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In a recent conversation with Jan Ozer from the Streaming Learning Center, Marc Todd, Founder and CEO of Skreens, shared insights into his company’s background, its mission, and its multi-view technology, which is already deployed by a major US service provider, and available either directly from Skreens or through MediaKind.
You can watch the interview on YouTube here, or embedded below.
“We’re a Boston-based AI video company,” Todd began. “Our main focus is building platforms for content and service providers to offer a wide range of hyper-personalization.”
While Skreens’ technology has a broad range of applications, Todd emphasized that their primary focus today is on live sports multi-view — a solution designed to meet the rapidly growing demand from viewers who want to watch multiple live games or events simultaneously.
“That’s the big product,” Todd said. “Our live sports multi-view system is already deployed with a major provider, delivering multi-views to millions of subscribers across the nation.”
With platforms like YouTube TV and Xfinity investing heavily in multi-view features, Todd believes Skreens is uniquely positioned to help providers meet this rising demand.
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The Rising Demand for Multi-View Technology
According to Todd, one of the biggest drivers of growing demand for multi-view technology is the rapid expansion of legalized sports betting in the United States. “Sports betting is rapidly becoming legal in the United States,” Todd said. “Five years ago, legalized sports betting was really nowhere to be found, and all of a sudden we have over 100 million people betting on sports games. That’s one in three adults.”
Elaborating on the importance of these viewers, Todd highlights the significant influence of sports betting, noting that “almost 40% [of sports bettors] are under 35,” indicating a strong engagement from a younger demographic. He also noted that “90% of sports bettors subscribe to pay TV,” demonstrating the strong connection between sports viewership and traditional television services.
Todd explained that this surge in sports betting has created a new kind of viewer — one who’s no longer content to passively watch a single game. “Sports fans, in my opinion, are not watching passive entertainment anymore,” Todd said. “They’re watching with a purpose.”
Many viewers follow multiple games at once, not only watching the outcomes but also tracking individual players and game details to manage their bets or fantasy teams. “In order to watch everything you’ve bet on, you’ve got to flip around the stations all over the place to find what’s going on,” Todd said. “It’s a very frustrating experience. The sports multi-view offered this interest group the ability to watch multiple games at the same time on that big screen TV.” Platforms like YouTube TV and Xfinity have already adopted multi-view features, and Skreens is helping service providers expand those capabilities with greater flexibility and control.
What is Skreens?
Skreens is a server-side multi-view solution designed to help content providers deliver multiple live streams within a single viewing experience. According to Todd, the system is built to provide viewers with seamless access to multiple games, channels, or live events on a single screen.
“What we’re doing is providing the infrastructure, the processing, and the control to take several live linear lineup channels and create a brand-new multi-view channel,” Todd explained. The technology allows providers to combine various live feeds, such as multiple sports games or a mix of sports and news channels, into one customized viewing experience.
A key differentiator for Skreens is that its multi-view technology operates entirely on the server side, meaning the video streams are processed before reaching the viewer’s device. This ensures high-quality video, even on large screens, while minimizing bandwidth demands and reducing the processing load on the viewer’s hardware.
“One of the big keys is it’s a server-side multi-view,” Todd said. “This is a big deal because it has a multiple advantages. One, it works with your existing infrastructure. That’s a big one. Another is that, because you have the processing power, you can create a really high-definition, ultra-high-definition quality for big screens.”
Skreens is designed to support a wide range of applications, but Todd noted that live sports is the biggest driver right now.
“We’re saying sports because that’s the piece everybody is pulling for,” Todd said. “But you could take any channel — the History Channel, financial news, or anything else — and create a multi-view with extra content or specialized layouts for different interest groups.”
Focus on Server- Side vs. Client Side
Skreens’ server-side multi-view technology offers several advantages that simplify deployment, improve compatibility, and reduce bandwidth demands. First, server-side deployment requires no changes to a provider’s existing infrastructure. Providers simply send their video feeds to Skreens, which composes the multi-view layout and sends it back as a single channel that can be distributed like any other. In contrast, a client-side solution requires providers to modify their systems to deliver individual streams, often involving additional development work and software updates.
Second, Skreens’ server-side approach is immediately compatible with all existing playback devices. Since the multi-view content is delivered as a standard TV channel, any device that can play a typical channel — from set-top boxes to smart TVs — can handle Skreens’ multi-view output. By contrast, client-side solutions place higher processing demands on the playback device, excluding many big-screen TVs, which remain the most popular way to watch live sports and other premium content.
Lastly, server-side technology significantly reduces bandwidth demands. “Client-side means you’re doubling, tripling, or quadrupling your bandwidth if you have four games playing at once,” Todd said. “Server-side sends just one stream — no extra bandwidth load, no extra device strain.”
Skreens Operation
Todd explained how Skreens efficiently creates and delivers multi-view channels with minimal disruption to a provider’s existing workflow. The process starts when the content provider submits the details of the multi-view layouts they want to create. This can include thousands of combinations, specifying which channels to include and how they should be arranged on the screen. Providers can submit this information via a schedule file or API request.
Next, the provider sends the live video streams to Skreens using the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol. Once Skreens receives the content, its platform performs four key functions:
- Input: Skreens ingests the live video feeds.
- Layout: The system arranges the feeds according to the requested multi-view design.
- Encoding/Packaging: The composed multi-view is encoded into a single stream for delivery.
- Delivery: Skreens sends the finished multi-view channel back to the provider’s CDN, where it’s distributed just like any other TV channel.
That’s creating one multi-view,” Todd said. “But we’re engineered to create thousands of multi-views and do it on command. I mean, it’s that realistic.”
This streamlined process allows Skreens to generate and deliver large volumes of custom multi-view channels efficiently, giving providers a powerful tool to meet rising viewer demands without complicated infrastructure changes.
At the core of this process is the Skreens Platform, highlighted in blue on the diagram. This is the system that handles the content ingestion, layout creation, encoding, and final delivery. As Todd explained later in the discussion, the Skreens Platform is available as a licensed product that providers can deploy either in the cloud or within their own data centers for data center operation.
For flexibility, the Skreens Platform can be licensed directly from Skreens or accessed through its partnership with MediaKind, which Todd sees as a significant benefit. “We’ve combined to take Skreens’ content composition technology and bond it inside the MediaKind streaming platform,” Todd explained.
This integration enables providers to build their desired layouts within MediaKind’s system. When they choose to enable multi-view, “it just happens behind the scenes, and it’s Skreens powering that.” Todd emphasized that the biggest advantage is that this integration requires no changes to the provider’s existing infrastructure, making it easier for broadcasters to adopt Skreens and launch multi-view services quickly. This deployment flexibility ensures content providers can choose the deployment model that best fits their technical environment and growth plans.
Commenting on the Skreens agreement, MediaKind’s CEO Allen Broome said, “The beauty of our integration with Skreens is its simplicity—providers can instantly layer multiview services on top of their existing AV pipeline without any changes to existing infrastructure. MediaKind handles all the autoscaling in the cloud, making it easy to introduce additional viewing options for sports and live events today, and seamlessly scale up as demand grows. Fans get greater choice – whether following multiple games, tracking key moments, or personalizing their feeds – all within a frictionless, highly dynamic viewing experience.”
Deploying the Channel
Once Skreens has generated a multi-view channel, the next step is getting that content to subscribers. Marc Todd explained that this process is designed to fit seamlessly into a provider’s existing distribution workflow. “Essentially, what we do is take that new multi-view channel and insert it back into the provider’s CDN just like any other channel,” Todd said. This integration ensures the provider retains full control over security, entitlement, and content delivery.
Because Skreens’ multi-view is delivered as a standard TV channel, providers have flexible options for how subscribers can access it. Some providers may choose to add multi-view directly into their linear TV guide, giving viewers a familiar way to tune in. “It’s just another channel,” Todd explained. “Channel 874 at 7:00 has the Celtics and Bruins, and the viewer can simply tune into it. It just pops up.”
Alternatively, providers can build a dedicated app on their set-top boxes that offers a menu of available multi-view options. This approach provides more control over layout options, audio selection, and other features, enhancing user experience.
Both methods take advantage of Skreens’ ability to create multiple targeted channels — whether for regional content, ad zones, or customized viewing preferences — all without requiring new hardware or major infrastructure changes.
As Todd emphasized, “The big win for everybody is that it doesn’t require any changes to your existing infrastructure.” This simplicity makes it easy for providers to adopt Skreens’ multi-view solution and deliver richer, more flexible viewing experiences to their subscribers.
Todd confirmed that Skreens’ multi-view technology already operates at scale with a major service provider. While he couldn’t disclose the provider by name, he emphasized that the system is actively delivering multi-view channels to millions of nationwide subscribers.
“I can tell you that many sports fans already watch Skreens-powered sports multi-views today because we’re deployed with a major provider delivering multi-views to millions of subscribers across the nation,” Todd said.
This confirmation underscores that Skreens’ solution isn’t just theoretical — it’s proven, scalable, and successfully operating in a live broadcast environment. The system’s ability to create dynamic multi-view channels, seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure, and deliver content to a wide audience has already been validated in real-world conditions.
Getting Started with Skreens
For service providers looking to implement Skreens, Todd described a straightforward path for providers to test and deploy the technology, starting with a quick proof of concept. “It’s very quick to start,” Todd explained. “You can send a few SRT streams up; we can combine those together and shoot you back a multi-view. You can see it, play with it — that can all get started within a day.” This rapid proof-of-concept process allows providers to experiment with layouts, test viewer engagement, and evaluate system performance before committing to a full deployment.
Once the proof of concept is successful, providers can choose between two deployment models:
- Cloud-based deployment — Ideal for providers seeking fast implementation and scalability. The cloud model allows services to launch multi-view functionality quickly and expand as demand grows.
- Data center deployment — Designed for providers that prefer to manage their own infrastructure or require tighter control over content delivery.
“Many customers will start in the cloud to roll out quickly,” Todd said. “Then, as you gain scale, you can start transitioning some of that on-prem to be effective and efficient.” For added flexibility, providers can license the Skreens platform directly from Skreens or through its partnership with MediaKind, which integrates Skreens’ technology into MediaKind’s infrastructure solutions.
Licensing options are designed to meet different financial models. Todd noted that Skreens offers both CapEx (capital expenditure) and OpEx (operational expenditure) models, giving providers flexibility to align costs with their budget preferences. This flexible approach — fast proof of concept, multiple deployment options, and adaptable licensing — ensures that providers can adopt Skreens at their own pace and with minimal risk.
The Future of Personalized Viewing Experiences
While Skreens is currently focused on delivering high-quality multi-view channels for sports and live events, Todd sees even greater potential in personalized viewing experiences powered by artificial intelligence. Todd explained that as content consumption habits continue to evolve, viewers increasingly expect personalized options that match their specific interests. Skreens envisions a future where individual subscribers can build their own custom multi-view layouts, choosing which channels, games, or content appear on the screen.
“Instead of using your iPhone to resize two screens or manage what you’re watching, an AI agent could quickly bring up three games and size them correctly to make things a lot more seamless,” Todd explained. The AI component would also enhance content discovery by learning user preferences and automatically suggesting relevant content — whether it’s sports, news, or entertainment — that aligns with the viewer’s habits and interests.
“We believe this is the future,” Todd said. “A powerful platform that combines multi-view with intelligent personalization to deliver a frictionless, tailored experience for each viewer.”
This AI-driven approach has the potential to improve engagement, reduce viewer frustration, and provide content providers with new ways to connect with their audiences. As Todd described it, Skreens’ long-term vision goes beyond just multi-view — it’s about creating smarter, more personalized ways for viewers to enjoy their content.
Looking Ahead — A Timely Opportunity for Broadcasters
As broadcasters plan for upcoming sports seasons, many are moving quickly to adopt multi-view technology to stay competitive. “One thing we’re hearing from service providers is that they’re trying to get stuff deployed and up and running and fully out before the NFL season comes this year,” Todd said. “Because guys like YouTube and other things are coming out with even more multi-view functions for the NFL season.”
For those looking to see Skreens in action, Todd noted that Skreens will be featured in the MediaKind booth at NAB 2025, offering live demonstrations of their multi-view technology.
For more information, visit www.skreens.com.
(Full disclosure: I’m currently working as a consultant for Skreens, helping to share insights about their technology and its potential impact on the industry.)
