scte PRESENTS
The CHANGING FACE OF STREAMING Panel 1: Security & Protocols
provided operators plan their capacity correctly.
parameter will almost inevitably drop as a result. If you want lower latency, that’s going to cost you something somewhere else. It’s always a trade-off.”
Streaming industry prepares for next generation of television The streaming industry is entering a new phase of evolution, with broadcasters and technology companies focusing less on simply delivering content online and more on improving viewer experience, reducing latency, strengthening security and preparing for the next generation of streaming technologies.
Instead, Sebastian Siepe said broadcasters increasingly face operational complexity because
He explained that protocols such as WebRTC (Web Real-Time
Communication) can achieve extremely low latency, but are more vulnerable to packet loss, while TCP-based systems offer greater reliability but can introduce significant delays when networks become congested.
they must support multiple protocols across
thousands of different devices.
Speakers on the Security & Protocols panel included Steve Strong, CTO of streaming server Norsk, Sebastian
“It’s not only protocol complexity, but operational complexity on top of that. Broadcasters have to support many different devices, different streaming formats and different generations of equipment, and that makes operating these services increasingly difficult.” The discussion then turned to MoQ (Media over QUIC), which many believe could become the next major streaming transport technology. Strong described MoQ as an opportunity to innovate in ways existing protocols cannot. “What excites me is that it lets us innovate. WebRTC is designed to be one thing and HLS and DASH are designed to be specific things. They tie the protocol and the media together. Media over QUIC keeps those separate, so people can build new capabilities on top of it.”
Ian Nock said it was important to understand what people mean when
they talk about latency. “When I generally talk about
Siepe of streaming operations company Einbliq.io, and independent consultant and SCTE executive member Ian Nock, ably moderated by industry journalist Neil Howman. One of the biggest topics was latency, particularly for live sport, where viewers increasingly expect streaming services to match the immediacy of traditional broadcast television.
latency, I mean glass to glass – from the camera all the way to the screen you’re watching it on. That’s the latency that really matters. The rest is academic because that’s what the viewer actually experiences.” He added that latency has always existed, even during the analogue television era, but modern digital processing has made delays much more noticeable. The panel agreed that scalability itself is no longer the industry’s biggest technical problem.
Steve Strong said every streaming
technology involved compromises. “There are always multiple parameters. You can’t just make them all good. If you make one parameter good, another
Strong argued that today’s streaming protocols can serve huge audiences
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SEPTEMBER 2026 Volume 48 No.3
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