For years distributors of video programming have been squeezed by rising programming costs on one side and consumers’ ability to pay for those ever-increasing costs. Services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have filled the void for some consumers looking for lower-cost alternatives. In the above interview, Jerry Weber, VP of Network Design of FARR Technologies, discusses an alternative that some of his clients are deploying whereby they provide a skinny package of local broadcast, off-air combined with over-the-top service.

Weber points out that a key technology development to make this work is adaptive bit rate streaming, which overcomes network bandwidth limitations and inconsistencies. The streams are unicast, so there is a potential network burden, compared to the multicast approach of IPTV; of course, operators are already having to support the unicast stream of over-the-top providers. As Weber wisely advises, the first step in creating such an offering is to secure content rights.

This post brought to you by FARR Technologies.