MPEG-DASH deployments due before second half of 2014

More than 75% of MPEG-DASH deployments are due to take place either the second half of 2013 and the first half of 2014, according to a new study by the DASH Industry Forum. 

Based on a survey of major European broadcasters, the forum found that much of this adoption is expected to take place under the HbbTV 1.5 standard, with the majority of deployments due to take place in the second half of this year.

The biggest challenge noted was the availability of DASH clients – which are expected to be largely available in the second half of 2013 – while the availability of content packaging tools was the second biggest concern.

Live and on-demand services will be offered by almost all European broadcasters using the standard, while time-shifted content delivery will be deployed by half of them, according to the survey.

DASH allows delivery of both non-protected content and content encrypted with multiple concurrent DRM schemes. The polled broadcasters indicated that while some content will be delivered without DRM, Playready and Marlin were the two DRM solutions that they were considering most, followed by Widevine and Verimatrix.