NAB 2023: Telstra Broadcast Services, Dalet and Eluvio unveil end-to-end video service and Web3 content distribution solution

Telstra, Dalet and content blockchain pioneer Eluvio have announced a strategic integration to serve OTT providers, broadcasters, content owners and creators, and other media and entertainment companies around the globe.

Designed to address the inefficiencies and unnecessary costs of conventional video delivery, the companies have unveiled a new end-to-end media supply chain network and managed service, from the camera lens to the consumer.

It enables simplified, cost-efficient and just-in-time video distribution from the source (stream or file), without making file copies – and without the use of costly third-party cloud storage, transcoding, OVP, or CDN providers.

Its built-in Web3 CDN capability enables secure, ultra-low latency, high-quality 4K video delivery for content creators and owners to support live and on-demand entertainment experiences and new monetisation opportunities.

“Today, we’re making a bold leap forward into the future of video management and delivery for our customers around the world,” said Andreas Eriksson, head of Telstra Broadcast Services. “By integrating our connectivity and Master Control solutions with the Dalet Flex media asset management (MAM) platform and leveraging Eluvio’s blockchain Content Fabric, we are delivering a unique and comprehensive solution that addresses our customers’ need for greater control, efficiency, security, and monetisation of their content.We’re excited to bring this new capability to market at a time when so many companies are rethinking their approach to premium video.”

“This partnership is a game-changer for the media and entertainment industry, empowering our joint customers to manage their content with much greater efficiency and transparency across the entire supplychain,” said Ewan Johnston, director of channel and strategic alliances at Dalet. “We’re excited to extend our partnership with Telstra Broadcast Services and partner with Eluvio, two of the world’s technological pioneers, who share our commitment to innovation, collaboration and customer success.”

“Many of today’s premium video providers are in a bind,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio. “They are under competing pressures to reduce costs, improve efficiency, improve quality, createnew services, and generate new revenue sources, but are hampered by the capabilities of their outdated video production technology and content distribution stacks. The Content Fabric is a content-native, real-time decentralised protocol that helps address all of those needs at once. Together with Telstra Broadcast Services and Dalet, we’ve created an end-to-end go-to-market solution to help content creators and ownersradically streamline the economics of their entire media distribution workflow.”

Prior to commercial launch, Telstra, Dalet, and Eluvio conducted numerous technical trials, including a significant proof of concept with a major live sporting event that took place in Australia with playback to fans in the United States. The challenge was to create a pop-up live OTT channel in just 72 hours, from the time of agreement to execution. The companies used the new video supply chain from the broadcast master control room to the consumer screen – without the use of any third-party video encoders, Web2 public clouds or CDNs.

Notably, during the live broadcast, there were only a few milliseconds of latency from the source feed to the Sydney Fabric nodes, and the Fabric protocol delivered the live client streaming playout around the globe 18 seconds faster than the host’s own broadcast TV channel. The stream was encrypted with the content owner’s blockchain private keys and real-time re-encrypted with strong DRM to the end user.

The new solution will be sold by Telstra Broadcast Services and Dalet, while utilising Eluvio’s Content Blockchain. It was designed to deliver several key benefits to customers, including simplified media supply chain and cost-efficiency. The new solution was designed to reduce content preparation time, remove infrastructure cost, reduce IP transit cost, enable automated video processing, and provide robust low-latency, high-quality video delivery via Eluvio’s decentralised Web3 CDN capabilities.

The network enables new opportunities for direct-to-consumer (D2C) OTT livestreams; live event, ticketing and stream access using blockchain smart contracts/utility NFTs; support for AVOD, SVOD, FAST and OTT channels; monetisation of archival libraries; creation of Web3 digital collectables and interactive multimedia/video NFTs; custom digital marketplaces; multi-party royalties backed by blockchain smart contracts; and more.

It also offers enhanced security and reduced risk of piracy, eliminating fakes by providing provable, gated and immutable access to premium content with DRM. It also prevents access to REST files based on source material or storage locations.

The solution is said to provide a breakthrough in carbon-footprint efficiency, both in the ways it manages media and uses blockchain technology. Depending on the implementation, the Content Fabric Protocol is said to yield up to a 50x carbon reduction compared to traditional approaches. Through its novel, compositional and just-in-time protocol, it does not make digital file copies and significantly reduces the network storage and usage requirements as compared to traditional streaming and content distribution systems. It also uses an eco-friendly ‘proof-of-authority’ consensus, which avoids the high energy consumption used in computational ‘proof-of-work’ blockchains.

As part of this joint solution, Telstra Broadcast Services provides the live video capture and production capabilities, playout automation, Master Control solutions, global IP connectivity, and the overall customer experience and customer support services. Telstra is also a node provider in the Content Fabric blockchain network contributing host compute, IP transit and block validation.

Dalet provides the on-premises and off-premises MAM platform, and tools for editors or producers to find content, edit and craft final production files. Once in Dalet’s MAM, the video files and associated metadata are directly published into the Eluvio Content Fabric.

The Eluvio Content Fabric serves as the utility blockchain network for owner-controlled storage, distribution and monetisation of video, music and other digital content. It provides live and file-based content publishing, transcoding, packaging, sequencing, dynamic and static distribution, and minting of derivative NFTs for all ranges of content experiences. Output media is built just-in-time via the Fabric’s programmable software engine.

This enables live, linear, on-demand or hybrid channel combinations to be served from the same source without pre-generating or distributing any files or versions across the network or storage facilities – saving distribution time, resources and costs. In-network transport and transcoding are coupled with a novel representation and distribution of media that avoids all ‘copying’ of file versions. This AV pipeline transcodes, packages and delivers, via a Web3 CDN capability, live and on-demand video, and intelligently routes content in the overlay network for the highest quality client experience. Every media asset is then backed by a built-in blockchain contract which controls access to the content.

This means all authorisations and accounting of a content’s life cycle – from audience reporting to rights management to version history – are realisable directly in the Eluvio Content Fabric, recorded in its ledger, provable and tamper free. All types of dynamic advertising, interactive experiences and programming possibilities can be created using loadable code and blockchain contracts. Metadata and runnable code stored with the video/asset are read and bound to the output content on demand, at the time of the request through a native WASM just-in-time execution sandbox. This creates the ultimate flexibility for programming and availability windows, which can be updated without remaking or redistributing any new versions.