Las Vegas Reflections

EZDRM, along with the rest of our industry, wrapped up another NAB show last week. As long-time attendees, we were reflecting on the experience of NAB 2024 as the bright lights of Las Vegas faded into the night one more time.

NAB 2024 was a event that definitely illustrated both the success and the challenges of today's video industry. The bad case of economic pessimism in 2023 has definitely passed, and projects are moving forward again. That's positive news for the team at EZDRM, where the DRM as a service model has become a must-have for both content owners and distributors. Security has become top of mind for a lot of companies, and most are adopting a a buy vs. build mentality, which keeps the team very busy.

On the other hand, the NAB event itself is, in some ways, a shadow of its prior self. Official attendance numbers are put at 61,000, but that falls far short of the frothy times in 2016/2017 when the peak attendance was well past 100,000. Major exhibitors of the past have now adopted a "suite only" presence - which is definitely felt on the show floor. And the awkward split hall arrangement discourages shared traffic between the pillar show themes set up by the NAB.

Although almost all pre-show press announcements felt obliged to add overtones of AI transformation into their positioning, the realistic impact of the technology seemed to be the maturing of the existing techniques for adding services value - better ad marker positioning, improving news highlight editing, more intelligent consumer content search features, and so on.

The overall EZDRM team experience was distinctly positive, confirming our strong inclination towards a solutions perspective and major partner pre-integrations that reduce risk and timeframes for new service deployments.

On the expanded booth presence, the team was pleased to showcase expanded solutions that included:

Tiledmedia Mosaic Multiview enabling multiple secure video streams to simultaneously play on one screen, with users able to fully customize their own screen layout for the most engaging and immersive viewing experience.

Videon Edgecaster bringing cloud functionality on-premises with LiveEdge ultra-low latency streaming, reducing operational costs, and improving reliability.

Custos video watermarking integration and infringement detection, featuring crypto incentives to agents who detect illicit content sources.

Ateme support for unified CDN distribution of OTT mezzanine video content using DRM protection.

Around the show floor, we wanted to highlight EZDRM participation in the conference panel session "Unleashing the Thrill: Live Sports Experiences", sponsored by Women in Streaming Media. This is an incredibly successful and impactful networking organization of well over a thousand members devoted to increasing diversity, and providing more visibility to women leaders within the streaming media industry.  Their impact is emphasized through forums, events, and a mentorship program.

Five executive trailblazers in the streaming video space, including EZDRM COO, Olga Kornienko, took a whirlwind tour around the topic of heightening engagement. They touched on the transformative potential of AI and other technology in revolutionizing fandom, and addressed the persistent challenges of security, latency, and operational efficiency faced by live sports streaming providers.

More broadly, we continue to be encouraged by positive warm embrace that  EZDRM received from the partners at the various socialization events where we participated. Our differentiation might well be our emphasis on working with all those who add their specific value in the technical and commercial ecosystem.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event!