STARZPLAY

How MEDIANOVA helped STARZPLAY improve its CDN performance by 52% and lower its operating costs.

STARZPLAY is a subscription video on demand (SVOD) service that streams thousands of blockbuster Hollywood movies, TV shows, documentaries, kids entertainment and same-day-as-the-US series – plus dedicated Arabic and Bollywood content – to 19 countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

• With STARZPLAY , subscribers can watch full HD and 4K content anywhere, anytime.

• The service is available on regional IPTV services and is continually adding apps for different gaming and smart devices.

• STARZPLAY is supported on iOS and Android devices, Mac and Windows browsers, Apple TV and Chromecast streams, PS4 consoles, and directly on Samsung Smart TVs.

• In addition, the iOS and Android apps are installed in more than 2.5 million devices and support downloads for offline playback.

The SVOD industry is a competitive world. This is reflected in STARZPLAY’s motto, “Obsessable and with a tough competition in the industry”. With the announcement that STARZPLAY beat out Netflix as the leading service provider in the MENA region in April, holding 26% of the market share compared to Netflix’s share at 16%, it’s clear that STARZPLAY has not and will not provide a mediocre streaming and download speed for its “demanding” subscribers

Challenge

STARZPLAY team needed to improve the last mile performance of its OTT platform.

The challenge was to cache 25,000 titles and its 20 different codecs and bitrates as close as possible to the end users to make sure video start times were faster and 4K high-resolution quality on all devices were buffer-free.

More importantly, the process had to be planned without any disruption to the service.

A Multi-CDN strategy was in place but the team knew that Cloud CDNs were not the solution with their high cost based on traffic, lack of available cache space at the edge, inadequate customization for 600+ unique devices, and below-average below-average 4K performance.

The team reached out to Medianova for its Agile Private CDN solution.

Solution

For OTT Executives looking to increase streaming quality with a better performance while controlling the CDN costs, Medianova's Agile Private CDN was particularly an attractive option due to.

• Its fully customizable feature set according to client-specific needs.

• Its container-based agile structure making sure the platform runs on the latest technology available.

• Its secure and software-optimized custom SSD caches dedicated to STARZPLAY.

• Its seamless integration with STARZPLAY's existing origin packager Unified Streaming Platform which meant no business processes or APIs needed to change.

• Its agile CDN software, which ensures that new edge locations can be launched within two days – this significantly minimizes the start-up time and speeds up the overall expansion process.

• Thanks to Medianova's multi-server dedicated cache structure, more than 72% of the content library is cached at the edge, which solves the last mile problem.

Results

• Improved hit ratio from 30% to 72%

• A decrease in the error rate to almost zero for over 10,000 streaming requests.

• 52% faster video start times.

• 679 unique devices, 17M requests served.

Faraz Arshad

STARZPLAY CTO

“We always deliver the highest standards for our demanding subscribers and Medianova helped us execute a successful migration to the Private CDN platform. We then achieved an increase in streaming quality while saving in CDN costs. On top of that, with the help of Medianova’s engineering team, we were able to lower the error rate to almost zero for every 10,000 streaming requests and we are now more confident to make deals with operators and expand our reach. Medianova is agile and flexible in both its technology and support".