Comcast opens new chapter in sports viewing with server-side-enabled Multiview
US cable giant Comcast has introduced a server-side Multiview solution that allows live sports TV viewers to watch up to four games at the same time, alongside each other on the same screen, without requiring any changes to existing devices.
This innovation is already live and was used recently with the National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s and women’s basketball tournament. Multiview sport is now part of the Xfinity X1 television experience for millions of Comcast customers.
Consumers are offered a selection of games that can be shown together, so a viewer could decide to watch games one, two, three and four alongside each other or a different selection showing, for example, games two, three, five and six. Having made that choice, the viewer can toggle between the on-screen games using their remote control, with the audio feed switching to whichever game they have selected.
The viewer can also jump to full-screen mode for the game they are currently listening to.
To power this solution, Comcast is using the MediaKind MK.IO cloud SaaS platform that offers a Multiview capability in partnership with Skreens Technology, which provides the compositing know-how to create the Multiview format. This technology combination has been deployed with other TV service providers, but Comcast is the first publicly announced commercial launch.
Cory Zachman (pictured, left), chief technology officer at MediaKind, explains that if there are four games offered together in Multiview mode, the four live video feeds are ingested into the cloud-processing workflow, decoded and then composited (using GPUs in the cloud) into a single new video stream that now contains four separate games. This single stream is then re-encoded using the standard video processing workflow, then sent to homes.
The four audio feeds maintain their independence, so the final output allows the user to change audio tracks while watching the same Multiview collection. One of the technological challenges is to ensure the video and audio stay perfectly aligned during processing.
For the receive device, there is no difference to playing a normal video feed. If a set-top box or TV can decode a standard video stream, it can display this Multiview offer. As Christopher Wilson, head of marketing at MediaKind, notes: “Because the processing happens server-side, you can provide a very modern experience on even old device technologies.”
Zachman adds: “Client-side solutions for Multiview are more complex and require devices capable of client-side manipulation.”
Any service provider using the Multiview solution decides how many games are shown on a single-screen view. Typical configurations are three equally sized views, two equally sized views, four equally sized views, one large view alongside two smaller views or one large view alongside three smaller views.
The background that surrounds the different Multiview feeds could include sponsor or advertising graphics.
Once the service provider has decided what the viewing template looks like, it also decides which game combinations are offered in each Multiview collection.
MK.IO is hosted on the Azure Media Cloud and makes use of cloud scalability and resilience, including geographic redundancy. Zachman notes that the MediaKind/Skreens approach uses cloud resource as required and so spins up the compositing instances for games and shuts them down straight afterwards — making it cost-efficient.
While sport is the obvious genre for Multiview experiences, this technology could also be applied to news or other major live events. And while Multiview is considered primarily a TV set experience, especially now giant widescreens mean even a four-game collection provides a good-sized picture per game, this technology can also be applied to tablets and mobile phones.
The Multiview feature at Comcast is being branded Xfinity Multiview on X1. Zachman says: “We are seeing first hand how scalable, personalised live viewing is transforming audience engagement.”
According to Marc Todd (pictured, left), CEO and co-founder of Skreens: “The future of live sports experiences is here for fans interested in fantasy sports, sports wagering or simply wanting to follow multiple games at once.
“Viewers can track events concurrently, creating a truly unique and personalised way for them to experience their favourite games like never before.”