Using industry reports, Murra – who is SVP product and marketing at video compression outfit V-Nova ­– illustrated the massive expansion in streaming.

Netflix has increased its subscriber numbers from 22 million in 2005 to 100 million in 2017, he revealed. Even more impressively, gaming platform Twitch, which is only five years old, has built a subscriber base of 100 million.

High demand at peak times puts increased strain on content delivery networks, Murra explained. To keep up with this growth, internet companies have been investing in these networks, with unicast and multicast IP deliveries fighting for supremacy.

Viewers expect the same quality level of video and audio as traditional broadcasting offers, but technical restrictions such as the poor visual quality of compression, buffering and contended data circuits all conspire against the mobile broadcaster.

The Streaming Video Alliance, which was established in November 2014, represents companies from across the streaming industry, and aims to promote best practice for online video and resolve quality issues.

Murra’s company, V-Nova, is at the forefront of these efforts. At the end of the evening he demonstrated some of the internet compression methods V-Nova uses to improve the mobile viewing experience.