ITVX UK Streaming Service to Adopt New Edge Video Delivery Network
Broadcaster ITV has announced that they’ve selected MainStreaming’s edge video delivery network to help power their ITVX streaming platform and app, which is mostly said to be down to its ability to integrate deeply within broadband and mobile networks, strengthened by its recent strategic partnership with telecoms giant BT (EE).
The change will see ITV add MainStreaming to its multi-CDN (Content Delivery Network) strategy, which they hope will deliver a more controllable approach to video delivery that enables “greater visibility, optimisation and performance management at scale“.
The new platform will thus support the delivery of ITVX’s core catalogue, including flagship programmes, news and live content, while also leveraging its distributed Edge architecture to deliver high Quality of Experience (QoE) while optimising total cost of ownership (TCO).
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ITV also noted that BT customers, both via fixed broadband and EE’s mobile network, are said to make up a significant share of ITV’s audience. This is relevant because MainStreaming and BT last year agreed a key partnership, which supports BT’s adoption of MAUD (Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery) technology for live-streaming (here).
Mark Ison, Director of Engineering at ITV, said:
“ITVX is a strategic platform for ITV, and our delivery architecture needs to be ready not just for today, but for where streaming will be in the next ten years. MainStreaming’s video-first, capacity-based approach helps us enhance our platform as our expected demand evolves, and its proven ISP partnerships – including BT – give us confidence we can address quality, scalability and efficiency for a significant portion of our audience, while continuing to build on our already world-class streaming platform.”
The collaboration is said to reflect a shared commitment to continuously optimise streaming performance, which is certainly something that ITVX would benefit from.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Please god let this improve their sports coverage. If you miss the start of a game you are either forced to watch it live or go right back to the start of the programme including all of the pre match build up (and cant fast forward to kick off) or watch it a day later when they upload the whole thing and you already know the score. If ITVX had half the usability of iplayer I would be happy but its awful.
Why bother? They are about to be purchased by Sky/Comcast, subject to any CMA/Government intervention.
ITV Studios will remain as an independent production company, with Sky promising 5 years of Coronation Street. ITVx and Terrestrial ITV channels will be sold to Sky/Comcast. Incidentally Sky and NBC Universal will be spun out of Comcast within a year too.
Can you stream linear/live TV in ITVX app for AndroidTV or not?
Yes. At least I can on my Google TV streamer. Only 25fps quality though, which ruins live sport.
If this improves the quality of live streams to support the likes of 50fps when the stream is encoded as such, then good. Sadly – i don’t see ITV doing that because they’ve never been one for quality – its always bottom of the bin levels!
If they can up the image quality of anything on ITV X at the same time, that would be great. It’s by far got the lowest quality of all.
Will my and blocker still work. That’s all I care about.