Transcasting and multicast adaptive bit rate streaming are set to generate product revenues of $852.2 million per year by 2023, according to Rethink Technology Research.
The firm defines transcasting as sending an ABR OTT video stream through an existing multicast network to reach larger audiences simultaneously. It said the market for that streaming technology will take off in 2018, with particular interest in Europe while the U.S. hesitates and Asia-Pacific runs a full two years behind.
Rethink said multicast ABR is gaining steam as live content such as major sporting events increasingly goes direct to consumers and requires “linear concurrency” in the delivered product.
“The technology relies on making changes to the manifest of existing unicast ABR feed and turning them into something ready to be distributed through existing multicast router networks. A handful of businesses—notably Comcast, and two major French operators—have been using this in stealth for a while now,” Rethink said.
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Since multicast streams have to be turned back into ABR streams for consumption—which is done either at the network edge, just before the home or in the home gateway—Rethink said the market winners will be those that can offer software across a different home gateway types.
The firm noted that Eutelsat announced a similar method of transmission, using DTH broadcast instead of routed multicast streams.
Ultimately, once multicast ABR gains wider adoption, Rethink said it will reduce live traffic on content delivery networks and therefore reduce operator delivery fees to CDNs. The firms said multicast ABR will also make it easy to reach 4 million or 5 million viewers simultaneously, allow operators to consolidate head ends and cut software costs, fit in with cloud-based video ecosystems, enable programmatic advertising on all forms of video, and facilitate new esports, sports and live music business models.