European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Recommends P2P Streaming

In 2006, the EBU decided to do an in-deep investigation of the available P2P solutions.
In the newly published final report, the technical department of the EBU concludes that Octoshape's solution is 'scalable, reliable (and) easy to manage'.
In 2006, the technical department of the EBU set up a project to investigate P2P streaming by summarising member experiences, hold conferences and conduct trials. EBU is the largest broadcaster organisation in the world with more than 100 members, including e.g. BBC, reaching an audience of 650 million people weekly.
In addition to solving the scalability and cost problem, Octoshape's unique solution also increases quality, as it eliminates buffering and plays instantly all the while using multiple point fail over systems and source signal stabilisation technology.
"We are exceptionally surprised by the high session duration for the stream that further indicated a very high quality streaming experience without any interruptions," said Assad Bagharib, Senior Vice-President of Mediacorp Technologies having used the Octoshape solution to stream the Olympics in HD (2.5 mbps).
The main motivation for the investigation was the high cost of content delivery and the wish to deliver high quality streaming to large audiences. The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), the largest non-sporting event in Europe, was hosted by a traditional CDN supplier in 2005.
One of the major problems found with that solution was the high cost, which was explicitly mentioned in that year's report. As o 2006, Octoshape has powered the webcasts from the ESC to a larger audiences (millions) than ever reached with traditional solutions.
Nicoletta Iacobacci, Head of Eurovision TV Interactive, said: "With the Octoshape (p2p) solution we are able to make our members content accessible to a large international audience on a low cost basis."
Based on the positive experience from ESC and many P2P trials conducted by EBU members, the EBU decided to make a public test with Octoshape in 2008.
The EBU created the 'EBU P2P media portal' (EBUP2P) on which they aggregated audio and video content from 10 of its member broadcasters. In addition, members were encourage to submit their overall requirements to new streaming solutions. These requirements included support for multiple operating systems (Windows, MAC, Linux), all common browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari), various codecs, support for advertising, geo-restriction, stability, reliability etc...
Background information on the trial and the experiences gathered has been summarised in the newly published EBU Technical Review 2008-3, 'Technical Trial of the EBU P2P Media Portal'. by Franc Kozamernik, Senior Engineer at the EBU and secretary of the EBU P2P investigation group.
The report concludes that all requirements were successfully met. The report stated: "The main conclusion of the trial is that Octoshape is an excellent internet distribution system for carrying audio and video streams to PC users. The system is scalable, reliable, easy to manage and interoperable with a number of codecs, operating systems, browsers and geolocation systems."
(KMcA)