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<\/div>\nFor the past 20 years, we have been improving digital media in\u00a0easily measurable ways.\u00a0Resolution has climbed steadily. Networks have grown faster. Latency has fallen<\/a>.\u00a0Across\u00a0almost every\u00a0technical metric, progress has been undeniable. And yet, for all this advancement, our digital interactions still feel oddly thin. We can see more and hear more than ever before, but rarely do we feel truly present.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is not\u00a0due to\u00a0a lack of\u00a0technological progress.\u00a0Advancements\u00a0in video compression<\/a>, audio coding, and delivery efficiency\u00a0have been extraordinary, and they\u00a0remain\u00a0critically important today.\u00a0Without them, modern\u00a0streaming\u00a0and communication as we know it would not be\u00a0feasible.\u00a0But these successes also\u00a0reveal a persistent blind spot.\u00a0High definition and clarity solved essential technical problems, not a fully human one.\u00a0<\/p>\n For many years,\u00a0sharper images and clearer sound were treated as\u00a0largely independent\u00a0challenges, each optimized in isolation. The result often looks\u00a0impressive but\u00a0can still feel incomplete. Presence is not delivered by resolution or clarity alone. It\u00a0emerges\u00a0when depth, motion, timing, and sound work together, as they do in the physical world.\u00a0<\/p>\n One reason this problem has persisted is that presence resists\u00a0simple\u00a0measurement. Pixels,\u00a0bitrates, and frame rates fit neatly into charts and benchmarks. Presence does not. It depends on how multiple signals combine in real time, and whether they behave in ways the brain instinctively recognizes. When they do not, the brain compensates – quietly filling in the gaps. Over time, that effort becomes fatigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anyone who has spent hours in video calls understands this intuitively. Faces appear crisp. Voices are clear. And yet something essential is missing. Micro-delays disrupt conversational flow. Audio arrives without a sense of space. Movement lacks weight and continuity. Each mismatch is minor on its own, but together they create emotional distance. We are connected, but\u00a0not quite together.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s changing\u00a0is not the importance of efficiency and clarity, but our understanding of their role. Continued improvements in compression efficiency<\/a>\u00a0(achieving higher quality at lower bitrates and lower complexity)\u00a0remain vital, particularly for applications such as immersive and volumetric video. At the same time, efficiency alone cannot create presence if the underlying signals are not coherent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recent progress reflects a broader alignment across the media stack. Advances in next-generation video codecs help preserve motion and depth more faithfully under real-world constraints. Spatial audio techniques<\/a> restore a sense of place, allowing sound to exist in three dimensions rather than collapsing into a single channel. These developments complement one another, rather than compete.\u00a0<\/p>\n Addressing\u00a0presence\u00a0requires treating streaming not as a delivery pipeline, but as a coordinated system. Low-latency connectivity, from today\u2019s 5G networks through to emerging 6G architectures<\/a>, is beginning to prioritise responsiveness over raw throughput. When combined with adaptive, AI-driven\u00a0video\u00a0encoding<\/a>, streams can be\u00a0adjusted dynamically, preserving the cues that human\u00a0perception\u00a0is most sensitive to, while shedding data that adds little to the experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n These shortcomings are not failures of ambition, but\u00a0failures of\u00a0formulation. For years, streaming has been treated primarily as a delivery challenge: how to\u00a0compress\u00a0more data, faster, through ever-wider pipes. Presence, however, is not delivered by volume.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an\u00a0experience shaped by coordination, responsiveness, and coherence across systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n The short answer is,\u00a0yes. Recent breakthroughs suggest that the tools\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and\u00a0the coordination across networks, codecs, and devices\u00a0\u2013\u00a0are now within reach. This marks a shift in how the problem is approached. Presence can finally be treated as a system-level challenge, rather than a visual upgrade.\u00a0<\/p>\n Full-fidelity streaming is not about overwhelming the senses. It is about restoring the subtle cues that make interactions\u00a0feel natural. Spatial audio, for example, anchors voices and sounds in three dimensions,\u00a0creating an immersive sound experience that adds depth and realism to music, movies, games, and calls, for a more natural, enveloping engagement.\u00a0Photorealistic 3D and volumetric video<\/a> introduce depth and perspective, allowing viewers to feel\u00a0and move around\u00a0inside a scene rather than looking at it from the outside.\u00a0Adaptive, AI-driven compression ensures these experiences\u00a0remain\u00a0efficient and scalable, even as their complexity grows.\u00a0<\/p>\n For this illusion to hold, these elements must\u00a0operate\u00a0in unison. Presence collapses if there is lag between image and sound, or between motion and response. This is why advances in\u00a0compression,\u00a0AI, edge processing, and emerging network technologies matter so deeply. They make it possible to coordinate complexity, adapt streams dynamically, and prioritise what human\u00a0perception\u00a0actually notices. As networks evolve toward 6G, the emphasis shifts from raw speed to responsiveness. And\u00a0from delivering more data to delivering the right data at the right moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u00a0emerges\u00a0from this convergence is a new phase of digital media. Streaming begins to feel less like something we passively consume and more like something that\u00a0welcomes\u00a0our participation. The distance between colleagues, collaborators, and loved ones softens. Remote collaboration becomes less tiring and more cohesive. The emotional bandwidth of media increases.\u00a0<\/p>\n This transformation will not arrive overnight, and it should not be oversold.\u00a0The core challenges\u00a0\u2013\u00a0efficiency, clarity, and scalability\u00a0\u2013\u00a0remain active areas of research.\u00a0But\u00a0the\u00a0direction\u00a0is clear. After years of pursuing clarity through pixels and throughput, we can begin to focus on coherence,\u00a0sound, motion, and interaction moving together through space and time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If the last twenty years were about making media clearer, the next may be about making it truer. Not\u00a0only\u00a0by adding more definition, but by\u00a0placing them within a broader\u00a0understanding of presence, and engineering for the way humans\u00a0actually experience\u00a0being together.\u00a0<\/p>\n [Editor’s note: This is a contributed article from Nokia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nWhy presence has\u00a0remained\u00a0elusive<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Can streaming become something we inhabit?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Redefining presence<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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