TECHNICAL
At the bottom is the minimum quality floor: 360p to 576p, which is where many limited users find themselves for a large part of their viewing time. This is where buffering, artefacts, and playback instability are most visible in the customer experience, which also makes it the space where most optimisation efforts can be measured with maximum impact. The industry has traditionally spent out-of- proportion effort at the top of this pyramid. Increasingly, however, the evidence points to operators having much greater practical QoE with a far improved base by focusing on strengthening it instead.
VMAF Unlike traditional metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) correlates closely with human visual perception, making it a more meaningful measure of viewer experience.
Strategic Implications for Broadband Operators
Looking Ahead: AI-Driven Video Optimisation Soon, intelligent optimisation frameworks will drive the evolution of video delivery. AI-assisted encoding, network-aware adaptation, edge transcoding and real-time QoE feedback loops will probably be central features of video architectures in the future. The aim is simply no longer an increase in pixel count alone. The goal is to provide the right quality at the right bitrate, on the right device, under what happens in front of the viewer.
This completely changes the value of transcoding optimisation for broadband operators. It should no longer be considered a standalone video engineering function but an integrated part of overall network strategy. Better encoders can help reduce the knock-on effects of raw bandwidth growth, so customer experience becomes less dependent on it. By keeping or enhancing the perceived quality at lower bitrates, operators are relieving pressure to increase access and core infrastructure while enabling improved customer experience. This second element becomes much more crucial when the broadcast-to-IP transition takes place. Operators will face ever-more concentrated peak-time traffic events as linear television services move onto broadband infrastructure. During such periods, smarter bitrate ladders and more efficient transcoding architectures will be necessary to ensure service stability. Third, optimisations don’t have to be better than they were before; they just must pay attention directly to what customers see. Consumers are not typically calling into the complaint line about codecs, bitrate ladders or VMAF scores. They complain of buffering, poor visibility quality or dropping out during playback. This means that improving service at lower tiers of delivery tends to have an outsize impact on perceived quality of service. Lastly, the objectives of optimisation also dovetail well with wider sustainability initiatives at the level of telecom. When you cut back on needless bitrate overhead, you reduce the transport required of access networks, metro infrastructure, CDNs and data centres. Acting in an industry that keeps such a close eye on energy efficiency and ESG performance, encoding efficiency is both an operational and an environmental win.
Conclusion
With the transformation of broadband infrastructure to an IP-first architecture, video QoE will be one of the key dimensions of operator performance. Capacity expansion continues to be key, but capacity is no longer sufficient on its own. VisualOn and Cires21 find significantly better comparative performance from content-adaptive optimisation throughout software/GPU/ASIC transcoding pipelines, with the most pronounced advantages appearing at the points in space where bandwidth constraints are most visible. However, for operators, the strategic answer is looking ever clearer. The future of video quality may not be achieved simply through ever-increasing resolutions or larger bandwidth budgets. Through smart optimisation that can achieve stable, effective and perceptually consistent quality for every viewer in all networks.
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