Discovery heads to AWS for cloud transformation

As preferred cloud provider, AWS will provide the vast majority of Discovery’s infrastructure needs to deliver its discovery+ direct-to-consumer on-demand streaming video service, its digital services, and more than 450 global linear TV channels. With AWS, Discovery will also aim to provide greater personalisation of the discovery+ service, helping viewers to find content that appeals to their interests and offer enhanced, reliable viewing experiences that are personalised to their tastes and consumption habits.

Discovery uses a number of AWS Media & Entertainment Services to deliver more than 8,000 hours of original live and on demand programming each year. AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaLive, and AWS Elemental MediaPackage manage Discovery’s video transport, preparation, processing, and delivery behind-the-scenes, helping ensure an exceptional audience experience regardless of viewing device type or connectivity.

It is the largest media and entertainment user of Amazon Personalize, AWS’s machine learning service that allows developers to create real-time, personalised user experiences faster and at scale. Discovery relies on Amazon Personalize to offer recommendations for curated content that matches viewer’s specific interests, customising the browsing experience. Discovery also uses Amazon Transcribe – AWS’s service for automatically converting speech to text – across its linear broadcast channels and streaming services to accurately generate closed captions to ensure content is inclusive and accessible to hearing-impaired viewers, and Amazon Rekognition, AWS’s service for automated image and video analysis, to extract and tag video content with metadata to provide viewers with a searchable video library and more personalised recommendations.

In the summer of 2021, Discovery elastically scaled its use of AWS Media Services to transmit 1.3 billion minutes of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 content across its range of digital platforms, including discovery+ and Eurosport subscription services, successfully delivering sports action in 19 languages across 50 markets in Europe. Discovery used Amazon SageMaker (AWS’s machine learning service that helps developers and data scientists build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly in the cloud and at the edge) to develop and train machine learning models that automate the process of language monitoring. These machine learning models can identify the program in live broadcast video feeds and verify that content gets delivered in the right local language for each television market.

“AWS provides the unparalleled portfolio of services, global infrastructure, and proven performance we need to reliably deliver our premium content at scale to Discovery viewers all over the world,” said Avi Saxena, chief technology officer, direct-to-consumer at Discovery. “Running on AWS, we have the agility and elasticity we need to deliver quality viewing experiences for peak events like the Olympics, as well as scalable machine learning capabilities to deliver meaningful personalisation to viewers so they can get the most value out of their subscriptions.” Rapid TV News