Synamedia upgrades to SVG Europe Gold as it fights against OTT piracy

The inexorable rise of piracy within the over the top (OTT) sports broadcasting world has led Synamedia to move up to Gold Sponsorship of SVG Europe. The company is upgrading in order to help “tackle the scourge of streaming piracy” through access to the association’s professional community.

Jean-Marc Racine, chief product officer at Synamedia, explained: “Sports video professionals, service providers and technology leaders need to collaborate to continually improve the sports viewing experience and tackle the scourge of streaming piracy. SVG Europe’s professional community is the ideal forum to ensure we’re all on the ball and listening and learning from each other.”

Racine went on: “OTT streaming changes the rules on how sports fans consume premium live content. It brings with it myriad technical challenges to reach the ultimate goal of synchronised latency and quality between broadcast and IP streams.

“We have made it our goal to be at the forefront of innovation to drive down latency,” continued Racine. “We’re uniquely positioned with our end to end video network solutions because we can optimise every part of the chain to support minimal delay. After all, there’s no point in having a low latency encoder if the CDN isn’t also optimised for low delay. From the encoding to the CDN through to the player, we can synchronise the OTT delivery pipeline with broadcast TV and help customers deliver sports content to a whole host of devices with broadcast-equivalent quality and latency.”

Racine added that while having the right video network technologies in place is one important aspect of sports broadcasting OTT, another is combating the inexorable rise in streaming piracy that threatens to decimate revenues.

He explained: “Security is in Synamedia’s DNA and we continue to invest heavily in this area.  Our award-winning Credentials Sharing Insight helps sports streaming providers fight the rapid rise of fraudulent password sharing by illegal, for-profit operators.

“To stay ahead of the pirates, we need to think like they do, know how they work, and move even faster than they will. We provide the technology to stay on top of pirate activity, combined with intelligence from our Operational Security (OpSec) team to see where they’ll go next. Our expertise in both video and cyber security can help defeat piracy and ensure a healthy and viable streaming marketplace. Our work in this area over the past six months for high profile customers has resulted in a considerable number of pirate networks being taken down.”

Racine concluded: “Security is not just about detecting and shutting down fraudulent, large scale, for-profit piracy but also enabling real-time response during the event and giving sports service providers the insight to pursue legal action.”