YouView (formerly Project Canvas) is set to transform the daily viewing experience of UK television audiences and influence IPTV deployments globally when it launches in the early part of 2011. It will unlock a world of content and services, combining live channels with on-demand, bringing web-based services and interactive extras to the living room TV. Anthony Rose explains how YouView is creating the right environment for Connected TV to thrive in the UK and beyond.

Adaptive bitrate encoding methods are gaining traction in the industry as Apple, Adobe and Microsoft have all recently started offering new ways to encode and deliver video, including via HTTP. Find out what that means for the average content owner who is trying to figure out the best way to improve the viewing experience, and get guidance on best practices, cost and overhead considerations, and real impact to users and the bottom line.

2010 represents a watershed for European online video, with the majority of internet users now watching it regularly. Consumer product strategists looking to use video to engage an audience must understand and respond to the key dynamics and trends shaping the market, including the confluence of video with social media and the mainstream integration of video into consumer-facing websites. In a rapidly evolving and crowded marketplace, ‘me-too’ video sites and services will struggle, especially in terms of what will be the key imperative – monetisation.

The last 12 months have been very eventful for the Flash platform. From developments around the iPhone and iPad to the availability of HTTPstreaming, from better DRM features to peer-to-peer capabilities, there's a lot to catch up on. This session will also touch on the imminent release of Flash Media Server 4, with its support for UDP-based streaming over RTMFP.

With the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre focusing on video applications, is portable streaming finally getting ready for prime time? How is the streaming industry developing and repurposing content for mobile streaming, and what will the business models look like? What will drive the adoption of mobile internet usage, and what are consumers willing to pay? Come and hear what opportunities exist today for content owners and operators, as well as how the business of mobile video will change in the future.

Lecture and presentation capture and delivery is changing rapidly, and this session answers key questions about how to best utilise the latest technologies: what do viewers want? What do administrators need? How should archives be managed? Bring your own questions to get the most out of this panel discussion.

This session uses client case studies to explain how video data analytics is supporting media companies, marketers and sports businesses seeking to exploit the commercial potential of online video. Analytics play a crucial role as clients seek answers to questions such as “Is my video strategy working?”,“Is my content truly engaging?” and “Am I optimising my advertising placements?”

This session will cover new Silverlight frameworks and tools that enable you to easily create players, integrate with data streams and third party providers, and manage video assets in a production environment. We’ll also be showcasing two brand-new frameworks that enable new immersive experiences not previously seen for online media.

Control of the media is shifting away from the domain of the media and telecommunication companies towards a more open communication platform. At the same time, communication patterns are shifting from one-to-one conversations and traditional broadcasting to many-to-many, collaborative communications – sharing videos, photos and other multimedia contents. The combined effect of these trends is redefining the competitive landscape, giving rise to new business models, and this session will address the challenges of the changing landscape in the years ahead.

Rocketing consumer expectations mean that digitised assets need failsafe distribution infrastructures. The partnership between data centres, carriers and connectivity services is vital in closing the gap between the producer's impulse to create and the subscriber’s impulse to consume. Robust networks and managed services that offer both flexibility and scalability are now invaluable links in the rich media supply chain.

Video remains one of the fastest-growing opportunities online and among the most compelling advertising formats for organisations of all sizes. Monetisation strategies around online video have seen many changes over the past several years, but a true business model for driving ad revenue still remains elusive for many digital media companies. Will 2010 be the year this changes or will it take longer? Join industry visionaries as they discuss this question and examine trends in video monetisation, and what to expect in the future – from mobile advertising to connected TVs and the impact of HTML5.

Join us for an informal drinks get-together in Streaming Media’s Expo from 17:00 on Thursday 14 October to meet your industry peers from around the world and find out the winners of the annual Streaming Media European Readers’ Choice Awards. Voted for by you, the finalists will be available at: www.streamingmediaglobal.com/ReadersChoiceEurope from early September.

Broadcasting is evolving from one screen to many, offering not just greater access on a multitude of devices but also greater personalisation and interactivity for the consumer. As the much talked-about convergence finally takes place, it’s changing the definitions of media – what is a TV programme? A magazine? A newspaper? This will create new value chains and new logistics providers, and it will be an ecosystem where partnerships are essential, where technology simplification, creating an outstanding user experience and customer interaction and involvement, are the important elements of success.

Live, linear video has come a long way from its early days of postagestamp sizes and frequent buffering. Recent technology arrivals and techniques like adaptive bitrate are paving the path for richer experiences and delivery to new screens. From Apple to Adobe to Microsoft, new ways to encode and deliver video using HTTP are helping to improve the viewing experience. In this session, you’ll hear directly from some of the platform providers and content owners themselves to see how this technology is impacting their content offerings and plans. We’ll also get their guidance on best practices, cost and overhead considerations and real impact to their users – and the bottom line.

The European CDN market is quite different from the US CDN market, with more of an emphasis on Quality of Service than on pricing. This panel discussion will break down the European market by the numbers, as well as examine cultural, market and technological differences among the various regions within Europe. Finally, panellists will discuss the varying services – CDNs, hosting providers and streaming providers – and how they fit into these regional differences.

While a number of vendors offer video publishing platforms, the features and functionality – not to mention cost – vary widely. Some vendors focus their solutions on content management and monetisation, while others are geared towards enabling syndication and interactive advertising campaigns. Adding to the confusion is the fact that different platform vendors have different metrics for billing and costs rise as content owners become more successful. This session lays the groundwork for content owners to better understand what type of publishing platform they need and what they should expect to pay for managing content.

Catch-up services like the BBC iPlayer and 4oD, as well as initiatives in Spain, France and Germany, are showing that savvy audiences are turning to their computers for entertainment, and in a way that can be profitable. How are traditional and cutting-edge companies capitalising on this trend? In addition to providing the content, how are they taking advantage of this ‘connected’ platform as they deliver content?

As video becomes increasingly important on the web, content providers, browser developers and end users can no longer afford to have the primary video delivery mechanisms locked up in standards that cannot be adapted to new environments. This is especially true for emerging trends such as mobile video and cross-device video technologies. HTML5 Video might be the answer, and we’ll discuss what it is, the challenges it’s facing, and how it affects other formats such as Flash and Silverlight, as well as how leading platforms and web giants such as Google, Mozilla, and Apple are supporting it.

Connected TV is a UK initiative to bring together ‘traditional’ broadcast digital television and the internet to deliver new services, applications, and programming (both linear and on-demand). This session addresses key questions surrounding the project: what is the technology behind Connected TV? What services will Connected TV enable? How will Connected TV affect our media consumption? What does Connected TV mean for content producers and rights holders? What are the business models for Connected TV? Where is the money coming from?

With the arrival of ‘video everywhere’ and increasing online video viewership, what role does search need to play to make it easier for consumers to find what they want to watch? Indexing and chapterising video to make it easily searchable can make the content much more valuable and effective, but that alone won’t increase consumption. With the recent improvements in search technology and advances in video recommendation, video searching is quickly becoming crucial to today’s content economy. Learn how some of today’s search services work and what’s being developed to make them even better.

Entertainment companies and content owners in particular have faced arguably the biggest challenge they have ever had with the emergence of online video content and the empowerment of consumers to get video content on any device, anywhere, anytime. Fragmentation of the audience, traditional revenue model disruption and the increasing cost and complexity of technology have left many content owners wondering how they will succeed in this digital world. This presentation looks at community-driven entertainment that empowers content owners to  take control of their content and brands to create new, more immersive and engaging online entertainment experiences for their global audiences.

The ability to produce and distribute high-quality video for both internal and external consumption is rapidly becoming a priority for companies everywhere. Companies can craft compelling video webinars to market their goods and services to consumers around the world, on a multitude of  devices. This presentation will explore the technology that’s needed to make this happen, and provide success stories from companies who’ve made online video work for them.

Luxembourg for ICT and the Dutch Media Hub are shining examples of the intersection of government, business and technology. Both organisations are working to attract online video and other digital media initiatives to the European market, but each one is taking a notably distinct approach. Come and hear both of them discuss their organisations and the opportunities and challenges that face digital media businesses looking to get into – or expand their current reach in – the European market.