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The BBC’s Research & Development division has extended the testing period and increased the number of devices able to take part in their beta trial of “low latency streaming” on their iPlayer service. This aims to reduce the delay on live TV shows/events that exists between terrestrial broadcasts and streamed content.
The delay on iPlayer, which partly occurs due to all the extra processing and connectivity that’s needed to stream a live broadcast, has reduced significantly in recent times but is still around 40 seconds, though it is not the same for all viewers. Many streaming services today have similar delays. By comparison, the BBC’s broadcast services deliver an end-to-end delay of around just 8-10 seconds.
The new testing phase will allow the BBC to measure more precisely how well low latency streaming performs outside of their lab and in people’s homes, across different networks and conditions. “It’ll also help us to understand what it takes to deliver live content online as fast and reliably as broadcast,” said the BBC earlier this week (here).
Melissa Darragh, Senior R&D Engineer at the BBC, said:
“As of this week, we’re entering a new phase designed to broaden device support and extend the hours of operation. This is so we can reach more reliable conclusions about how low latency streams behave in the home, at scale. This will also increase participation from homes with different internet service providers, Wi-Fi setups, and network stress patterns. Low latency puts the player closer to the ‘edge’ of what the network can support; so, diversity in real-world conditions really matters.
Extending when the trial is available lets us capture performance through different live moments such as sports, music, or breaking news, as well as across weekdays and weekends. This will result in a larger and richer dataset, which will allow us to measure smaller differences in performance.
Working with the teams responsible for our TV iPlayer product, we have once again arranged for a low latency stream to be available via iPlayer beta.”
The table of supported devices now includes a couple of Amazon Fire TV Sticks, BT’s TV Box Pro, the Sky Glass Gen 1 TV(s) and various TV models from Bush, Sony and Toshiba. But the BBC acknowledges that this is still very much a work-in-progress trial and “more work is needed before we could deliver a fully resilient fault tolerant low latency stream at the scale needed for a major sporting event.”
Anybody who wants to give this a go on a supported device merely needs to switch-on iPlayer Beta in the settings and watch BBC Two live – the trial stream is currently available from 8am – 10pm BST for viewers who have set their location to England or Scotland. It is expected to run for around a month. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this development.