RIST Survey: Key Findings

We carried out our first annual survey earlier this year to better understand how RIST is currently being used, what challenges the industry is facing and requirements for the future. The survey was a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions and was issued to individuals registered on the RIST mailing list. Survey data has been gathered from media and broadcast professionals from across the globe.

 Respondents currently use RIST

Half of the respondents stated that they were already using RIST when the survey was carried out. Although the RIST users were predominantly fibre/IP network operators or broadcasters, there was also widespread use in other areas too.   

Out of reliability, bitrate, quality of video and latency, RIST users ranked bitrate as most important consideration followed by latency, then quality.  

All of the RIST users stated that they use public internet, although many also use a dedicated IP connection (80%). Encryption of content is a critical content transport security requirement with 80% of RIST users stating that content either needs to be protected in flight by the protocol, or content needs to be protected and endpoints need to be authenticated.  

RIST is currently being used for a very wide selection of use cases. Generally, it is one of multiple transport protocols being used or available on products.

RIST Forum, Reliable and Stable interoperability

 

Dr. Ciro Noronha, President, the RIST Forum, commented: “The fact that RIST is often present with other transport protocols is something we would have expected. RIST is a relative newcomer so many products and workflows are already established with existing protocols. However, RIST is still being added as it brings additional benefits and functionality that is critical for broadcast-grade video contribution over IP, yet not available with other protocols.” 

Some of the most common uses of RIST are delivery of live feeds over the internet and managing remote contribution and cloud workflows.

Respondents stated that the key reasons RIST is used is because:

  • Reliable/Stable

  • Cost Effective

  • Not tied to single ISP

  • Interoperability

IST Forum survey results are in.

Respondents who are broadcasters, using range of protocols

Over a quarter of the respondents (27%) were broadcasters. When asked to rank reliability, bitrate, quality of video and latency in order of importance, broadcasters ranked latency over bitrate.

When it comes to choosing which protocol to use, 91% of respondents cited multi-vendor interoperability as a key factor. This was followed closely by seamless redundancy and availability (82%), then ease of use (73%) and ability to operate in degraded networks (73%).

Regarding IP enabled video chains, the majority of broadcasters (82%) had IP enabled contribution. A high proportion of broadcasters also had IP enabled distribution (72%) and IP enabled content delivery (72%).

 Final thoughts

The survey findings provide some interesting insights into how RIST is being used as well key considerations for the future. One thing that is clear is that RIST can certainly help to meet the needs of, and address some of the challenges that media and broadcast professionals face now, and in the future.

Helen Weedon