platform. The video streams get delivered according to the bandwidth available and pre-defined rules. With the capability to handle the 4k HDR video format, the solution is also future-proof.

Traffic shaping ensures that no unnecessary data occupies the network and prioritizes only the data chunks needed for streaming. In contrast, multicast and retransmission logic guarantees that only targeted vessels receive the data with retransmission happening within the vessel, and no further needed repetition of transmission via satellite link. Thereby, Axinom Live TV not only helps in cost savings but also makes sure that no transport vessel, that doesn’t have a client application occupies any satellite beam unnecessarily.

Axinom Live TV can be integrated on any existing hardware or customer portal, residing and running as a containerized image. The whole solution is designed to ease the installation, maintenance, and operation costs of live TV. 

So whether it’s enhancing your customer experience by bringing the latest news and sports on-board, or adding value for your business customers through business news, Axinom Live TV is an efficient and effective solution for linear TV transportation scenarios.