Three trends in digital multimedia for 2017

John Bishop, Chief Technology Officer for Multimedia at Akamai Technologies, shares his predictions for the media industry in 2017.

One of the great gurus of the industry, John Bishop, CTO for multimedia at Akamai, wanted to share his predictions regarding the media industry for 2017.

In his opinion, we will continue to see a trend towards more online video that will be viewed on larger screens at home, which has traditionally been the territory of cable and satellite video services. This is due to the continued evolution and spread of Smart TVs and greater penetration of digital media platforms such as Apple TV and Roku, but more importantly, it is due to continued improvements in the connectivity and protocols required to support the higher bitrates necessary for a higher quality experience on these new devices. This will contribute to greater engagement, where we have seen an increase in viewing time in correlation with screen size, from phones, to tablets, computers and finally home screens.

Bishop also highlights that broadcasters will do more experiments with delivering virtual reality content, particularly around live events. Although Akamai has helped deliver about two or three virtual reality events per month during 2016, we hope to reach about 10 per month in 2017. We are still in the early days of virtual reality but the interest is there and the necessary technology and infrastructure continues to improve.

Finally, expect streaming of much more 4k and HDR content to increase in 2017. 4k has become more common in 2016 but it's still early days. This past Christmas, homes have been filled with new 4k displays, 4k-ready gaming consoles as well as more dedicated 4k-ready media platforms that are driving demand for content and will make consumers happy with their investment. The majority of this content will continue to be in the on-demand category, but we will also see more live events delivered in 4k streaming over the Internet.