The BBC has found a clever way to make iPlayer streaming even better quality

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November 14, 2022 Business

The BBC regularly explores ways to improve its digital offerings, and iPlayer plays an essential role in how the corporation engages with its consumers. BBC iPlayer is one of the most popular and most-watched streaming platforms in UK. Binge-watchers get worried and look for ways to access BBC iPlayer somehow when they ever go abroad. The easiest and best way to enjoy the content of BBC iPlayer outside UK is to use a paid VPN service. You can access BBC iPlayer outside UK anywhere in the world.

Though iPlayer is excellent, there are likely better-quality video streaming facilities available. However, the BBC has figured out a smart method to enhance the performance of the iPlayer streaming.

The BBC has discovered a smart method to enhance the operation of iPlayer streaming

The BBC’s Research and development division, nevertheless, has now been testing out new technologies and it has concluded that it is possible to produce video streams of even better quality. The testing took place digitally rather than on a smart TV and featured a revolutionary 1080p50 live stream, which is high Definition and 50 frames /second. This technology is appropriate for sporting events, where both frame rate and clarity are significant.

The BBC wants its online streamed audience members to have a positive perceptual experience, ideally, the best hearing and watching experience possible given their internet speed constraints.

A wide range of video qualities, such as low definition & frame rate (mandating just a tiny amount of web data transmission to deliver) to high definition & frame rate, was indeed offered to players for every software system within the so-called “adaptive bitrate streaming” modes, such as HLS and MPEG DASH, that were employed to transfer most of their content online (needing higher bandwidth to transmit).

To deliver the finest experience with the internet access present at the time, a player streaming programming can actively switch among different video resolutions as it streams.

An advantage of using these adaptive bitrate codecs is that, whenever fast broadband connections get more available, BBC will increase the range of video quality standards that are made available to spectators of their programs to include high-resolution content. This would lead to a more satisfying visual experience for people who have quick broadband internet and even the tools needed to decode and broadcast a high version.

However, not all consumers do have speedy and consistent internet service. Furthermore, not everybody has the necessary tools to access the content at frame rates and high resolution.

When introducing an elevated video version or “representation” to BBC program broadcasts will surely be predicted to enhance the quality of the session for people with high-speed internet connections (& sufficient decryption devices), what about individuals whose broadband is only infrequently enough to broadcast the new greater-quality content? Would players be sophisticated enough to utilize the new video encoding if there is sufficient connection accessible, avoiding using all data available & stuttering if the connection falls?

One may presume that since they could not have exposure to it, a new representation will not impact how pleasant their experience is. But, is it a valid assumption?

While viewing a live stream with a range of resolutions up to a 720p50 HD representation, BBC evaluated how effectively an iPlayer made up of a dash.js technology behaved. After that, BBC contrasted it with the functionality of a similar player streaming the same video, however this time with the inclusion of the 1080p50 HD version.

It was conducted using a variety of bandwidth levels that reflect the range of connection speeds witnessed by BBC audiences, between high and stable to slow and inconsistent.

As one would guess, once 1080p50 video becomes available, broadband connections with wide bandwidth demonstrate an increase in the quality of the viewing experience since users can stream full HD with no stuttering.

Unfortunately, in cases in which the internet speed just rarely had a high capacity to broadcast the 1080p50 content, researchers noticed that the general experience can be weaker whenever the 1080p50 representation was offered than if it wasn’t. Occasionally, viewers were able to view the strong 1080p50 visual, but doing so was coupled by far more delaying, which seems to overshadow the perks of the rarely better visual quality.

The effect of introducing a 1080p50 representation upon quality, though, is the most unforeseen finding since the player was not given the option to select the representation due to inadequate internet bandwidth. As discussed previously, you might assume that in such a case, the absence or presence of 1080p50 video will have no significance.

However, it surely did: although the viewer never temporarily picked a 1080p50 representation, the mere existence of 1080p50 footage in the table of viable representations amounted to a lower experience quality than if it wasn’t.

Therefore, lower overall clip bitrate was the reason for the general quality decrease rather than additional pausing (which didn’t alter). In simple words, the player’s shifting selections were weaker than they were in the exclusion of 1080p50 representation.

The explanation of instability was identified after a little additional research within the dash.js code. It appears that selecting the best quality content representation leads dash.js to delay longer in the background by default than any other media representation. The addition of the 1080p50 representation means that the 720p50 representation, which had traditionally always been the best quality video representation, wasn’t anymore the greatest.

But, the issue meant that when the 1080p50 feed was present, this didn’t operate. The BBC was able to solve the problem by altering the settings. This allows the dissemination of a 1080p50 representation to all customers without disturbing some who favor lesser-quality versions. They were indeed able to improve the 720p representation after changing the setup.

Conclusion

The BBC must ensure that you experience the lowest amount of latency and the best quality content available if using iPlayer. The excellence of the BBC’s streaming platform is shown via activities like this test and reveals how involved the process is and helps BBC in elevating its streaming offerings.