By Stefan Lederer, CEO and Co-Founder, Bitmovin
With so many streaming services out there all vying for a bigger share of the pie, video providers are constantly seeking out new ways to engage viewers and enhance their offering. Many are looking to incorporate multiview functionality into their services because it allows viewers to personalize their viewing experience and makes streaming more interactive and engaging. You can watch multiple streams showing different events or even different perspectives and feeds from the same event, all at the same time.
However, delivering multiview functionality is not without its challenges. Although playing multiple streams simultaneously on higher-powered devices is less of an issue, reliably streaming multiple streams simultaneously on standard TVs, which typically have only one video decoder, presents a significant hurdle. These devices can generally only display one active video stream at a time, making multiview functionality unworkable.
User appeal of multiview
Being able to watch multiple streams at the same time is especially appealing for live sports, esports, and live concerts, where viewers may be torn between different events happening simultaneously, whether that be soccer games or music performances at festivals. With multiview, viewers need never risk missing out on the action again when flicking back and forth between channels.
Additionally, multiview also enriches the viewing experience because viewers can use the functionality to view the action at one event from multiple angles or feeds. Sports fans can enjoy the excitement of different angles, such as switching between field views during a game, or driver perspectives in a race. This provides viewers with a more engaging, interactive and personalized experience.
When viewing with friends or family, multiview has the added bonus of being able to meet different viewers’ preferences by showing different parts of an event or different angles together on the same screen, without needing to change channels.
Benefits for video service providers
To boost engagement and increase viewer satisfaction, video providers need to deliver a premium user experience that meets user’s needs. By allowing viewers to watch multiple streams at once and giving them the option of choosing which angles or feeds to watch, providers are better able to meet these users’ diverse needs. Additionally, on top of choosing which streams to display, if viewers can customize multiview layouts to suit their own individual preferences, this helps create a sense of control, and viewers enjoy a more involved experience. In this way, by allowing audiences to shape their viewing experience, multiview empowers service providers to deliver a better user experience, which in turn increases engagement making viewers less likely to switch to other services.
It can also be a tool to unlock new monetization opportunities. The added value of customizable viewing options can be marketed as a unique feature to attract more subscribers, or alternatively could be added to premium subscription tiers only as an added draw to paid or higher priced tiers. Additionally, multiview can also help to increase ad revenue because providers can display ads dynamically alongside the main content. This approach allows for targeted advertising that complements the main viewing experience without interrupting it.
Overcoming multiview delivery challenges
As mentioned, bringing multiview to all devices has traditionally been a challenge, because many TVs and lower-powered devices are only able to play one stream at a time. To address this, recent innovations in video technology allow multiple feeds to be combined into a single ‘tiled’ stream. This approach encodes separate feeds into a single composite video, displayed in smaller tiles within the player window. For devices with a single video decoder, this tiled approach overcomes technical constraints, making multiview accessible to a broader range of viewers.
This method of displaying multiple video streams within one tiled interface keeps multiview efficient and smooth on all devices, regardless of their hardware limitations. By handling tiled stream encoding on the server-side, platforms can also ensure a high-quality, low-latency experience for users. This approach delivers a seamless multiview experience that’s both device-friendly and scalable.
New levels of engagement and interactivity
In a world where capturing and retaining viewers’ valuable attention is increasingly difficult, features like multiview offer an edge by making streaming platforms more immersive and engaging. It’s a powerful differentiator that goes beyond basic streaming, opening the door to deeper engagement and new levels of personalization. As broadcasters and video providers continue to innovate, we can expect multiview to become a core feature in the future of streaming, enhancing the way audiences experience events and paving the way for the next generation of interactive streaming.
