IBM Video Streaming is the best in its class!
July 12, 2019

IBM Video Streaming is the best in its class!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Streaming Manager (Ustream Pro Broadcast)

Modules Used

  • Ustream eCDN (IBM Cloud Video Enterprise Content Delivery Network)

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Watson Media's Video Streaming

Our company produces a live-streaming broadcast for Las Vegas-based entertainers. It is critical we have no lags, disruption, or dropped content during the live productions. Doing live broadcast provides no margin of error as compared to on-demand or more traditional broadcasts.
We found Upstream after we had an unsuccessful experience with many of the other well-known streaming services.
  • We were two hours away from our first live broadcast when our streaming service failed. We contacted IBM and the show went on as scheduled.
  • We went from initial contact with IBM to live streaming in less than two hours, no problems.
  • If reliability is critical then there is only one choice, the IBM Watson Media service.
  • If budget is important then IBM Watson proved to more cost-effective than services advertising lower initial cost.
  • While we set it up in less than two hours we did need to do some trial and error through the first show.
  • The documentation provided is technical and complete which requires time to figure out all the options available for the user. Being more concise would be better.
  • It would be nice to have a simpler process for creating passcodes for viewers to select a show and pay for those shows without us having to generate codes each time.
Our clients expect our service to support from 100 to 1000 concurrent viewers for any given show and the IBM Video Streaming service did not disappoint on any show. We could not offer our service with any other stream solution we looked at due to their limitations. The IBM service did not limit us to a specific number of viewers.
Being in Vegas, we have hundreds of entertainers who want to reach their fans and increase their exposure beyond Las Vegas so in one show we had the original case of Chippendales (male dance review) put on a special show for select fans including a live question and answer session that was sold out in Europe. Without the IBM service this show would not have been possible.
Technically I can not speak to the SD-CDN layer but I can say we did not have any complaints from clients or viewers as to the quality or delivery of any show. Since the purpose of the technology is to improve delivery we have no reason to question its effectiveness since we did not have any problems.
The metrics were critical to providing feedback to our clients on how their shows were viewed. We followed the metrics in real time and in one show we adjusted the live performance to be more engaging with international and regional viewers. This would not have been possible without the detailed information we were getting in real time. It was as close to having a live studio audience as you could possibly have without people in the studio.
We did not use closed captioning since our shows were live entertainment and the acts spoke for themselves.
It is perfect for live and on-demand video streaming where customers expect excellent results. If someone only needs to stream a meeting of Youtube style videos it is overkill, but this doesn't mean it does not work, it is just a waste of the capabilities of the IBM video service. For individual gamers who want to stream it is also massive overkill but if they want the best service available this is the one.

IBM Video Streaming Feature Ratings

Lead generation
7
Video personalization
9
eCommerce
Not Rated
Support for advertisements
9
Video SEO
9
Video access controls
9
User management
7
Video link sharing
9
Internal video
9
External video
9
Player customization
8
Embedded videos
9
Video quality / Bandwidth controls
10
Mobile compatibility
8
Streaming quality reports
9
Per viewer tracking
9
Per video tracking
9
Video analytics dashboard
9
On-Demand video
10
Live streaming
10
Impact of streaming on network
9
Video upload & format support
10
Video library / File management
9
Video portal
9
Audience polling
9
Audience Q&A / Live chat
9
Video comments
9