Customer Stories

CNTV

CNTV Logo

Customer Success Story

CNTV is the digital arm of China’s predominant national broadcaster, CCTV, with a network of 22 channels accessible to more than 1B viewers. CNTV provides global, multi-language, multi-terminal news to six continents and offers both live and video on demand (VOD) streaming in sports, entertainment and news.

“As China’s national broadcaster, CNTV understands the need to ensure the best quality of experience for our viewers in every country or continent where our premium content is accessed. The ability to provide quality content globally without the distraction of buffering and stuttering is essential for our brand. In addition, the ability to seamlessly add CDNs in different regions to our own streaming servers allows us to rapidly expand our reach while simultaneously maintaining the highest viewer experience and containing the cost overrun.”

– Weijun Song, CTO, CNTV

CHALLENGE

CNTV had initiatives to increase reach and presence globally by expanding their offering for both live and VOD content. As the demand for video streaming expands, viewers worldwide have come to expect higher quality in online streaming. To this end, CNTV needed to better understand their global online video business, including content delivery and consumption, requiring visibility into a comprehensive set of metrics to improve their infrastructure. For CNTV, it was necessary to cut the buffering ratio in half and improve quality in Africa and North America. They required a multi-content delivery network (CDN) strategy to exploit the capacity of multiple CDNs in order to deliver “always on” high quality.

SOLUTION

After an in-depth analysis of CNTV’s existing technology, Conviva’s team built out their multi-CDN strategy and video workflow. To improve overall quality, CNTV implemented Precision, Conviva’s preemptive optimization solution. Precision is the ideal solution to optimize both live and on-demand content for viewers in 190 countries across multiple CDNs. Utilizing its viewer-centric metrics to forecast real-time global and local internet patterns, Precision detects, locates and resolves any failure before it impacts the end viewer. Additionally, CNTV benefits from Conviva’s Insights, which provides real-time actionable analytics and visibility into the individual viewer’s experience.

RESULT

With global intelligence, unified multi-CDN and multi-bitrate control algorithms, Precision preemptively optimizes quality for each individual viewer. Precision delivers the best possible video experience to every viewer in real time. Precision increases video resolutions by up to 180% as measured by average bitrate while simultaneously decreasing buffering events by up to 150%. CNTV is able to precisely monitor its online video business and stream quality in real time, providing for intelligent decisions to improve engagement and economics.

After Precision implementation:
• CNTV doubled average playtime in South America, Europe, Australia and Africa
• CNTV buffering ratio was cut in half globally

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