What is OTT Media Testing?

With impending technology developments in obtaining higher bandwidth networks such as 4G and 5G, the OTT Video streaming world can anticipate on-demand video consumption to increase.

FREMONT CA: A streaming media service provided directly to digital viewers through the internet, bypassing established platforms such as cable, broadcast, and satellite television, is known as an over-the-top (OTT) media service.

Users want high-definition streaming on every device, at any time and place, and the user evaluates the service or product. OTT takes a user-centric strategy, providing a streamlined viewing experience across devices and browsers, resulting in an outstanding user experience.

Challenges of Media Testing

There is content on streaming devices in today's digitized society. Due to the various stakeholders involved, like broadcasters, content suppliers, and service providers, one of the primary challenges of testing streaming applications is building an automated and scalable testing platform with a holistic perspective.

The user can browse and download content like movies and TV programs, which is provided directly through the internet to connected devices like PCs, tablets, smartphones, and consoles, depending on their preferences. Audio, video and wireless protocols are all included in these multimedia gadgets. To produce a seamless streaming experience, different elements such as streaming statistics, buffering, latency, network, and many more must be considered.

Many web series, movies, and other media are available for streaming on online platforms, but it is influenced by variables such as:

• What STB (Set-Top Box) configurations are available?

• Where the content is operating (region)

If the STB is of decent quality, check whether it supports the correct streaming settings (video and audio) to stream high-quality media, such as movies and television shows (quality video with proper audio). If the streaming settings are not suitable, audio and video packets will be lost, providing the user with a terrible experience.

A Holistic Approach to Media Testing

With the rapid growth in the development and consumption of streaming content, several challenges arise when working on an OTT platform.

As a result, it's critical to have a QA testing strategy in place for the OTT platform that includes different types of situations and essential functionality throughout the network, infrastructure, and application components, such as:

• Basic application functions such as launching, searching, menu options, link verification, and recommendations is operational.

• Playback scenarios such as Play, Pause, Forward, and so on.

• Lip sync, buffering, latency, resolution (high definition, standard definition, low, etc.) are examples of audio and video performance metrics for many categories such as audio, video, news, gaming, and lifestyle applications.