On Wednesday, Aug. 12, panelists from AWS, Paramount, Al Jazeera, and TAG Video Syystems will join Reality Software’s Nadine Krefetz for the Streaming Media Connect panel “Optimizing Live Streaming QoS and QoE.” From measuring and improving rebuffering, startup time, and bitrate quality to tying QoE metrics directly to retention, this panel focuses on quantifiable streaming metrics that matter, as well as harder-to-measure viewer satisfaction signals that define true QoS (quality of service) and QoE (quality of experience). Come for the real-world war stories from high-stakes live events, where every hiccup costs viewers and revenue, and stay for the real-time QoS/QoE Q&A with live streaming’s best and brightest.
Confirmed panelists include:
- Michael Demb, VP Product Strategy, TAG Video Systems
- Dilip Bharadwaj, Senior Live Streaming and OTT Engineer, Al Jazeera Media Network
- Nishant Sirohi, Director, Live Video, Paramount
- Stephanie Lone, Global Leader, Solutions Architecture, M&E, Games and Sports, Amazon Web Services
Register now for Streaming Media Connect!
Nadine Krefetz is a contributing editor for Streaming Media. She focuses on how technology will drive change in the media industry, writing on generative AI, adtech, and a wide range of cloud SaaS for delivering streaming. Her background is in software development, project management, journalism, and marketing consulting through her company, Reality Software. With this company, she helps media organization consistently and objectively evaluate technology choices, improve time to market, optimize budgets, and create better streaming services, as well as design new marketing strategies.
Michael Demb joined TAG Video Systems in 2022 as the VP of product strategy, where he is tasked with aligning the company’s product development roadmap and resources with customer needs and staying ahead of the rapid pace of technological advancements. Before joining TAG, Demb worked at Telestream, where he began as a service engineer and progressed to the role of director of solution architecture. Throughout his career, Demb has leveraged his extensive expertise in systems engineering, solution planning and delivery, field support, pre- and post-sales engineering, and product management to help his customers implement and integrate innovative solutions.
“Most of what we call a QoE problem is really a symptom,” Demb shares. “When a viewer sees a visual impairment on screen, the picture itself is rarely the cause; it can be a wrong buffer setting, upstream packet loss, or a degrading satellite signal. If you only measure at the screen, you know something is wrong, but not where or why. On this panel, I want to talk about connecting what the viewer experiences to the underlying cause, across the full path from contribution to playback, and how objective metrics and AI-driven analysis let you troubleshoot at that scale before the audience notices.”
Dilip Bharadwaj is senior streaming media architect and subject matter expert for live streaming and OTT ecosystem at Al Jazeera Media Network.
Nishant Sirohi, a seasoned media and entertainment technologist with more than 18 years of experience, is head of engineering operations with the central video tech group at Paramount. He manages the shared live streaming platform used by different brand outlets including Paramount+, PlutoTV, and CBS Sports that builds end-to-end pipelines with components from on-premise signal acquisition to in-cloud transcoding, packaging, protection, distribution, ads insertion, and delivery. One of the bigger recent projects he was involved in was Super Bowl LVIII. He holds a B.S. in electronics and communication engineering.
“The end user direct impact gets reflected in client side QOE metrics, which are heavily influenced by QOS on delivery. The one aspect that gets overlooked is QoS during content preparation,” Sirohi asserts. “Apart from regular QoS/QoE metrics like TTFB, CHR, VSF, and SPI, I would like to focus the discussion on QOS content preparation such as ingest bitrate stability, origin error, and throughput.”
Stephanie Lone joined AWS as global director of M&E solutions architecture in 2022 with more than 25 years of experience leading digital teams and transformation efforts in various roles at ViacomCBS. In her most recent role as SVP of engineering at CBS Sports Digital, she led the technology teams and technical aspects for all digital platforms. Lone has managed CBS Sports’ record-breaking digital live streams for several marquee events, including Super Bowl LV, Super Bowl LIII, and Super Bowl 50.
“I’m looking forward to discussing how streaming providers can move beyond reactive troubleshooting toward truly intelligent operations—using real-time analytics and AI-driven observability to maintain quality from ingest through to each individual viewer’s player,” Lone shares. “Fox Corporation’s decision to name AWS its preferred AI cloud provider underscores how seriously leading broadcasters are investing in AI-powered streaming infrastructure, from 4K/HDR with sub-second latency to automated vertical video creation in under 10 seconds. As audiences demand immersive, low-latency live experiences at massive scale, the gap between QoS and QoE becomes the competitive differentiator. We’ll explore practical approaches to holistic monitoring that give operators actionable insights before viewers ever notice a problem—the same kind of closed-loop, predictive intelligence that’s now powering platforms serving hundreds of millions of viewers. If you’re scaling live streaming and want to protect both your viewer experience and your margins, this session is for you.”
Register now for Streaming Media Connect!
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