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One copy crosses the backbone.
SmartCast sends one copy of the programme across the long-distance network and replicates it hop by hop. Add another ten thousand viewers and the long-distance part carries no extra traffic at all. It works over the ordinary internet, with no cooperation needed from telecoms companies.
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It fans out only near the audience.
The stream arrives close to where the audience is, and only there does it fan out, at roughly 1,000 viewers per endnode at 5 Mbps. The master hands each player its own playlist and points it to the nearest endnode; the video flows from the endnode.
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The last mile stays exactly as it was.
The last stretch, from the local point to each individual screen, still happens exactly as before. Every viewer still receives their own copy of the picture. And every endnode reports the join and the leave, so the count comes from the delivery path itself.
Ten thousand viewers, ten thousand copies of the same stream. We send one.
The internet was never built to send the same live programme to a lot of people at once. It was built to send one thing to one person. So when a broadcaster streams live today, the delivery network sends a separate, private copy to every single viewer: ten thousand viewers means ten thousand copies going out.
SmartCast sends one copy of the programme across the long-distance network. It arrives close to where the audience is, and only there does it fan out to individual viewers. Add another ten thousand viewers and the long-distance part carries no extra traffic at all. It works over the ordinary internet, with no cooperation needed from telecoms companies.
How the stream travels
Viewcast delivers live video over Smart PTMP, point-to-multipoint delivery for the public internet. One copy of the programme crosses the long-distance network and fans out only where the audience is, so the delivery bill stops climbing with the audience.
1,00010,000,000
- Copies crossing the backbone
- Viewers
- Endnodes serving
at roughly 1,000 viewers per endnode at 5 Mbps
The more successful the programme, the bigger the bill. That is the problem we remove.
Live streaming has a strange economics problem: the more successful your programme is, the more money it costs you. A hit show is a bigger bill. Broadcasters are now at the point where the delivery bill is eating the margin on the very shows that are working.
Customers typically save 30% or more on what they currently pay their delivery network, and the saving grows as the audience grows. We price against what the equivalent unicast delivery would cost you, so the bigger your peaks, the wider the gap.
Schematic. Not a quotation; your saving depends on your peaks.
Glossary
- Smart PTMP
- Point-to-multipoint delivery for the public internet: one copy of a live stream crosses the long-distance network and fans out near the viewer, with no cooperation needed from telecoms companies.
- SmartCast
- Viewcast’s delivery layer built on Smart PTMP: origin to global masters to regional masters to endnodes to viewers.
- SmartPlay
- Viewcast’s platform for running TV channels online, in one portal: playout from your own schedule, SmartCast to your viewers, legacy egress to partner platforms, ads chosen per viewer, and measurement.
- Regional master
- The node that receives the one copy for a region and feeds that region’s endnodes.
- Endnode
- The local point near the audience where the single stream fans out to individual viewers; roughly 1,000 viewers per endnode at 5 Mbps.
- Last mile
- The stretch from the endnode to each screen. Every viewer still receives their own copy of the picture; nothing changes there.
The questions we get asked
- Does the last mile change?
- No. The last stretch, from the local point to each individual screen, still happens exactly as before. Every viewer still receives their own copy of the picture. What changes is everything before that: the expensive, long-distance part.
- Do telecoms companies need to cooperate?
- No. SmartCast works over the ordinary internet, with no cooperation needed from telecoms companies.
- What happens when the audience grows?
- The long-distance part carries no extra traffic at all: one copy crosses it however large the audience gets. Only the fan-out near the viewers grows, at roughly 1,000 viewers per endnode at 5 Mbps.
- How much do customers save?
- Customers typically save 30% or more on what they currently pay their delivery network, and the saving grows as the audience grows. We price against what the equivalent unicast delivery would cost you, so the bigger your peaks, the wider the gap.
- How quickly can we start, and what if it does not work?
- We plug in as a transparent carve-out behind your existing playout and DRM, typically live in four to six weeks. If it does not perform, you flip the traffic back. That is the entire risk of trying it.
- Can we switch only our delivery layer and keep our playout and DRM?
- Yes. You can take SmartCast on its own: it is the delivery leg that changes, not your stack. Delivery is standards-based, to ordinary players: HLS, SRT and MPEG-TS output; no special client software is required. If it does not perform, you flip the traffic back.
- Does channel switching feel like television?
- Because the endnode already carries the stream, tuning in is not a cold fetch from a distant edge: channel switching is immediate, with no buffering on start.
- Who runs on it today?
- DanceTV, an independent company and a customer of eight years, runs nine channels around the clock to more than 140 countries on SmartCast, per internal analytics.
- What does a 24/7 live channel to 10,000 concurrent viewers cost a month?
- Delivering a channel that holds 10,000 concurrent viewers around the clock is the Launch tier: $12,000 a month at list price, with the traffic included and no overage, billed on the 95th percentile of concurrent viewers. What it costs sets that beside the same audience at public CDN list prices.