Explosion in Live Streaming of Sports Prompts Launch of Comprehensive Program for OTT platforms
Testronic, the leader in quality assurance (QA), localization services and compliance for the film, television and games industries, has launched Testronic Platform Testing Services, focusing on live streaming of sports.
The comprehensive multi-part service offering is designed to help clients create and maintain a world-class OTT platform. Testronic’s live-streaming and OTT app service is built on a 20-year history of testing apps, websites, games, software, localization, and film and TV.
“Today there’s a big focus on live-streaming content, and streaming sports is a major disruptor to both OTT and to sports,” explains Jason Gish, president of Testronic’s Film and TV Division. “Sports fans are a different kind of audience from the casual TV viewer. The expectation of flawless content delivery is even higher and more difficult to execute in a live environment.”
Gish notes that the explosion of live sports content has “happened very quickly over the last year and is growing incredibly fast. People are getting away from expensive cable packages and big pay-per-view costs in lieu of a reasonably priced streaming sports app. The traditional sports watching options can be quite limited and may not allow fans to access the sports and events they desire. Live-streaming platforms are expanding rapidly because they offer sports fans much better options.”
“The expectation of flawless content delivery is even higher and more difficult to execute in a live environment.” – Jason Gish, President, Film & TV
Testronic is uniquely positioned to help OTT platforms “because of our 20 years of testing experience across content, apps, software, website, and utilizing our extensive international device test beds” says Gish. “I don’t know of any other company that has our range of experience and expertise, and all of these areas of focus are needed for live streaming.”
The company’s Platform Testing Service covers all stages of a project from inception through production and beyond. It includes benchmarking, launch planning, testing integration, on-demand testing, maximizing reach, refining performance, and territory launches.
“Every engagement is unique,” notes Gish. “Nearly all of our clients need some of the same fairly basic testing services, but the bigger portion of their testing needs are unique to each client. Testronic Platform Testing Service allows us to custom build the perfect solution for each client. We’re not boutique in size but we’re boutique in approach, and all engagements on the platform side are necessarily customized.”
Testronic strives “to be involved as early as possible with clients even in the design stage to avoid road blocks and hazards,” he points out. “A lot of people don’t think about QC until they’re past the design stage, but it’s beneficial to consider it very early on. Since we have a wide range of clients, we have learned lessons that give us incredible insight into helping our clients build a successful offering. Despite our evangelizing, people tend to think of QC late, in the last mile, and although we prefer to start early in the development, we can still jump in at any step in the process.”
Testronic can begin with launch engagements, which Gish says are increasingly necessary for “high-volume, high risk” sports streaming. Once platforms are up and running, some maintenance by the client should be routine, but they may still want to offload internal testing, since it is not their core competency.
“Development is never really done,” Gish says. “There are always software updates, changes to the user interface, browser and device updates. You need to test these things before a launch to the general public. Some like to beta test using their fans, but that’s not an ideal solution because fans are not professional testers and they might have a bad experience and can be unforgiving. Testing by experts gives you very actionable, detailed feedback that adds real value.”
Testronic’s international scope (the company has offices in the US, UK, Poland, and Thailand and is able to quickly scale up in new territories) offers in-territory testing for platforms, a process that’s increasingly in demand. “There is an ever-growing requirement for in-territory testing around the world,” Gish reports. “We create pop-up offices as needed, leading up to and following new territory launches.”
“We’ve already seen tremendous interest in our program,” says Gish. “the sports-streaming space is growing so rapidly, and the platforms are already seeing the need to outsource these services. We’re expanding at an incredible pace to adapt to demand and will continue growing to fill the requirements for platform testing in the streaming content sector.”
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