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June 2016
The magazine for global video
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September 2019
8K TV: why here, why now?
• OTT, VoD, Cloud TV, Cable, Satellite, IPTV, DTT, IoT • The latest news, views and features
The leading media for video delivery technology
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Editor’s report:Ericsson CTO Erik Ekudden recently played down talk about 6G, arguing the focus should be on moving 5G forward, given that the technology is only just out of the blocks. Ekudden’s argument comes to mind in the early discussions around 8K TV. While 4K is not as new or immature as 5G, it still has a long way to go in terms of commercial implementations - with many channels globally yet
to make the switch to HD, let alone 4K. Some view 8K as a distraction as 4K finally makes progress and gathers steam, while others view it as natural evolution and an inevitability. How do you see it? Speaking of 5G, in this issue we examine the implications of 5G for the media & entertainment sector, starting with the mobile video experience of consumers, including mobile broadcast, before zooming in on the production environment. Goran Nastic
Contents
06 Analyst corner: Disney+One of the biggest experiments in the history of the entertainment industry
08 COVER STORY: 8K TVWho needs 8K (apart from TV makers)?
14 Opinion: ATSC 3.0ATSC president Madeleine Noland provides insight into the new standard
15 Low latency streaming with SynamediaOvercoming the challenges of achieving low latency end-to-end
21 Technology corner: CMAF LL Fraunhofer FOKUS details a concrete implementation of DASH low latency streaming with CMAF
24 DTG column Ensuring a better future TV experience
26 Blockchain in broadcastThe latest progress and use cases
32 Smallsats Can the promise outweigh the challenges?
38 5G in media: part 1What will 5G mean for mobile video?
42 5G in media: part 2Examining the potential of 5G in outside broadcast and (remote) production
48 Q&A: Yahoo SportsHow it works with the NFL to reach younger viewers and football fans
52 IBC 2019 previewA look at what’s new at this year’s show
53 Next-gen compression with V-NovaNavigating the new codec landscape
59 Stats cornerEuro and US pay-TV data with informitv
2019
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The magazine for global video
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September 2019
8K TV: why here, why now?
• OTT, VoD, Cloud TV, Cable, Satellite, IPTV, DTT, IoT • The latest news, views and features
The leading media for video delivery technology
TV Broadcast • Streaming • Satellite • Cable • Hybrid
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EditorGoran Nastic
CommercialCamilla Capece
Design and productionMatt Mills (Manager)Jessica Harrington
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ISSN 1467-5935
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The leading media for video delivery technology
TV Broadcast • Streaming • Satellite • Cable • Hybrid
03_Contents.indd 1 29/08/2019 13:54:28
news in brief
Telus Home Assistant for TV voice controlCanada’s Telus is the latest operator to launch a Home Assistant and voice control. In this case, it gives Optik TV customers with hands-free control using voice commands for their entertainment. As voice assistant technologies become more commonplace in Canada, the company saw it as a natural fit to integrate control over the largest screen in the house for a better user experience. Optik TV customers with a Google Assistant-enabled speaker or Smart Display can pair the new Telus Home Assistant to allow voice commands to change the channel, launch Netflix and other apps, search for their favourite shows, pause or turn off their digital box. It also allows customers to manage accounts with voice.
ViacomCBS sets sights on DTC streamingA long running saga has come to an end as CBS and Viacom have decided that they will, after all, merge after 13 years apart. CBS will acquire Viacom to form ViacomCBS. Current Viacom CEO Bob Bakish will lead the combined entity, with the deal expected to close by the end of the year ago. The plan calls for an acceleration of a direct-to-consumer strategy, supported by both both subscription and ad-supported products.
News
Media giants gearing up for streaming supremacy - which one will win?2019 has been labelled a “hallmark year” for the streaming industry, the biggest shift in the US video market since Netflix’s push into streaming in 2007. This is as heavyweight players like Disney, Apple, AT&T and WarnerMedia among others enter an increasingly crowded field with new streaming services and direct-to-consumer (D2C) launches.
Coinciding with further international rollout and price details of the Disney+ launch on November 12, Apple is now expected to debut its own streaming service also by that date.
Bloomberg reports that Apple+ will go live by November, initially offering a free trial to start, as it
builds up the content catalogue, and then could charge $9.99 per month. This would make it more expensive than Disney+ (at $6.99 in the US) but more on a par with Netflix and Amazon Prime (Netflix’s lowest tier is 8.99).
According to Bloomberg, Apple is weighing different release strategies for shows. Apple’s budget for original content has also grown from the original $1 billion to over $6 billion as more shows have moved through production.
Disney’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service will launch on November 12 in the US, Canada and the Netherlands.
They will be followed by Australia and New Zealand a week later on November 19.
In Canada, Disney+ will be priced at C$8.99 per month, or $89.99 per year. Dutch residents will pay EUR6.99 per month, or €69.99 per year. Australia is set at A$8.99 per month, or $89.99 per year, and New Zealand’s price is NZ$9.99 per month.
There is much speculation about what Disney’s removals of titles in particular from Netflix will have on the SVOD trailblazer.
Allan McLennan of Padem Media has described Disney+ as a “game changer”
Guy Bisson, the lead analyst at Ampere Analysis, labels Disney+ as one of the “biggest experiments in the history of entertainment” and you can read his in-depth thoughts on page 6.
Viacom makes inroads into in-vehicle entertainment The Viacom International Media Network is making its TV content available to car passengers, one of the first content providers to make this move into the connected car space.
Viacom’s popular TV channel brands such as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon will be accessible to vehicle passengers in German-language via the Twine4Car solution from Access Europe. This will make Viacom’s content available via the car head unit and rear-seat entertainment units to more deeply engage passengers of all ages.
Access is acquiring the rights to make linear feeds of these channels available in German-language for integration into in-car infotainment systems being developed by German car manufacturers. The channels available via Twine4Car service will be a simulcast of the linear TV networks that VIMN makes available free-to-air in Germany, featuring the same content and advertising.
“Viacom believes in-car entertainment is an exciting new frontier for the video industries, with the next
generation of mobile network technology ushering in a new era of connected vehicles and immersive entertainment experiences on-the-go,” said Raffaele Annecchino, MD of VIMN Southern and Western Europe, Middle East and Africa. “This deal is the first of its kind for Viacom.”
04 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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Satellite operator SES is taking its business to the cloud, together with Amdocs and Microsoft Azure.
SES is creating an open, standards-based network automation and service orchestration platform, built on Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP). Using the Amdocs NFV solution, SES said it will modernise and automate its network platforms in the cloud. SES said this will make it the first satellite network solutions provider to adopt ONAP, an open software platform designed for orchestrating the creation and delivery of new services in an automated operational environment.
For example, this will enable SES to rapidly build network solutions that are
powered by its fleet of MEO and GEO satellites. SES will also be able to serve its broadcast, telecom, corporate and government customers with applications and technologies such as SD-WAN, WAN optimisation, high security, and Unified Threat Management, creating more value for its customers.
The satellite company is implementing ONAP with Amdocs on Microsoft Azure, making SES the first customer to use Amdocs NFV for SD-WAN on Microsoft Azure. Through this approach, SES will be able to extend network services and activate virtualised network functions quickly and at scale, accelerating time-to-market and improving service agility for customers anywhere on
the globe, according to the companies. By deploying open, cloud-based network automation and orchestration, the goal is to make satellite networks a seamless extension of the global communications ecosystem.
“Our vision is to make satellite-based networks a seamless and wholly integrated part of a global, cloud-scale network ecosystem. Central to this vision is an open, automated operational environment that allows our customers to easily create and deliver new, innovative services anywhere,” said SES networks CEO JP Hemingway.
Will other satellite operators follow suit in the company’s lead?
news in brief
DT tops 100Gbps over microwave linkABI Research expects the VR market to grow to $22bn thanks to enterprise adoption and new headsets, as well as make a deeper push into the M&E sector. A new report from ABI Research likens the VR market to a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. Unlike the ill-fated 3D market, VR will succeed, but widespread adoption will take longer than expected to evolve, the reports argues. “Contrary to some opinion, VR is not in the same situation as 3D TV, which never really took off,” said Michael Inouye, of ABI, which expects the VR market to hit an inflection point within the next two years, but remain outside the collective mainstream audience for some time.
In-home WiFi devices pass 5bn mark A new wave of WiFi smart home devices is about to drive adoption towards a total of 17 billion home devices in use worldwide by 2030, according to new research from Strategy Analytics, which estimates that nearly 5bn home WiFi devices are now in use around the world. The leading home WiFi standard today is WiFi 5 (802.11ac), accounting for three quarters of 2019 device sales. WiFi 6 (ax), will account for a third of device sales by 2023, dominating thereafter.
SES looks to the clouds with ONAP
News
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 05
IBC hosts MovieLabs 2030 VisionMotion Pictures Laboratories, together with member studios, published a new white paper presenting an industry vision for the future of media creation technology and next-gen workflows by 2030.
The paper, jointly authored by MovieLabs and technology leadership teams from Hollywood studios, looks at future technology and
discusses the need for the industry to work together now on innovative new software, hardware and production workflows to support and enable new ways to create content over the next ten years. Cloud services and software-defined workflows are two key overarching trends identified into the next decade.
The results of this research on media tech disruption will for the first time be publically discussed at IBC, when MovieLabs will be presenting a keynote panel, titled ‘Hollywood’s Vision for the Future of Production in 2030’, on Sunday 15 September, bringing tech leaders from 5 big Hollywood studios.
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By the end of this year, one of the biggest experiments in the history of the entertainment industry will be underway. Disney+,
the family pillar of Disney’s grand ambition to go direct will have launched, and consumers will be getting their first taste of the new service and the content it has to offer. That description may sound melodramatic, but after 100 years of history, the major studios will for the first time take their own content direct to the end viewer. I’d call that a seismic industry shift.
Disney has yet to embark on its promised huge marketing and awareness campaign that will push the service pre-launch, but (with Fox) the group already owns enough high profile brands and content franchises to have made an impression with its streaming plans.
A survey carried out in the US by Ampere in June 2019 shows that awareness of Disney+ is highest among 18-24 year olds (45% of this age group say they have heard of Disney+) and homes with children, illustrating an obvious but important point about Disney+ and the wider group strategy. Disney+ is part of Disney’s direct plans, not the be all and end all. Disney+ will be one of a family of streaming services that Disney will manage, augmenting its
offer with ESPN for sports and Hulu for general entertainment. The family strategy or streaming channel bouquet is something that has not been tried in the streaming market to date, but for Disney, it means the $6.99 a month price point for Disney+ (widely analysed by market commentators for under-cutting Netflix), is actually just the start of the customer value story and the revenue potential of Disney’s wider direct move.
Of course, with an already crowded streaming market where the typical US SVoD home already takes three SVoD services, the place of Disney+ within the wider home entertainment bundle will be crucial. Ampere’s regular consumer survey shows that Netflix is usually the foundation stone of in-home streaming bundles and other services are layered on top, but rarely taken alone. Asking specifically about how homes would engage with Disney+ showed that 65% of consumers interested in the service intended to take it in addition to other SVoD services. Eighteen per cent said they would replace one of their existing SVoD services with Disney+ and 17%
said they would see Disney+ as a replacement for multiple SVoD services in the home.
Disney+ and other studio services are likely to give a second wind to the US streaming market which has otherwise slowed in terms of the number of services homes are stacking. Content will be key to that boost and — with the addition of Fox franchises — is one of Disney+’s key strengths, even as it gradually unwinds its existing licensing relationships.
Ampere’s Disney+ attitude survey shows that
Analyst corner
The great Disney experiment: Disney+ and the studio direct revolutionBy Guy Bisson
06 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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63% of respondents are aware of at least one of Disney’s core content franchises with Pixar being the strongest in terms of awareness (44% of respondents know the brand). Star Wars (27%) and Marvel (25%) rank second and third. Interestingly, respondents mistakenly associate a number of key brands that have no relation to Disney or Fox with Disney+. Chief among these are rival Warner’s Harry Potter and DC Comic franchises and Universal’s Jurassic Park. The halo of the Disney brand it seems is engulfing its Hollywood neighbours, presenting both a benefit and a challenge. Disney will need to be clear in its content messaging as it begins the service roll-out.
Among legitimate Disney content franchises, interest is spread across age groups. The Marvel franchise has a twin peak for interest among 18-24 year olds and 35-44 year olds picking it as the content most valuable to them while Pixar content is most appealing to 25-34 year olds, the group also most interested in Disney animated films and Disney TV shows, doubtless driven by the likelihood of this age group to have younger children. The Star Wars franchise is an interesting one for Disney. Peak interest for Star Wars is among 35 to 44 year olds, a group just shy of being old enough to have seen the original 1977 cinema release (now dubbed Episode 4). Star Wars will be key for Disney in extending the age appeal of Disney+, although its other streaming channel brands will also help broaden overall appeal of the wider direct play.
Disney has set an ambitious target of 60m-90 million subscribers by 2024, with 20m-30m in the US. On current interest levels, that would be a fairly ambitious target, requiring all of the respondents to Ampere’s interest survey that said they were highly likely or likely to sign up for the service to actually follow through. But with Disney’s own marketing push yet to come, awareness and interest in the new service can only rise.
Analyst corner
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 07
DISNEY+ AWARENESS
STACKING DISNEY+
MOST VALUABLE CONTENT
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Back in 2012 when the ITU-R enshrined UHD in two phases, 4K UHD was already seen as a stepping stone to 8K. UHD-2 was considered so
far away that little other than resolution was considered in the specification.
While the industry is some way from deploying even 4K, heads are turning towards what’s next. For some this is an unwelcome distraction from the practicalities of 4K transition, with possible risk of consumer confusion, others view it as the natural progression of an industry which has technological advance written in its DNA.
“It’s not unusual for a new technology
to emerge and move forward while an earlier one is still being rolled out,” asserts Peter Siebert, DVB Head of Technology. “In this case, it’s relevant to note that 8K TV sets are not necessarily threats to 4K production and delivery, as they could bring improvements in image quality for lower resolution content through upscaling.”
“There will always be technology Luddites,” says Ben Schwarz, speaking as an independent expert, founder of CTOi Consulting and communications chair of the Ultra HD Forum. “A devil’s advocate would say that 4K is a distraction from HD deployment.”
Increasing resolution vs HDR and HFR8K ultra-high-definition video has a
resolution of 7680×4320 pixels, which is four times more than 4K and 16 times
that of full HD.For William Cooper, founder of consultancy Informitv, 8K represents a natural evolution of video resolution. “HD is now mainstream, 4K is already a reality and 8K is now a possibility,” he says. “Although there may be diminishing returns with each
increase in resolution, if the objective is a representation of the highest fidelity, then 8K or beyond may be technologically inevitable.”
He points out that there are many dimensions to improving the fidelity of video reproduction. “Spatial resolution is one, the precision of each pixel is another, and temporal sampling is a further dimension,” he says. “Traditional television technology is compromised in all these dimensions, with plenty of room for improvement.”
The entire industry is now working to deploy 4K with HDR and NGA (Next Gen Audio), as a result of efforts that have cumulated over the last five years.
The Ultra HD Forum, at pains to put 8K on the back burner, recommends that the industry focuses on these added
value services such as HDR with dynamic mapping, NGA and HFR for sports, noting that there are barely over a dozen active services across the world that implement HDR.
“The industry has yet to explore the right combination of resolutions, taking into account HDR, HFR and NGA,” notes Thierry Fautier, VP of Video Strategy at Harmonic and president of the Ultra HD Forum.
Rian Bester, who runs 4K channel Insight TV, agrees, “If you show a consumer 4K verses HD the difference is not that apparent but if you show them HDR versus non
8K TV
8K: Why here, why now?With the tools for 8K production and display in place, the hurdles of distribution and standardisation now lie between the world and 8K media. Is it a distraction or just natural progression? Adrian Pennington reports
08 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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HDR or HFR vs non HFR - especially in fast moving content like sport - the difference is very apparent and there is no doubt as to the benefit. Those two aspects are far more valuable than going from 4K to 8K for current screen sizes.”
While no-one is suggesting 8K holds any benefit over mobile (and even telcos like BT Sport argue for HD HDR as optimum for handsets) the claim that you need to sit closer to the home screen to perceive the benefit needs re-examining.
The screen conundrum Screen sizes are getting bigger – by about an inch a year according to some reports. What’s more, what we think of as a TV set, could be on verge of a radical format overhaul with MicroLED and rollable screens on the horizon.
“In the not too distant future we will have screens that are significantly bigger than currently and they will be multi-application devices like our phones,” Bester suggests. “For that reason, I don’t think people should get too hung up on the science of traditional viewing distance and screen size. This is completely changing.”
Cooper supports this. “The whole point of increasing resolution is that the pixel structure of the image should be imperceptible. It is a psychovisual effect that results in an image that appears to be more realistic.”
Will the tail wag the dog? This is perhaps the most voluble charge against 8K promotion, especially since TV makers don’t always get it right (see stereoscopic 3D for details).
It is no coincidence that brands including Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung and TCL are primary backers of the 8K Association nor that Samsung, LG and Philips are partnering Japanese-owned Spanish streamer Rakuten TV’s plans to stream 8K content later this year, nor that Samsung and Sony are sponsoring 8K productions by Insight TV for marketing purposes.
“Although models are already available as low as $5,000 they need to be five times cheaper, and up-scalers don’t yet make all 4K or HD content shine at 8K,” notes Schwarz.
HDMI 2.1 is provisioned to support 8Kp120 and we are still in the interoperability phase.
The potential for consumer confusion could be high if misleading messages about near-term 8K content availability are made, which could result in 4K market destabilisation.
“While it’s folly to think that the industry can stymie the natural technological progression of display technology, the industry does owe a responsibility to correctly inform consumers of the availability of native 8K content and when it will reach a reasonable critical mass,” says Matthew
Goldman, SVP Technology, MediaKind. He believes 8K will only be available for occasional special events like the Olympics or World Cup over the next five years. “We all need to find a compromise between one part of our industry pushing 8K to sell more ‘better’ consumer TVs to increase profit versus another part of our industry pushing back to prevent undermining the wider marketplace for 4K content creation and consumption.”
There is a certain inevitability in cost reduction from TV sets to distribution bandwidth. “We know 8K TV sets will be affordable at some point in time, and that’s when consumers will adopt them at mass scale,” says Fautier. “Therefore, the industry needs to make sure it can offer attractive services for broadcast, live and on-demand streaming, as well as immersive experiences.”
An embryonic workflowBester says Insight TV’s 8K experiments are not necessarily in order to build up
a library, “but because we want to understand where we need to adapt the workflow chain from production through to delivery.”
While there is equipment from
8K TV
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“8K TV sets are not necessarily threats to 4K production and delivery, as they could bring improvements in image quality for lower resolution content through upscaling.” DVB
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cameras to finishing systems and video switchers capable of a full production chain the workflow is embryonic. Data volumes alone present a challenge and a cost.
Nonetheless, the industry is steadily moving toward capturing video at higher resolutions to enable pan, scan and zooming. Production costs for HD and 4K can be reduced by capturing in 8K using one camera and extracting the region of interest via AI.
For immersive experiences such as VR, it’s necessary to capture at 8K resolution and deliver the field
of view to either an HD or 4K display. The benefit of 8K here, according to Fautier, is that it provides “an exceptional QoE in contrast to conventional VR approaches where the full frame is sent and the player up-samples the field of view, leading to a poor experience.”
In the same manner, for personalised broadcast, content can be captured in 8K for end-users to navigate the content (at lower resolution) on mobile devices.
“8K offers a more personalised experience with a high QoE compared to other approaches where the zoom leads to fuzzy picture,” says Fautier. This was demonstrated at the French Open with Harmonic encoding and Tiledmedia packaging.
The applications for ultra-high quality source material are not limited because of the production technology. The
biggest bottleneck is distribution.“Even if you look at a high resolution
VR application, the problem is not displaying the picture it is getting the content to the consumer via download or streaming,” says Bester.
The only broadcast network capable of supporting 8K today is ARIB DTH (heavily subsidised by the Japanese government via state-run NHK). Neither ATSC nor DVB have made any provision to support 8K as yet.
“In 2019, DTH is probably the only viable way to deliver 8K at scale [but] satellite distribution hasn’t yet managed to ride the 4K wave successfully despite active promotion by the likes of SES or Eutelsat,” says Schwarz.
“As far as compression is concerned, the numbers circulating throughout the industry for bandwidth requirements vary. NHK’s commercial service uses 100Mbps, but recent trials with HEVC have shown live sports content at 85Mbps and VOD at 65Mbps.”
VVC promises to half those requirements in a few years. The proposed standard winding its way through MPEG “is the silver bullet” identified by Bester required to drive things forward “because whether the content is 4K or 8K, it really addresses the bottlenecks like CDN costs and bandwidth.”
Proofs of concept, by BBC R&D among others, show VVC being
meaningfully more effective than HEVC with the goal of decreasing bitrate by half. But we will have to wait until 2020 when the MPEG specification is finalised and then 2022 to see it implemented in the first devices.
Harmonic’s take is that 8K will start with DTH, “but very quickly we will see IP delivery to connected TVs and mobile devices,” though probably limited to 4K.
The codec is an important element, but high-speed broadband networks (fibre, DOCSIS 3.1, and 5G) “are the best fit to carry 8K content,” says Fautier. For live applications at scale, multicast will likely be needed, with 5G FeMBMS an attractive solution.
Globecast, which reports more than 60% of its customers in Europe still to make the transition to HD, identifies OTT as the preferred method for content delivery in new formats.
“That was true for 4K and will likely stay true for 8K,” says Globecast’s Juliet Walker. “That’s because you don’t need to wait for an industry-approved new interoperable tech standard for the signal transmission chain. Innovation comes fast on the internet and device/display vendors are quick to adopt new technologies to sell ‘boxes’.”
Standards and business modelsAs with 4K, Walker thinks sports will lead the way in 8K, even while 4K
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“We want to understand where we need to adapt the workflow chain from production through to delivery.” Insight TV
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rollout remains sluggish. Expect to see the first wave of 8K content produced at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as well as VoD in 8K streamed to connected TVs in the same time frame.
That’s why, argues the 8K Association and the UHD Forum, that it’s important to agree on a standard for 8K that includes support for IP delivery (VoD and live) across all type of networks, on all devices (TVs to smartphones). Immersive applications being different from broadcast ones, will also require guidelines.
The DVB for its part has completed a report into media formats beyond UHD-1 4K. “These formats have the potential to be commercially viable in the coming years,” says Siebert. The report was submitted to DVB’s Steering Board in July as an input document for potential future specification work.
The prevailing view, voiced by Antonio Corrado, MainStreaming CEO, is that “broadcasters won’t be able to justify the cost for a small niche audience that will be able to experience streaming in 8K until its wider adoption by device makers and consumers.”
Thomas Wrede, VP, New Technology & Standards, SES Video says the key ingredient is an effective business model. “We need an equation that encourages subscribers to pay for the quality of the content itself, and not just the screen they unboxed.”
To lay the groundwork for 8K the industry needs an aligned end-to-end ecosystem. Even with two organisations (the UHD Alliance and Forum) guiding 4K deployments, “it was not an easy process,” Fautier admits. “However, member companies have learned to work together, even if they compete in the marketplace. The same collaboration needs to exist for 8K, and the 8K Association is at the forefront to drive those efforts.”
“For most TV viewers 8K will remain off the radar for many years to come,” says David Mercer of Strategy Analytics. “Content providers, and
broadcasters in particular, need not be panicked into near-term technology upgrades to support 8K production and delivery, and few will be able to afford this in any case. 4K, HDR and HFR will remain the primary technology drivers of video enhancement for most viewers
through much of the 2020s.”In summary, there is a vast amount
of work required to make 8K a reality. This is a multi-year effort, at least five to ten years depending on the application. Is too much focus placed on classical broadcast, while IP is a low hanging fruit? Could certain territories lagging now but unencumbered by legacy infrastructure in future, see 8K leapfrog 4K in the same way that cellular did over DSL?
“The next generation of video entertainment is based on several pillars of which a higher resolution is but one aspect,” says Schwarz.
“This is why we shouldn’t get too hung up on the science,” Bester agrees.
“Let’s imagine you have an entire wall in your living room at 16K, if you go beyond that it will not make a difference. I think 16K is the top limit where the drive for higher resolutions will end.”
“We need an equation that encourages subscribers to pay for the quality of the content itself, and not just the screen they unboxed.” SES
8K TV
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Limited early activity
NHK NHK began broadcasting an 8K service in Japan in December 2018, in preparation for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The Japanese broadcaster began research on an ultra high-definition video system back in 1995. Video shot using a 8K Super Hi-Vision camera with a frame frequency of 120Hz was shown for the first time in the world at IBC2014.
RAI Italian broadcaster RAI will begin broadcasts in both 4K and 8K, coinciding with the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
France Télévisions France Télévisions trialled 8K over 5G at Roland garros. It demonstrated over 100 hours of live 8K coverage of the tennis in Paris. In partnership with Orange.
SES SES demonstrated an 8K ultra-high-definition signal broadcast directly to a Samsung TV with an integrated satellite receiver in Luxembourg. The 8K material, at 50 frames per second, was encoded in HEVC at a data rate of 70Mbps and carried on a sin-gle 33 MHz transponder as a DVB-S2 transmission.
Rakuten TV Rakuten TV, a global VOD service provider, plans to trial and launch 8K content in the second half of 2019, under a partnership with TV manufacturers.
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Although broadcasters and media companies are preoccupied with the challenges of making 4K and HDR work, the 8K
format will hit a major milestone in 2020 when NHK presents coverage of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo in high-frame-rate 8K.
The Japanese broadcaster has been preparing for this event for decades, working on development and implementation of an 8K production and satellite delivery system to support 8K public broadcasts. In addition to building out professional infrastructure, including camera systems to support 8K, NHK has helped drive development of the 8K consumer TV sets that audiences will need to view Tokyo 2020 broadcasts in all their 8K glory.
LG, Samsung, Sony, and TCL announced at CES 2019 that they’d be shipping 8K big-screen models to North American retailers this year. Still, for several reasons, the market will take some time to grow. For one, the adoption of 4K (also known as UHDTV1) consumer displays is still ongoing. It may be time soon for CE manufacturers to bring new premium TV sets to the market.
The higher resolution of 8K (UHDTV2) images aims at increasing the field of view by raising the resolution, and it therefore allows manufacturers to build larger TV sets while preserving image quality. The intention is to provide a more immersive viewing experience without degrading resolution. The 8K format’s recommended minimum display size is 65 inches. At this size the boost in resolution doesn’t deliver a significant difference for the viewer, but as the display gets bigger, the higher resolution of 8K over 4K does have an impact. In the case of VR and other immersive experiences, including gaming, 8K has a lot to offer and can support the high-quality implementation of such.
For now, however, there is little 8K content available outside of Japan. While NHK has Tokyo 2020 in its sights, few broadcasters or studios in other regions have commercial pressures or opportunities driving 8K adoption forward. There are, for example, no expectations that there will be increased revenue in an ad-supported distribution system just because 8K is being distributed. A new business model may be in order.
Terrestrial and satellite broadcasters in the US tend to favor an improved HD broadcast with higher bit rate and frame rate over 4K for broadcast. At the same time, most studios are creating content in 2K with little content being produced in native 4K, let alone 8K, to keep production costs down. Although some satellite broadcasters have broken into 4K broadcasting (eg, Korea’s KBS), the main medium for distribution of 4K is online. There are no signs that online distributors will adopt 8K in the near future.
While 8K cameras are available, much 8K production equipment is still in a relatively early stage of development. Production itself can be expensive, and most content producers face serious bandwidth constraints that would limit high-quality 8K distribution due to the use of increased compression. New compression technology under development could help to remedy some of these issues.
Although all major NLEs are already capable of supporting editing of 8K content, adoption of 8K TV sets may come more quickly than the creation of 8K content for them. This is true simply because of the high-quality, AI-powered upconversion mechanisms in 8K TV sets, which will be able to upconvert
HD or 4K content to 8K, redefining the sharpness possible from existing sources in order to give viewers vastly improved on-screen images and an extended field of view on larger TV sets.
Considering all of these factors, it appears that large-scale 8K content delivery is at least a decade away. When that time comes, and 8K is more of a reality for content producers and audiences worldwide, SMPTE Standards will be ready.
SMPTE was the first organisation to standardise UHDTV1 and UHDTV2 image formats, as well as immersive audio formats. While SMPTE ST 2110 was mainly developed for current live HD TV productions, the standards suite also can support higher frame rates and higher resolutions up to 16K.
The buzz over 8K at CES 2019 was considerable — and Kudos to NHK, which realised an incredible technological milestone in TV history by enabling 8K end-to-end workflows. So, while 8K may not become mainstream any time soon, it is starting to gain real traction, and undoubtedly has a bright future.
Thomas Bause Mason is Director of Standards Development, SMPTE
8K becomes a reality — for someBy Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE
8K TV
12 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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Television viewing is now much more than something that needs just a TV antenna or cable line. Over the past two decades, viewers have enjoyed
a plethora of new viewing options, from satellites to streaming and new services that take advantages of better connections that can deliver more choice and control.
The original ATSC Standard was set in 1995, before the availability of DVD players (not to mention Blu-Ray). The iPod wouldn’t even be a reality for another six years. And the DVB-T standard dates from about the same time period. DVB-T2 was a huge improvement, but that 10-year-old technology dates from the era of iPhone3.
Meanwhile, Moore’s Law has been chugging away each year reducing chip cost by half (or doubling capacity), mobile broadband penetration has exploded and Internet Protocol (IP) has taken over as the de facto language of the communications world.
The broadcast industry’s response to this rapid pace of technological change is the new ATSC 3.0 standard, now literally the best in the world.
Early in its conception, ATSC members determined that in order to
achieve true excellence the ATSC 3.0 system would have to be non-backward-compatible with the current ATSC 1.0 system, giving the freedom to design a system with all the newest technical developments.
At the physical layer level, the flexible nature of the “bootstrap” functionality offers unparalleled extensibility for the standard, a unique advantage of ATSC 3.0. As we have learned over and over again, technology just doesn’t stand still. The myriad combinations of modulation, coding and features of the ATSC 3.0 physical layer offer significant improvement over standards a decade old (or even older) and features such as Layered Division Multiplexing bring unheard of opportunities for mobility and hybrid services with tangible spectrum efficiency advantages.
ATSC 3.0 is well aligned with other communications technologies that are already in use today, and this reduces the complexity of implementation.
Certainly, better audio and video, more accessibility features, advanced emergency messaging, and a high capacity, robust, flexible physical layer are all key elements. In addition to those advancements, one of the key decisions for ATSC 3.0 was that ATSC members wanted the new system to align with Internet-based technologies. We envisioned a future of digital terrestrial TV broadcasting as an integral part of a global ecosystem that has embraced IP transport, web browser technologies, and app-based services.
ATSC 3.0 IP transport offers several advantages, but perhaps most interesting is that it integrates well with other IP networks, such as the Internet and cellular networks. A number of use
cases have been envisioned and implemented already.
Of course, content security is paramount for any IP network. ATSC members again turned to existing Internet technologies for a solution.
In this case Common Encryption (CENC) was chosen. CENC is used by many OTT streaming apps, and so many receive devices already understand CENC. The challenge was to devise a CENC system that works on unconnected devices as well as connected devices. ATSC members and implementers (including new ATSC member Google) have solved this use case and are now implementing it in the Phoenix Model Market and elsewhere.
ATSC members also selected Internet technologies for the interactivity system, which is based on technologies that are supported by the major web browsers running on laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones and smart TVs. This convergence can simplify receiver development and also allow broadcasters to tap into the rich ecosystem of web developers, including the skilled men and women they already employ in the digital departments of local TV stations.
Today, we see the successful deployment of ATSC 3.0 in South Korea with millions of receivers sold. At this year’s NAB Show, broadcasters announced plans to deploy ATSC 3.0 in 61 US TV markets over the next year - a move that will reach more than 70 percent of the US population. Those introductions coincide with the expected introductions at retail of the first US ATSC 3.0 TV receivers.
It’s an exciting time for Next Gen TV as broadcasters enter the global 21st century data-driven world.
ATSC 3.0 – “Best of the Best” for broadcasting’s futureATSC’s Madeleine Noland explains some of the thinking behind the key components of the new ATSC 3.0 standard
Opinion
14 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
Madeleine Noland is President of the Advanced Television Systems Committee
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Low latency streaming
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Florian Diederichsen, the CTO of DAZN, is one of many technology executives working in the streaming space who is excited about the
onset of low latency streaming.Speaking about low latency CMAF
(CMAF LL), Diederichsen said at Streaming Media’s London summit earlier this year, “It is something I really can’t wait for”.
He explained that DAZN has got lag down to 25 seconds on some devices, but that CMAF LL will help get it down to cable TV levels, which is where he wants to be. “It’s possible to stream fast, but hard to stream fast at good quality. We will probably be able to get safely down to seconds, but for product reasons we won’t necessarily do that…
but I’d rather have the latency to play around with.”
This proclamation is particularly welcome coming from the CTO of a major online sports video provider because the rise of OTT sports is by far the main reason why so many companies are pouring R&D efforts in this space. For live sports, latency is a big problem, with the often cited cases of people hearing neighbours cheering a goal next door before it has happened on their own screen.
With many high-value live TV events now being watched online, the additional delays introduced by an IP delivery system can have a significant impact on the viewing experience, particularly for live sports.
Thanks to the continued migration towards online video delivery and consumption, innovation here has been
coming for some time, with NAB 2017 standing out as a moment when vendors first came out in numbers with their low latency streaming options. The big technology driver to cut down latency at the time was using CMAF packaging (Content Media Application Format) and HTTP chunked transfer encoding. CMAF creates content that can be viewed in both HLS and MPEG-DASH, allowing a single packager output.
Things have moved forward since then. Despite having a single media container for both HLS and DASH, one of the main features introduced with CMAF is support for low latency streaming. This is because CMAF in itself does not actually reduce latency, but was created to bring together the HLS and MPEG-DASH formats in order to simplify online video delivery. So chunked CMAF can be seen as a low latency extension to the standard and CMAF-LL is a Flash-free, non-proprietary, standardised technology.
Also on the standards side, Apple during its recent WWDC19 (Worldwide Developers Conference) event announced low latency HLS, and it’s clear that different initiatives are underway to go for a standardised approach, or to have standardised technology that can help to get the latency down to something which is equivalent to broadcast.
“It takes years to establish a winner. We are moving into a phase where multiple approaches will coexist. Just look back at what has happened in streaming, it took a while for HLS and DASH to gain dominance. The same will happen here,” says Julien Signes of Synamedia
The goal everyone is working towards is for a real-time streaming workflow to match the latency of live broadcast, which is about 5-7 seconds from (stadium) camera to TV. Typically today viewers on standard OTT DASH or HLS will see the video some 45 seconds to a minute behind the broadcast feed.
Once streaming latency is cut down
Low latency
The quest for low latency gathers paceGoran Nastic reports on the latest development efforts to get to broadcast-level latency with streaming video
16 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
HEVC patent ownership distribution Source: CPA Global
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to size, it is expected to open new opportunities for not just live sports streaming, but also e-gaming, online gambling, VR and other interactive applications. It can then also be used by OTT players, and really all others broadcasters and service providers that offer video streaming, helping them attract and retain customers.
Moving only as fast as the slowest part of the chainAt NAB 2019, low latency demos were everywhere and one technology supplier told us it had a number of trials ongoing of a real commercial deployment of ultra-low latency CMAF.
However, things are never that simple in real life. As Fraunhofer explains in its technical article that follows this section, some open issues in the context of low latency OTT streaming with CMAF still remain. For example, ad insertion becomes very challenging as the ad splice points are usually signalled 4-6 seconds in advance.
And that’s just one small part of the whole piece. ‘A buffalo herd can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo’ comes to mind here and acts as a good analogy for solving the problem of latency from a holistic perspective.
To get to the levels talked about by vendors, and aspired to by service providers, requires an end-to-end (e2e)delivery system that can enable that - and that’s the real challenge.
As Synamedia argues in the next article, ‘zero’ latency is not so easy to do in practice, precisely for this reason. “The pitfall people fall into is they say
“I have a low delay encoder”. OK, that’s one piece of the equipment, but you also have the CDN and the player. The entire e2e chain has to support minimal delay otherwise you won’t reap the benefits,” Signes points out.
There are signs that more concerted developments are starting to take shape. This is why Apple’s support for low latency streaming with HLS (ALHLS) is significant. Instead of using HTTP 1.1 chunked transfer encoding which is widely supported on existing CDNs, Apples implementation requires HTTP/2 Server Push and additional logic on the CDN and media origins.
It’s not only about having one low latency encoder, a low latency packager and a low latency origin and a low latency CDN, but also the way in that all the different components are integrated together.
Moreover, optimising each of these for latency requires trade-offs in cost, quality and reach, so operators face a balancing act, as DAZN’s Diederichsen alluded to.
OTT delivery results in more inherent latency. The video stream traverses hundreds of nodes and an extensive number of systems from the production down to end user devices, and each of those systems introduces a small delay. Because e2e latency is a composite of many elements in and outside of network congestion, multiple factors and combinations can increase/decrease latency, such as encoding/decoding; edge server ping, load and CPU;
Forward Error Correction (FEC); player settings; and protocol used.
And then, the higher the format, the longer the latency simply because of the amount of data involved with buffering, meaning that the gradual emergence of 4K/HDR UHD services will have to be factored in.
Synamedia claims it is uniquely positioned in that has all the solutions needed - from the encoding, to the CDN right through to the player - but also that it is at the same time capable of optimising all the key elements in the workflow. This, ultimately, allows the company to minimise the delay, down to a range of 5-7 seconds (see next page for more details).
“People have to understand this is not an easy solution and they might have to change various components, it’s a massive e2e upgrade and investment, it’s not simply changing the pro�le bitrates or adding a logo somewhere,” notes Signes.
“Because it is so complex and involves the whole chain, to my knowledge there is not yet an e2e commercial deployment. But it will happen,” Signes promised, with 2020 expected to be the year for these first early deployments to be rolled out.
Once this happens, internet viewers will be able to finally cheer that match winning goal at the same time as their neighbour on good old broadcast TV. Synamedia can be found on stand 14.C41 at IBC 2019
Low latency
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 17
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CSI: What’s driving this industry push to get streaming latency as low as possible?Julien Signes: It’s a hot topic for several
reasons. It’s a true market requirement. Why? Because for live sports OTT it is becoming important. People may
not want to have access to sports all the time but they may want to access a particular event and OTT can provide a good solution in those cases. Taking video content into an online environment brings a lot of pluses in terms of metadata and interactivity, but the negative side is you may well have a delay of up to a minute compared to cable or satellite distribution.
Ideally, you want to synchronise your OTT delivery pipeline with live to traditional delivery. For live sports especially, this has become a must- have requirement.
But it is not so easy to do in practice. One of the reasons is because it’s an end-to-end (e2e) chain. �e pitfall people fall into is they say “I have a low delay encoder”. OK, that’s one piece of the equipment, but you also have the CDN and the player. �e entire e2e chain has to support minimal delay otherwise you won’t reap the bene�ts.
I think that’s where we as Synamedia are uniquely positioned because we have an end-to-end solution, from the encoding, to the CDN right through to the player, that enables us to minimise the delay.
How low do we need to go? I have heard from several service providers that zero is a nice goal, but not necessarily the target.JS: I think you can take it in steps. Right now, it’s a minute versus 5-10 seconds, which is a big gap. If you tell operators
who have latency of a minute that they can have 15 seconds they would be happy with that 4x improvement.
I would say ideally you would like to synchronise both - and that’s exactly what we are showing at IBC. It is the same as when we launched HD: no one was asking for 4K, but then people saw it looked better and then HDR came along.
It’s a question of delta to me. �e �rst goal is to reduce it; the ultimate goal is to match it. Elke Hungenaert: I think there is also a shi� occurring. Historically, if you look at traditional broadcast, low latency was a requirement for live sport events. Also, in regions where there was a lot of competition, for example in Latin America between DTH and other operators, even shaving o� a few hundred milliseconds was good enough because they wanted to deliver live sports earlier than their competition did. In North American cable, on the other hand, there was very little competition and so it was never a big focus for them.
I think with the OTT players coming in and the competitive landscape changing, then the ability to deliver your live sports earlier than an OTT provider becomes a major plus. So even if it wasn’t that much of an issue before in some regions, it has become (more) important now. Today it’s a competitive di�erentiator.
Who do you think technically has the upper hand in implementing this e2e chain? Are OTT providers worse off due to their lack of control in terms of QoS/QoE?EH: I would say those who control the pipe end-to-end can master it best. Because there is processing involved in every piece of the chain. For example, there may be an extra delay introduced when getting it onto the CDN node. If you are not in control of the CDN, then you are not in control of the e2e network and are dependent on these third parties.
18 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
Low latency
Achieving low latency streaming end-to-endCSI spoke with Synamedia’s Elke Hungenaert and Julien Signes about what it takes to reach low latency across the chain and how Synamedia can help
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www.csimagazine.com September 2019 19
Low latency
I don’t think the latency control is specifically related to the software processing of the ABR chain because our product portfolio in broadcast is now following the same technologies there. It’s really about what you do to get every processing step as optimised as possible: looking at how clients actually process whatever they fetch as input, and; whether it is DASH or HLS – this has a major impact on the overall e2e latency that customers experience.
Where is the industry as a whole currently in its quest for low latency and the e2e goal?EH: I would say we are very close to getting initial deployments. It’s a given that customers select vendors that can deliver on the promise. End-to-end testing is ongoing, but because it a�ects the whole e2e ecosystem it typically takes time because in the end if you o�er your content on a plethora of devices you need to do this testing across the board. �ere’s quite an extensive test requirement.
You could say everything that goes up to the house is pretty much under control, but then the big unknown is in the home, with the WiFi conditions, how do you tackle scenarios on a bad network day? How do you tackle too many devices needing to share streaming bandwidth at the same time? How do clients react if instead of fetching 3 segments which the Apple spec recommends today, they just fetch chunks and the network conditions change? How does that a�ect the behaviour of the client and how do clients need to adjust to that user experience?
Getting robustness into the ecosystem is what is preventing those full or large scale deployments today. �at’s why we are still in a proof-of-concept stage.
Can you give us more details into Synamedia’s solutions, support services etc in this area and how you are helping operators reduce streaming latency?
JS: We are one of the only companies that to have it all - the encoder piece, the CDN distribution piece, as well as access to the player through our In�nite platform. If you look at others in the market, none of them has has all the 3 pieces together, which puts us in a strong position with operators. We have showed this in our demonstrations by touching every part of this ecosystem with those 3 major components.
�is is very important because until there is an e2e standardised solution and a way to do this in an interoperable fashion, the best way to do this initially is to have one e2e solution integration and that’s exactly what we have done.
EH: We optimise every piece in that chain. For example, because this is HTTP IP delivery where we talk ABR we support HTTP 1.1 so we support chunk transfer encoding. Let’s say we have a packager or origin (server) in the chain, then as soon as a chunk is available, as opposed to waiting for the whole segment to become available, it will start downloading so it will already start processing, for example if the DRM needs to happen. We support this type of technology on each and every piece of our CDN, origin and packager products.
We have implemented low latency CMAF in our own product line and we also support chunk encoding on our virtual DCM products in combination with CMAF DASH delivery. And we also work with optimised clients, depending on other metrics, for example network conditions and so on.
If you look at that optimised chain and you are o�ering a traditional ABR delivery, then latency can actually go down to 5-7 seconds across the whole e2e chain. We optimise the encoding delay, we make sure the packager, encryption, origin, CDN and even the multicast ABR just take one chunk in, then the player will either download a chunk, or perhaps even 2-5 chunks depending on the network conditions, but ensuring all the time that there is no bu�ering or stalling on the video. �at’s
how we get to 5-7 second delays, down from 30-60 seconds, depending on the segments you are reaching.
Given the variables involved, what’s the challenge, or the trade off, in trying to achieve such low latency across the chain when making these optimisations? EH: �e big thing is the in-house network conditions. �e big contributor in traditional broadcast is the encoder. We can encode with a delay of just a second, but then the quality will not be what the service provider expects and the viewing experience will be poor. �ere’s de�nitely a trade o� to be made.JS: In the encoding space, people usually talk about bandwidth and quality but delay is a third pillar. If you can increase delay you can increase quality at a given bit rate, there are 3 interdependent variables. If you want to push the encoding to deliver a lower delay, lower than say the 2-3 seconds of traditional broadcast-quality encoders, then you will start to chip away quality of the video at the same bitrate. �at’s one element.
Even though each step of the way everything can be optimised, we are still in a best-e�ort type of network; we are talking OTT, and we are dependent on the quality of that underlying network.
What can we expect from Synamedia and the market next year when it comes to low latency streaming?JS: You need to encourage people to do trials because technologies are starting to mature. People have to understand this is not an easy solution and they might have to change various components, it’s a massive e2e upgrade and investment, it’s not simply changing the pro�le bitrates or adding a logo somewhere. But user demand is getting strong enough that for providers to embrace it.
In summary, we certainly hope to be undertaking some deployments e2e in 2020. That is our goal.
16-19_Synamedia-V2.indd 5 29/08/2019 12:54:51
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Untitled-4 1 28/08/2019 16:19:56
HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) are the two main formats for adaptive media
streaming. HLS and DASH offer support for a new media file format called Common Media Application Format (CMAF). Despite having a single media container for both HLS and DASH, one of the main features introduced with CMAF is support for low latency streaming.
Common latencies of the different distribution channels Compared to other distribution channels like broadcast or managed IPTV (multicast), classic OTT live streaming introduces very high latencies. While a satellite feed is usually 4-5 seconds behind real-time, standard HLS and DASH streams
introduce latencies of up to 30 seconds. As shown in Figure 1 this is a significant problem when it comes to live streaming of sports content. Viewers watching the game via satellite or terrestrial distribution channels will see the deciding scenes like goals much earlier than viewers consuming the content via standard OTT DASH or HLS.
Besides classic sports streaming, low latency delivery is also relevant for streamer-chat interaction on eSports streaming platforms like Twitch as well as for synchronised playback of broadcast and broadband content in HbbTV.
CMAF chunks for low latency OTT streamingCMAF introduces the concept of “chunks”. A chunk can be considered as a small segment inside the classic 2-6 second ISOBMFF segments. On a high level classic ISOBMFF segments consist of one “moof” box and one
“mdat” box. With CMAF chunks the segment now has multiple of such boxes allowing the client to access the media data before the segment is completely finished. The benefits of the chunked mode become more obvious when looking at a concrete example as detailed in Figure 2 (on the next page).
Let us assume we have 8 second segments and we are currently 3 seconds into segment number four. For classic media segments this leaves us with two options:
• Option 1: Since segment four is not completed we start with segment three. That way we end up 11 seconds behind the live edge, 8 seconds coming from segment three and 3 seconds coming from segment four.
• Option 2: We wait for segment four to be finished and immediately start downloading and playing it. We end up with 8 seconds latency and a waiting time of 5 seconds.
Now with CMAF chunks on the other hand we are able to play segment four before it is completely available. In the example above we have CMAF chunks with a duration of 1 second leading to eight chunks per segment. Let’s assume only the first chunk contains an IDR frame and therefore we always need to start the playback from the beginning of a segment. Being three seconds into segment four leaves us with 3 seconds latency. That’s much better than what we achieved with classic segments. We could also increase the playback rate for the first chunks and play even closer to the live edge. However, it is important to keep in mind that low latency streaming has a negative influence on our media buffer. Getting closer to the live edge will result in smaller media buffers and less robust playback with regards to network fluctuations.
CMAF low latency with dash.jsThe open source player dash.js was one of the first players to implement support for CMAF low latency streaming. Let us take a closer look at
Tech corner: CMAF LL
Low latency live streaming with CMAFBy Fraunhofer’s Daniel Silhavy, Stefan Pham
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 21
Figure 1: Viewers on standard OTT DASH or HLS see goals later than traditional channels
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how CMAF low latency works within dash.js.
Signal low latency in the manifest. First of all we need a way to signal the client that our segments are chunked and available prior to being complete. In a low latency DASH manifest we can identify two new attributes:
• @availabilityTimeComplete:
Specifies if all Segments of all associated Representation are complete at the adjusted availability start time. If the value is set to false, then it may be inferred by the client that the segment is available at its announced location prior being complete.
• @availabilityTimeOffset (ATO): Provides the time how much earlier
segments are available compared to their computed availability start time (AST)
By setting @availabilityTimeComplete to “false” we tell the client that the segments are available prior to being complete. Using the @availabilityTimeOffset (ATO) we can specify how much earlier they are available. In our example the segments have a duration of 8 seconds and the ATO is set to 7 seconds. This means that we have a chunk duration of 1 second and the first segment is available 7 seconds before its usual completion time.
Calculating and updating the segment availability. In dash.js a lot of different processes are running in parallel. One of these processes is responsible for constantly updating the availability window of the media segments. The player uses this information to determine which segment to load at which time. The basic flow of the update process is depicted in Figure 3 (on the left).
The PlaybackController triggers an event every 50ms telling the RepresentationController to update its internal segment availability range. The RepresentationController uses the TimelineConverter to get the current segment range values and updates its internal range attribute:
voRepresentation.segmentAvailabilityRange = range;
The TimelineConverter is also the class which uses the new @availabilityTimeOffset from the MPD. Without going into too much detail the offset subtracted from the current wall clock time becomes smaller with a larger @availabilityTimeOffset:
const endOffset = segmentDuration - availabilityTimeOffset;
Requesting the right segments. Now that we know how the player updates the
Tech corner: CMAF LL
22 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
Figure 2: Benefits of chunked mode in one example
Figure 3: Basic flow of the update process
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internal segment range state we can take a closer look at how the segments requests are generated in Figure 4 (above).
For means of simplicity the flow illustrated above only shows the communication up to the point where we actually use the segment availability range described in the section before. The ScheduleController periodically checks for new fragments to download every 100ms. It issues a request to the NextFragmentRequestRule which calls the DashAdapter for a fragment request. The DashAdaptercontacts the DashHandler which calls an internal update function leading to a getSegment request on the TemplateSegmentsGetter. Depending on the type of the manifest the getSegment request can also be issued on a SegmentTimeline specific Getter class. Finally the TemplateSegmentsGetter uses the segmentAvailabilityRange we calculated previously:
const availabilityWindow = representation.segmentAvailabilityRange;At this point the program flow leads us
back to the ScheduleController which executes the fragment request using the FragmentModel.
Outlook and conclusionThis pretty much concludes our dive into CMAF, low latency streaming and the corresponding implementation in dash.js. Some final remarks: In order to use the low latency feature, the browser running dash.js needs to support the Fetch API and HTTP 1.1 chunked transfer encoding. The combination of both allows us to access the mediadata prior to the media segment being completely available.
Some open issues in the context of low latency OTT streaming with CMAF still remain. Ad insertion becomes very challenging as the ad splice points are usually signalled 4-6 seconds in advance. If the client is playing at a live edge of 3 seconds, the ad insertion components have less time to request and insert the ads. Moreover, accurate bandwidth prediction is an issue as the segments are delivered as chunks. The connection to the CDN remains open and the complete segment is
transferred in small byte portions. In addition, DRM license acquisition can add further latency as a lot of clients playing at the live edge will request a license at the same time.
During WWDC19 Apple announced support for low latency streaming with HLS (ALHLS). Instead of using HTTP 1.1 chunked transfer encoding which is widely supported on existing CDNs, Apples implementation requires HTTP/2 Server Push and additional logic on the CDN and media origins.
About the authors: Daniel Silhavy (left), Project Manager, Future Applications and Media, Fraunhofer FOKUS Stefan Pham (right), Senior Project Manager, Fraunhofer FOKUS
Figure 4: dash.js: Generating the segment requests
Tech corner: CMAF LL
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Emerging technologies have always played a vital role in the advance of the television sector but perhaps at no other time has the pace,
complexity and scale of change been so transformational.
We are now preparing for the convergence of the physical and digital driven by 5G and the rise of IoT.
Internet video has radicalised the viewing experience from a selection of scheduled programs to effectively an infinite selection of content available anytime on any device, anywhere.
Consumers are installing various apps on their devices and personalising their viewing experience, anytime, anywhere, on any device. Such new viewing habits are driving the growth of on-demand and time-shifted video as well as multiscreen TV and ushering in a new era where unicast and two- way interactive video dominates traditional broadcast.
According to Intel, immersive applications which don’t even exist today could generate $67 billion a year by 2028 – equivalent to the value of the entire global media market in 2017.
It will be a significant challenge to achieve this future in an effective, timely, and cost-efficient manner using traditional video delivery platforms. An entirely new approach is needed, one that enables reuse of infrastructure, is based on open interfaces, and uses the cloud to deliver scalable, virtualised, federated services.
As the system multiplies in complexity there’s a greater need to ensure standards are in place to guarantee that the viewer remains the top priority. As television continues its transformation into an era of universal IP delivery, the resilience and quality of experience of broadcast television must be maintained.
Initiatives such as the DVB Project’s DVB-I, which builds on the work of HbbTV, are intended to advance the
standardisation of OTT and TV into a smooth viewer experience. The future of television for Europe is also a major focus of the ITU.
The DTG supports these developments and argues that if we are to begin to map the future vision for TV across all devices for the benefit of all stakeholders we need an ordered framework. This can be divided into three broad areas of technical activity:
The first is Quality of Interoperability. Does something work and does it do what it should? In order to ensure interoperability across systems and devices, there should be a constant conversation with manufacturers to balance the business requirements of both service providers who receive ongoing revenues and CE manufacturers who do not. To ease the complexities in interoperability is there a standard set of measurement metrics the industry can use to test, diagnose and solve faults?
Quality of Experience not only emphasises the merit of basic operation but the value of attributes that will provide, for example, the best HDR, the richest colour range, the optimum picture and sound. How easy is it for viewers to control these parameters? What are the minimum true end-to-end requirements to deliver a consistent and reliable viewer experience? All of these combine to push the industry to deliver the very best for the consumer.
The third key area is Quality of Security. With analysts estimating more than 420 million connected devices in
UK homes by 2020, the cybersecurity risks for citizens has never been higher. What’s more, it is smart devices such as TVs and home speakers which are among the most vulnerable to attack, according to the DCMS. Every connection that we make creates a potential digital doorway and so cybersecurity is becoming a correspondingly ubiquitous issue. The DTG endorses the DCMS’ Code of Practice which shifts the onus for secure internet-connected devices and apps from consumers to manufacturers, designers and suppliers.
Innovation in CE devices, in partnership with service providers, will shape the future television experience. Understanding emerging developments in hardware and software, together with a view on how these might be implemented by the TV device sector are critical if the viewer experience is to be protected, and industry and government are to derive the maximum economic and social value of the unique opportunity that lies ahead.
To download the DTG IP Manifesto go to www.dtg.org.uk/dtg-ipmanifesto/
Richard Lindsay-Davies is CEO, Digital TV Group
Ensuring a better future TV experience By Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO, DTG
Industry column
24 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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What are the main industry challenges and consumer pain points with video services?Let’s start with the consumer. There is an abundance of great - and hence expensive - content available. The whole point is how easy the end-users can find, discover and consume that great content. The degree of eliminating friction in that experience is key.
In the industry, we had the telecom operators launching digital TV offerings with linear, catch-up and on-demand offerings, followed by the success of a handful of OTT SVOD providers on all kinds of platforms.
We now are noticing new ways to reach the eyeballs with the aim to harvest a direct relationship with end-users: Direct-To-Consumer or D2C.
The industry challenge is that we need to reduce the friction for the end-user to discover all the content and in the mean time we have the numbers-game for the providers that have made investments in platforms plus content and that are trying to leverage the new gold: consumer data. Which is by definition a numbers-game.
How can Android TV as a platform help address these?Android TV addresses the issue for the consumer to have a full suite of entertainment services integrated in one platform. That is video and all kinds of entertainment services that are part of the Google Play store. Android TV as a platform has the potential of seamlessly integrating managed video content such as linear TV channels, catch-up and VOD, D2C providers, 3rd Party SVOD providers such as Netflix as well as unmanaged content from e.g. YouTube.
For Service Providers, Android TV also brings a process that accelerates the time-to-market and hence the time-to-money. That process of pre-certification brings predictability and speed to launch an abundance of attractive entertainment services.
What does Zappware bring to the Android TV ecosystem?With Zappware we tried to leverage that potential of Android TV. We ported our NeXX 4.0 user experience on Android TV and were among the first in Europe to deploy the solution in a record-time with WIND Hellas in Greece on a hybrid STB.
Our Telecom Operator customer was able to win market share quickly by launching a great User eXperience. The UX defined as much more than only the clean User Interface across devices. It is not only a nice design with all the best practices in terms of ergonomics, but it’s also about simplicity and openness. Simplicity across the whole customer journey: self-install, easiness to activate your Netflix account, get
your favorite content appearing in your welcome screen and the ease to discover great content via voice search, up until a smooth e-billing integration for the full entertainment proposition.
As Zappware we try to bring technology innovations together in a meaningful way. Meaningful for the end-user and for the service provider. In the above case we are operating our Zappware back-office system off a very scalable Amazon AWS environment.
What are the key considerations for operators deploying Android TV?The key consideration is to cherish HDMI 1 and bring relevancy to the eyeballs. The viewer engagement is the first step, combining seamlessly all content types including OTT in one UX. Research has shown that a great User eXperience is an enabler to dominate HDMI 1.
Second step is making sure the tools are in place to optimise that eXperience moving forward by applying all the learnings you capture on the viewership and related services together. All those learnings combined enable operators to optimise the UX continuously and provide triggers to discover great stuff and push personalised up-sell triggers to the viewers. The above considerations remain valid in any deployment. I see Android TV as an accelerator. Embrace it and leverage the openness the platform brings to serve your customers in a cost-efficient way.
Zappware can be found on stand 1.A81 at IBC 2019
Q&ASponsored
CSI talks to Laurent Van Tornhout, VP Product & Marketing, Zappware, about delivering a frictionless user experience and the role Android TV can play
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Interest in blockchain among broadcasters and video service providers is increasing, but confusion still reigns over where and when it is worth deploying the technology and what the
benefits would be. This is hardly surprising at a time when the only widespread proven use case for blockchain is in cryptocurrency, with the field still riven by hype and unrealistic expectations such as talk of it providing the guts of a new Internet.
Nevertheless, the blockchain features that enabled cryptocurrencies and especially blockchain to take off also hold great potential for other use cases that call for secure distributed tamper-resistant transactions that are faithfully recorded and avoid need for a central authority. All that is essential for bitcoin and looking increasingly attractive for media distribution in a fragmented content world where consumers face the prospect of having to take out multiple subscriptions to access all the programming they want.
There has also been interest on the advertising side where the appeal lies again in blockchain’s ability to bypass any middle layer in transactions, as well as to facilitate secure transmission of data between consumers, service providers and advertisers. Blockchain promises to underpin this data transmission in such a way as to give each party control over their domain, while conforming with increasingly stringent privacy regulations, notably
the European Union (EU) GDPR, which has set a wider global agenda for protecting personal data. This data handling capability also holds appeal in content distribution, especially for content owners and smaller service providers, which could gain from being able to aggregate audience information securely from multiple sources.
Building blocksBlockchain in essence is a secure distributed database where all records are replicated among multiple end points rather than residing at a central location. This gives it greater security against attack since many records would need corrupting, but also presents various scaling problems.
The original blockchain design is attributed to a group of individuals, some of whose identity is unknown, under the fictitious name of Satoshi Nakamoto. The first problem solved was to specify a distributed database or ledger where all replicated copies of a record were consistent and yet would not be bogged down excessively during the update process. When a user initiates a transaction, the request is broadcast to all nodes via a peer to peer (P2P) mechanism, so that both the action itself and the user can be vetted and authenticated using established algorithms. If the transaction is accepted, it is combined with all other relevant pending transactions that might overlap in their access to or writing of data to create a new block. That block is then added to the chain and becomes immutable at that stage – hence the
name blockchain. Before the block is added any actions such as data reads would be performed on the state of the database prior to any of those pending transactions being executed.
This was the fundamental technology but as use cases have emerged, as well as experience from the field, it has had to be refined. The first such refinement came at the beginning with the obvious requirement for cryptocurrency operation of avoiding the “double spending” problem where the same token can be spent multiple times by copying it. This has a similar effect to counterfeiting coins or banknotes of artificially devaluing the coinage and thereby stoking inflation.
The mythical Nakamoto was also first to implement a blockchain system resistant to double spending attacks by incorporating the so-called Proof of Work system that had been invented well over a decade earlier in 1993, which only allows transactions through where the service requester can demonstrate that some work, usually computer processing, has been done. This can also be used to combat other breaches such as denial of service attacks and spam, by identifying their unauthorised origins on the basis of work done, or lack of it.
However, no security measure is infallible and proof of work systems in blockchain rely on the distributed nature of the system in order to reduce the chance of any malicious component passing the test by able to perform work across enough components to fool the defences. This is the basis of the “51% attack” where a group of malicious players, referred to as “miners” take control of more than half the systems compute machinery so that they can demonstrate they have done enough work.
In fact, an attacker can then take control of the ledger and the whole system’s security unravels because it is dependent on strength of numbers. Although bitcoin itself has been immune from such 51% attacks,
Blockchain
Blockchain invades broadcasting by stealthPhilip Hunter looks at the potential use cases of blockchain technology and latest projects taking place in the broadcast space
26 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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Ethereum Classic, the 18th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, has succumbed, so it is a real concern. That prompts Greg Burns, Senior Business Development Manage at Arqiva and an advocate of blockchain in broadcasting generally, to question whether the technology was yet demonstrably secure enough to be trusted for critical applications. Although larger systems such as bitcoin itself are more robust because their users are more fragmented, even they are potentially vulnerable to collusion attacks where multiple players pool their resources to get closer to that magic 51% mark.
Combating such attacks proactively before they occur, in most cases, has been a challenge for cryptocurrencies. “Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have gone through multiple evolutions and the changes they involved to the code base and network operation were not always unanimously supported,” says Burns. “The result has sometimes been forks of the chain, which did not usually serve users well. When you’re relying on a blockchain for something critical to your business, you must have absolute faith that whoever is running it will evolve in ways that are in your best interest. Collusion attacks are interesting and raise questions about
how well the various consensus approaches work in the real world. I think lots more work needs to be done to understand the issues related to collusion to understand the limits of current practices.”
By forks, Burns is referring to the fact that in a large distributed system such as bitcoin it is hard to ensure absolute uniformity in use of the technology which can result in inconsistent results. Updates are necessary to combat bugs and sometimes this leads to a permanent fork, such as the break between Ethereum into Ethereum Classic to overcome an earlier bug and yet which led to the successful 51% attack on the latter. That raised questions early in 2019 over the safety of smaller cryptocurrencies and indirectly is likely to hold up the advance of blockchain into broadcasting, according to Burns.
Ultimately though Burns is convinced that distributed ledger technology will have a profound impact on broadcasting and that the current security and scaling issues will come to be seen as teething troubles, albeit lasting longer than proponents expected or hoped.
“I think adoption of blockchain for broadcasting may be slow, but when it does occur, the impact may be significant and profound. I also think
they will be very subtle.” He notes that already private distributed ledgers had been quite widely deployed almost beneath the radar and that the technology would continue to infiltrate broadcasting infrastructures gradually.
A similar line is taken by another blockchain enthusiast for video, CableLabs’ Distinguished Security Technologist, Steve Goeringer, who is also concerned over the impact of scaling on compute resources.
“One of the major drawbacks of blockchain, particularly when deployed with proof-of-work mechanisms, is the huge compute resources needed to solve the crypto-puzzles which will allow a new block to be added,” says Goeringer. “The environmental impact of such heavy compute usage is not yet understood but could well be catastrophic.”
As Goeringer points out, the proof-of-stake mechanism has evolved to circumvent this scaling problem, but this in turn raises new issues. Proof of work is computationally intensive because it entails solving complex cryptographic puzzles to verify pending transactions and create new blocks accordingly for addition to the chain.
Proof of stake (PoS) aims to achieve the same goals by instead validating transactions and users on the basis of randomly selected properties they have, such as age or wealth. But this in turn can lead towards centralisation and hierarchy, with decisions based on account balances favouring wealthier participants, so instead alternative or additional measures have been devised, such as imposing fines for unauthorised transactions, perhaps scaling these to the wealth of participants in the spirit of progressive taxation. But this is all work in progress, leading Goeringer to conclude that “the use of PoS in public blockchains is uncertain.”
Early momentum for Comcast-backed BlockgraphSuch considerations have not inhibited the one major deployment so far of
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blockchain by a broadcaster or operator, Comcast’s Blockgraph unveiled in 2018, for sharing data among service providers, agencies and brands for addressable advertising. Rather as with some of its earlier great initiatives such as RDK, Comcast is trying to be a godfather for pay TV with its averred aim of making Blockgraph into the “identity layer” for the whole TV industry. Accordingly, it has sought partners and found some, such as Viacom and Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales arm of Charter Communications’ Spectrum TV brand (formerly Time Warner Cable). Meanwhile the technology has been trialled at Comcast’s own subsidiary NBCUniversal ahead of incorporation into its addressable platform sometime this year, scheduled to be followed by deployment at Viacom.
Comcast appears determined to build momentum around Blockgraph, having in May 2019 named ex-Google executive Utpal Kalita as VP, engineering and chief technology officer for Blockgraph, reporting to the division’s general manager Jason Manningham, who has been keen to emphasise the importance of consumer privacy to win trust and therefore gain access to valuable data for addressable advertising.
Blockgraph will depend for its success on scale to provide a sufficiently rich repository of data and that in turn hinges on Comcast making this the only show in town. This point is touched on by another Blockgraph partner, Pubitalia, the advertising division of Italian pay TV operator Mediaset, which is owned jointly by France’s Vivendi and Italian investment firm Fininvest.
“Since Blockgraph is a peer-to-peer network, the greater the adoption by the TV industry, the greater the potential depth and scale of its data insights,” agrees the company’s GM for Adtech and Business Development, Paola Colombo.
Such convergence around Blockgraph would, however, raise the paradox that while being based on decentralised blockchain technology it would by its very nature be centralised in its management with protocols and choice of encryption technology under the control of Comcast and its partners.
A role for Blockchain in content distribution?The early momentum gained by Blockgraph has prompted some analysts, such as Rethink Technology Research, to consider that advertising rather than, say, content marketplaces featuring micropayments will be first to take up blockchain seriously. However, Burns suggests that blockchain-based systems might have greater appeal in developing markets, where prospective subscribers lack access to regular banking systems.
“In markets where credit is not available to all potential viewers, new and creative ways to entitle consumers to content is of major interest,” says Burns. “Coins or tokens, earned by users who do things such as promote platforms on social media, partake in gaming or refer friends to join, can be issued and managed securely through blockchain technology. The virtual currency, specific to the OTT platform, can then be used to rent movies,
purchase pay-per-view sport or subscribe to box sets.”
Blockchain could also feature for video distribution in peer to peer mechanisms for local distribution around the network edge, exploiting consumers’ own resources as caches with scope for efficiency and core network bandwidth savings.
“One particularly interesting use case for blockchain is for ultra-local, peer-to-peer content distribution,” says Goeringer, who explains: “A selection of the most-viewed content for an SVoD service could be stored on an individual subscriber’s PC or laptop and maybe, one day, smartphone, and be served up on-demand to another subscriber very close by through a WiFi or broadband connection. Blockchain could be used as the secure database behind such a service, authenticating users, finding locally-stored content and even compensating subscribers when their storage is used. Such an application would be analogous to Napster peer-to-peer music file sharing but this time on a legal, trackable basis.”
As Goeringer notes though, this use case is only theoretical at present and has not as far as we know been considered seriously by providers of P2P CDNs. It does highlight the point that with very few exceptions such as Comcast’s Blockgraph, these are very early days for blockchain in broadcasting, even though evidence of the great potential is accumulating.
Blockchain
28 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
“I think adoption of blockchain for broadcasting may be slow, but when it does occur, the impact may be significant and profound.”
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What are the key trends you see taking place in the video space today?When it comes to creating a complete customer experience, companion OTT services are becoming more and more important. And with the wide variety of customer devices in use, along with online and offline video consumption, a fragmented environment has to be supported.
Investments are being made into new infrastructure designed to create high-speed offerings in the most cost-effective way. The remote PHY architecture, for example, has been embraced by the cable industry to support higher bandwidth per subscriber, and telcos are continuing to invest in network capacity and 5G, to a large extent driven by video use.
Targeted advertising is becoming increasingly important as an additional revenue stream, not only for broadcasters, but also for telcos and cable operators in cooperation with content owners.
There is a strong drive towards virtualisation and cloud, including
hybrid approaches. This also connects to orchestration; managing resources and infrastructure in a flexible and automated way is an important tool for simultaneously increasing productivity and quality.
We see strong interest from service providers in analysing and assuring the service quality and the customer experience as these changes are made. Doing so is a key factor in cost effectiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
These changes in consumption, infrastructure, monetisation and orchestration will have a major impact on the industry, blurring the lines between telco, cable and broadcaster. Any solution must embrace the challenge of supporting service providers in these changing times.
With the move towards online video, there is much work around achieving broadcast-quality QoS/QoE for OTT services. What are some of the main considerations to keep in mind for service providers? To succeed, we believe that solutions and processes need to work across traditional silos and teams and provide real-time insights across the complete service-delivery chain, from head-end to subscriber.
To assure service quality and to really understand how the customer is experiencing and using a service, the best approach is a unified end-to-end monitoring, analytics and visualisation solution. This must cover the entire service delivery in real time with in-depth KPIs and metrics; from encoding and packaging, through CDNs and the ISP, to STBs, apps and devices.
This will provide far superior results when compared to fragmented and siloed analytics systems based on limited metrics.
With a solution such as Agama’s in place, service providers have the foundations for providing excellent services in a cost-effective way.
What role can Artificial Intelligence /machine learning play in improving the network and overall end-user experience?AI technology is used in many different areas, for instance in content discovery, in operational support and problem discovery and in video analysis to extract metadata.
Agama uses AI and machine learning to provide self-learning anomaly detection for example. This has several benefits. Firstly, triggers for an alert can be made context aware. If the number of active subscribers suddenly drops, for example, it matters greatly if it is Friday early evening or four in the morning on Tuesday. Secondly, by getting just anomalous situations flagged, the number of false positives is reduced, making the NOC more efficient and quicker at resolving actual incidents.
The winners in the streaming market will be the ones who have access to the right type of high-quality data and the ability to draw the right conclusions from it. Here AI and automated analytics will be key to delivering the best customer experience as efficiently as possible.
Visit the Agama team at IBC, stand 5.B72, to see a demo and to discuss joint projects. For more information,also visit www.agama.tv
Q&AAdvertorial
Mikael Dahlgren, CEO of Agama Technologies, talks through video trends, OTT QoE and using AI to improve the user experience
...with Agama
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After decades of digging proprietary moats around customer premises equipment (CPE) to lock out competing content offerings
and control the consumer experience, the pendulum has swung in an entirely new direction. It seems increasingly clear today that long term success and profitability for network service providers (NSPs) will hinge on creating more open, more intelligent and more integrated platforms that allow a growing variety of value-added services to be mixed and matched according to subscribers’ desires.
The result: a new generation of set-top box (STB) technologies is entering the market that features widely used and accepted platforms -- such as Android TV -- which also leverages the latest generation of System on Chip (SoC) technologies to run sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications.
According to analysts from Ovum, AI is already in the process of transforming
the TV-user interface. AI represents an opportunity for NSPs to create new business opportunities. Ovum analysts believe that AI enabled services will become the new battleground for large tech companies -- such as Amazon and Google - as the fight for connected home customers rages on.
Adding value through intelligent integration“The move to more open and more intelligent CPE has broad ramifications for NSPs and their customers,” says Brian Jentz, Senior Director of Product Management at Technicolor.
“Once you have these powerful STB engines sitting in your home, it becomes a natural integration platform for applications and services that are outside the delivery of standard linear video content,” he explains.
This is particularly true as Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices permeate the home to provide a wide range of both specific and integrated services.
“Take internet-based security cameras in the home as an example. They can be used to monitor what is going on within and around your home. But with high-powered intelligent STB engines
currently being deployed by NSPs, consumers can add layers of value-added security by overlaying facial recognition and motion detection functionality onto the information that is being captured and processed by these cameras,” he says.
Moreover, these services can be extended to be accessed and managed seamlessly by other devices -- including smartphones, tablets and computers -- to optimise each consumer’s experience.
“The possibilities are growing because the community of talented and innovative professionals is growing. Android has become a common platform across mediums. As a result, we now have access to a large base of software developers, designers and systems integrators. It’s becoming increasingly plausible to bring a rich array of intelligent algorithms quickly to market,” says Jentz.
Keeping sensitive usage data in the homeThe power and intelligence of these CPE technologies creates opportunities to strengthen the performance of edge computing operations as well, points out Sylvain Philippe, Product Manager at Technicolor. While many applications will have to access resources in the cloud, a lot of the data generated by these new value-added services can stay in the home. This addresses important privacy and security concerns held by many consumers.
“At Technicolor we are working with NSPs to limit the amount of data that needs to go to the cloud by storing and processing the data in the connected home’s CPE. This means that sensitive information -- such as voice and facial recognition data -- is not pushed to the cloud. This is a very positive consequence of having more power and intelligence in the home,” explains Philippe.
As a result, Technicolor is adding more compute power on smaller form factors to help NSPs deliver on this promise to subscribers.
Advertorial feature
Android TV drives rapid adoption of open and AI-enabled set top box technology in the connected homeNew intelligent services create new value propositions for subscribers and new revenue generation opportunities for network service providers
30 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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Advertorial feature
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“We’re increasing the performance of central processing units (CPUs) and graphical processing units (GPUs) by over 50 percent in the generation of STB products that we are bringing to market this year. And yet, we are fitting this substantially increased power into a form factor that’s 30 percent smaller,” Jentz says.
The increase in power is contributing to major improvements in how consumers are able to manage their connected home experience using more intuitive and sophisticated voice assistant technologies.
“The use of interactive voice technologies to improve the user interface [UI] and user experience [UX] in the connected home is going through an extremely exciting period of innovation,” says Pierre Donath, Chief Product Officer for 3 Screen Solutions (3SS).
“When we talk about voice as a UI, it is critical to discuss it from a holistic perspective. In the future, we believe voice interfaces must be integrated seamlessly into the navigation process. It will be particularly useful for initiating more complex actions or queries - including conversational interactions if the system needs more information to refine its results- which are cumbersome when using a mouse, your hands or the remote,” says Donath.
Making this possible means harnessing the power of AI/ML. These kinds of applications will go a long way toward streamlining processes and creating conveniences that will be
appreciated -- and ultimately expected -- by connected home users.
CE vs CPE battle for hearts and minds of users The question is, who is going to own this intelligent interactive space?
Today there are two main categories of contenders. In one corner are the consumer electronics manufacturers who develop and sell smart speakers through retail channels (including e-commerce) that connect through home Wi-Fi networks to access cloud resources and services.
In the other corner are the cable and telco service providers who are bringing increasingly intelligent and interactive CPEs into their subscribers’ home.
With Android TV, the opportunity for NSPs to do well in this competition is extremely compelling. Operators are in a position to pick up market share among consumers who are suspicious of “always on” smart speakers that are constantly listening.
“We believe that Google Assistant on Android TV will be extremely successful because the Assistant can be triggered via the remote or far-field voice devices. Choosing how to trigger Assistant is ideal for people who are concerned about microphones that are always on,” adds Donath.
NSPs that have chosen to deploy Android TV operator tier can truly build their own, fully brand-tailored product. Furthermore, cross-device search and custom actions using Google Assistant can be enabled, allowing
NSPs to additionally extend the smart home capabilities of Android STBs,” says Donath
Technicolor is working with multipe partners to develop intelligent, innovative, and intuitive solutions that create new value propositions for NSPs to offer their subscribers, says Jentz.
“All of our current STB products – including our Sapphire, Jade and Ruby offerings -- have embraced AI/ML and open platforms like Android TV to deliver a new generation of value-added services. We are working with partners – like 3SS – to manage the immense complexity that comes with all the choices and functionality that become available as a result of today’s more open and intelligent environment.”
Open and intelligent CPE deployments on the rise“Technicolor has worked closely with NSPs to understand how the quality of experience can be enhanced for consumers in today’s connected home environment. Our commitment to creating STBs and gateways that serve as platforms for an increasing array of applications is a direct result of those interactions. This is why Technicolor has been fortunate enough to be selected by over 33 NSPs in the Android TV space -- making us the leading technology partner to operators in this segment of the market,” concludes Jentz.
Sylvain Philippe, Product Manager at Technicolor
Brian Jentz, Senior Director of Product Management at Technicolor
Pierre Donath, Chief Product Officer for 3 Screen Solutions (3SS)
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In an ever-evolving technology landscape where electronic devices constantly shrink in size and cost but expand in capabilities and processing power, communication satellites have lagged behind
the rest of the pack.These huge spacecraft, the size of a
double decker bus, are colossally expensive to build and launch and have suffered from latency issues and limited data transmission speeds because they circle high above the earth in a Geostationary Orbit (GEO).
But now major players like Amazon, SpaceX, and Sky and Space Global are putting their weight and wallets behind constellations of small satellites
(smallsats) and experts are predicting cosmic results.
Designed to hover in non-geostationary Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of around 2,000km or less, significantly lower than the 36,000km for GEOs, these miniature craft have the potential to deliver low-latency, high-speed broadband coverage almost anywhere and at a significantly reduced cost.
Although limited in size and therefore functional capability, they are much cheaper to build than regular satellites, making it possible to launch large constellations with shorter lifespans that can be simply and cheaply replaced.
Smallsats present a major opportunity for satellite operators, and companies
like OneWeb, the Space X company Starlink, and Sky and Space Global have all launched test satellites. Others will be launched courtesy of LeoSat, O3b and Amazon. However, certain technical and economic obstacles must be overcome before widespread rollouts
become practical. Managing the
complexity of spacecraft constellations will require new expertise, increased launch activity has highlighted concerns about bottlenecks, and the prospect of satellite mega constellations increases the danger of collisions and orbital debris.
But perhaps the biggest challenge is market acceptance
and understanding of these technologies. Sandeep Kumar, Head of Satellite Sales at Telstra told CSI: “Integration with the wider communication eco-system has a long way to go, which means educating carriers and telcos, along with wireline and wireless, to adopt these new technologies.”
Small miraclesSmallsat is a catchall term for satellites in a range of different sizes and weights, including nano (CubeSats), micro and pico. Definitions vary by the largest can weight up to 500kg and the smallest down to 1kg. By mid-2015, many launch options had become available for smallsats, mostly focuses on
Smallsats
Smallsats set for big growthSatellite operators are moving to exploit the smallsat market with many test spacecraft already in orbit. But can the promise of faster broadband speeds and greater coverage outweigh the challenges of launch bottlenecks, investments in infrastructure and destructive space debris? Stephen Cousins reports
32 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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space research, military and Earth observation purposes.
The jury may be out on the long-term viability of smallsats for commercial communications, but that hasn’t stopped a hive of global activity from taking place.
The space industry is expected to see over 3,600 LEO satellites launch over the next ten years, of which 800 will be communication satellites, according to a new report by Euroconsult. Smallsats under 10kg, such as 3U cubesats, will account for 28% of the smallsats launched in the next decade, but only 2% of the total market value. The total market value of these satellites is anticipated to hit $22 billion (manufacture and launch) between 2016 to 2025.
This rate of growth is unprecedented for the space sector, says the report, and will bring about fundamental changes as new and established industry players scale up activities to grab market share.
The FCC approved many constellations to provide non-geostationary satellite orbit by the FCC in 2018 and in June this year the Commission released new draft regulations intended to streamline licensing.
Satellite operators are particularly keen to investigate the data capabilities of smallsats to support the shift in business models from video to OTT platforms, especially in developed
markets. The transition is creating data capacity challenges, stagnating revenues and pricing pressure, hence the need to develop new capabilities.
“With capacity needs higher than ever, there is an insatiable
appetite for bandwidth and for video to be delivered at acceptable quality using data networks, with many satellite operators shifting from pure DTH play to a hybrid video/data play,” says Telstra’s Kumar.
Geo-stationary satellites have always played an important role in connecting remote locations, but with high latency and complex and expensive ground equipment. In contrast, constellations of non-geostationary smallsats could deliver unimpeded high-speed broadband.
The spacecraft can boost to WiFi and 4G backhaul and, crucially, support emerging technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), connected cars and so on.
Alan Crisp, Senior Analyst at satellite market research firm Northern Sky Research (NSR) told CSI: “IoT is expected to benefit from smallsat constellations, not as a result of increased bandwidth, but lower bandwidth (and lower cost) from constellations such as Astrocast, Hiber, Fleet Space, Myriota and many others. Such constellations offer services that deal with data packets in the kilobyte range, however in many cases they will have higher latency compared with existing satellite operators. This will allow price points of a couple of dollars per month to a couple of dollars per year, depending on data requirements.”
The size of the smallsat will often limit the functions it is able to perform and therefore the business case. Regular GEO satellites will provide a point-to-multipoint advantage in terms of video, where a single beam can broadcast to millions of dishes.
Tipping pointInnovations in satellite systems and software, manufacturing and launch technology have come together in the last couple of years to create the right conditions for smallsat communications deployments.
Building small reduces the CAPEX cost of satellites as well as the cost of storage space on rocket launchers. Outlay is cut further by using new reusable launch rockets, such as those manufactured by Space X, and operational costs are reduced because smallsats are powered by either electric propulsion, compressed gas, or vaporisable liquids such as butane or carbon dioxide.
“The economies of scale associated with deploying constellations adds another layer to this. Smallsats have also lowered the barriers of entry to the market, which is creating new business models - that are easing the procurement, launch and licensing process. This is driving demand further,” said Shagun Sachdeva of NSR.
Recent attention has focused on the
Smallsats
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“The jury may be out on the long-term viability of Smallsats for commercial communications, but that hasn’t stopped a hive of global activity from taking place.”
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smallsat internet-connection constellations proposed by SpaceX and OneWeb. SpaceX launched the first prototype of its LEO broadband network at the end of 2018 and OneWeb now has six operational satellites in LEO. Looking ahead, Amazon plans to build a global, low-latency, high-speed broadband network of 3,236 smallsats and LeoSat has revealed plans to launch a constellation of up to 108 communications satellites, interconnected through laser links, to create a high-speed data backbone.
Launching large smallsats constellations requires heavier rockets with bigger payload capabilities. But companies are also developing smaller dedicated rockets that could be used for replenishments or constellations of micro- or pico-sats. Customers are already launching on RocketLab’s Electron rocket and Orbex plans to debut its Prime launch vehicle, designed to take one or multiple satellites up to a total payload of around 180kg, in 2021.
A dedicated service could become an attractive alternative for smallsat owners unwilling to wait for larger ‘rideshare’ launches, where the business model tends to focus on large satellite deployments.
Chris Larmour, CEO of Orbex told CSI: “Smallsat owners often have no influence or control over rideshares, in terms of destination and timing. It’s a
very different experience if they are dealing with a company whose entire business is designed, end to end, to deliver smallsat launches. The analogy we use is if you’re rushing to get to the airport to catch a plane, do you wait for the bus and hope for the best or are you going to get a cab?”
Orbex is currently working with partner Highlands and Islands Enterprise to create Space Hub Sutherland, the first vertical launch site in the UK.
Apart from the threat of a launch capacity crunch, large constellations need to be mass produced, potentially resulting in long lead items for critical components. Infrastructure in the ground segment, for both mega or smaller constellations, will require significant upgrades, the nature of which is not yet entirely clear.
Andrew Bond, Sales and Marketing Director at ETL Systems, which supplier RF switching equipment for the ground segment, told CSI: “While it may work to send up small low cost satellites, that approach may not work for the ground segment where investment needs to be made in terms of redundancy and remote control. Right now, we don’t know exactly what the ground segment will look like to support mega constellations and design and investment still needs to be made.”
According to Bond, smallsats require faster switching because each LEO is
picked up by an antenna then switches to another antenna as it continues to move.
Avoiding collisionsOrbital debris makes up over 90% of the tracked objects orbiting the Earth today. With hundreds of satellites operated by numerous different companies in orbit, the chance of a collision rises significantly, and debris created by an impact could wipe out other satellites or even an entire LEO ecosystem.
Regulatory pressure has increased in this area and now all proposed LEO operators must demonstrate orbital debris management and mitigation techniques prior to launch in their ITU and FCC filings. However, the details of these management schemes are unspecified and not yet standardised.
Martin Coleman, Executive Director of the Satcoms Innovation Group, told CSI: “The risk of collision is very real. This, coupled wih the lack of an adequate space traffic tracking and management regime, is a huge concern that desperately needs to be addressed. In addition, we need to ensure that all satellites have an end of life strategy, so they don’t simply compound the debris problem once the mission ends.”
The Japanese company Astroscale is working to tackle the debris problem by building a prototype rescue craft that would be launched at short notice to grab any malfunctioning satellite. Computer vision would enable it to lock onto the target satellite, it would then latch onto it magnetically and drag it into the atmosphere where it would burn up.
The dangers of space debris, or other technical or financial obstacles, might ultimately send the smallsat programme spinning towards the dark side of the moon. But for the time being a groundswell of ambitious companies, investors and space boffins thinks they have the right stuff to execute a successful landing.
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It is an understatement to say that the video creation, distribution and advertising industries are undergoing extraordinary change.
Each year brings a new set of records – the investment in new
content, the number of series, the new entrants into the video industry. Major content providers are consolidating and rushing to launch new direct-to-consumer offerings. All of this to provide consumers with the premium content they want on any device at any time and often, under any business model.
While this era may be characterized as the golden age of TV/video for the consumer, the shifting of viewing from linear TV to Over-the-Top (OTT) and the fragmenting of content distribution requires a fundamental rethinking of marketing. In the foreseeable future, OTT will make up 1/3 of time spent with video. Marketers know they will need to shift their budgets to follow viewing trends. Over the next 5-7 years, the advertising spend on OTT is forecast to equal that of linear TV. While this foundational shift in video consumption presents opportunities for marketers, an equal set of major challenges must be addressed.
The opportunityOTT video advertising answers the wish lists marketers have held for decades – an offering that can be targeted with audience data, alongside traditional contextual targeting. At scale, OTT brings the benefits of linear TV advertising combined with the data-driven capabilities of digital. The distribution model of OTT brings efficiency and waste reduction. OTT ad serving is flexible so that near-real time optimization strategies can be put to
use. The availability of quick, granular, deterministic viewing data allows precise ROI measurement whose results can be fed back into optimization strategies.
The challengeAs OTT becomes a larger share of the video advertising media mix, marketers can take advantage of its benefits; however, OTT cannot be managed in a vacuum. It must be understood in the context of linear TV. When asked what issue prevents shifting more spend to OTT today, TV planners and buyers consistently state a lack of understanding of what the new medium delivers. How much incremental reach relative to linear TV is delivered? Which audiences should they optimally target on OTT and how does the ROI compare?
No measurement standards exist to join the worlds of OTT and linear TV. Consequently, much of the OTT inventory today bought today follows traditional TV planning and buying. If News nets are on the TV buy, they get added to the OTT schedule – with the expectation that they will deliver incremental reach. Even audience targeting focuses on age and gender today. These practices vastly sub-optimize the capabilities of OTT; the good news is that this is temporary.
Solving the challenge todayIronically, to improve OTT measurement, we need to better understand linear TV. The traditional panel-based, syndicated TV measurement offerings do not have the precision required for this challenge. However, a wealth of TV viewership data from settop-boxes and smart TVs is now collected, organized and readily available to solve the problem. And this
granular TV data is now being put to the task. Content providers looking to drive tune-in to new
shows are using TV viewership data to match surrogate shows to identify audiences and target their OTT buys. Post event they are matching OTT and linear promo viewers against real viewers to measure the true OTT contribution to the overall ROI of their campaigns.
The way forwardUnderstanding the relationship between OTT and linear TV is just one of the measurement challenges. As OTT scales, many of the measurement practices common in linear TV need to be solved, such as defining audience universes to understand reach and developing trends for forecasting. Further data collection methods anddata availability across OTT properties will need to be normalized. OTT as an advertising medium has a wealth of potential, but confidence and standards in data and measurement will be necessary to capture the appropriate media budgets. A thirdparty measurement offering will not emerge to solve this. The industry will not replicate traditional TV measurement. That is positive news since such an approach limits potential. The burden rests on leading OTT participants to collectively come together and solve it.
TiVo will be at IBC in Hall 5.A31 in Amsterdam this September if you’d like to discuss further how we can help develop the next stage of comprehensive OTT measurement.
OTT measurement – opportunity, challenge and the way forward
Sponsored article
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 35
Walt Horstman is SVP and GM, Advanced Media and Advertising at TiVo
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Tell us who ACCESS are and how the company has changed.We have always been big in mobile, TV and networking. With the mobile and home now well established parts of the TV Everywhere experience, the next one is the car. Why will cars be so important in the multi-screen story?We supply in excess of 30m cars like Jaguars and Mercedes with our browser technology, but that’s just the display part of it. Now the consumer comes into the car and expects to have Spotify, Netflix and other video services. Really, it’s consumer expectations that they should have seamless access and at the moment you go into most cars and you’re lucky if you have some audio of interest.
From our point of view, the studios and other content owners are starting to see cars – especially new electric vehicles with massive OLED screen displays, and Teslas have large screens now – all these screens means there is something you need to do on it. It all tends to the autonomous car where
there is this time to do other things.It’s not just entertainment, it’s
services, it’s managing my lifestyle but the fun one is watching films and TV, that’s the exciting part.
How does ACCESS help enable that transition?We work with Irdeto on securing the content in the car, as well as Faurecia, one of the top suppliers in the automotive industry, we announced that at the Shanghai motor show. We’re not a content producer but are a content aggregator, we’re bringing together compelling content, some of it is short kids cartoon type stuff if you just have 15 minutes to get to school. Then we have sports if you are sitting there waiting and want to catch up on highlights. There’s lots of use cases with what you can do in a car where you don’t want to watch a 2 hour film but want to catch up news or sports. These make the car unique and there is nothing like that at the moment. We are providing an aggregated solution for the content and a tech platform to provide that content into the car.
Do you think the content owners are aware of these in-vehicle opportunities?There is an education process. The industry is still working out what the use cases are. We have relationships with Chinese, American, LatAm and European companies in terms of content. We’re independent and we can display apps from Netflix and others so we can bring whatever the car company and whatever is required.
The car is very different from the home. The car is a brand. If you look at Audi, Porsche and others they are fundamental brands. In the future, a car-as-a-service will be even more interesting, where you use the mobile to unlock a car for half an hour. These ride sharing services you want to inherit your media preferences and have your profile follow you into the car. It’s a new model as the world moves on.
How does your acquisition of NetRange fit into this?They created a compelling and leading app store, which we were missing. We are taking their app store to deliver alongside live TV, VOD, audio and location-based services. The apps, they have thousands, were filling a hole we had and it allows an app experience for consumers in the car. But also TVs. digital TVs are their other area of business, which we are now also taking into the car.
At IBC, ACCESS will be showing demos of its Twine™ for Car product, as well as traditional STB and TV solutions, together with EKT on stand 1.D11
Video
Video Q&A
CSI editor Goran Nastic spoke to Dr Neale Foster, CEO of ACCESS Europe, about convergence between the automotive industry and media industries
36 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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It’s no secret that video streaming services are becoming the mainstream method of consumption globally. Consumers love watching content anytime, anywhere, enabled by
broadband access on media friendly personal devices like tablets and smartphones.
There is also a myriad of attractive OTT services on the market for consumers to choose from. The realistic outlook therefore is that in ten years’ time, most content will be delivered through OTT, which means that now is the time for operators to review and adjust their STB strategies to future proof their businesses.
To make a cost-effective transition into this new connected world quickly, operators must look to open platforms like Android TV that come with premium features such as voice-based search and app stores for free on a hybrid platform (broadcast and OTT). These open platforms with extensive app stores will play an influential role
in the future of pay TV, allowing operators to build premium hybrid STBs quickly and at low cost, while giving consumers both broadcast TV and the OTT apps they crave. In addition, by giving consumers access to their favorite OTT apps in addition to the operator’s own services, the operator maintains control of HDMI-1.
In the case of Android TV, with thousands of apps in the Play Store and more added daily, the operator has options to offer new revenue-generating services through partnerships as well as extending their business models beyond media. However, with increased choice comes a greater threat from illegal content sources. Kodi is a prime example. Kodi gives consumers legitimate choices but can also be misused for piracy, allowing consumers to install piracy add-ons and bypass operators’ premium content subscriptions on their STB. Therefore, many operators will not take the plunge unless they can monitor app usage and control app-based piracy on open application platforms. After all, content redistribution piracy is the number one threat facing the pay TV industry.
Google is focused on security and will remove an app from the Play Store when it has sufficient evidence to judge that it is designed for media piracy or behaves maliciously to disrupt the consumer experience, but this may take time. Therefore, to secure against malicious apps on open platforms,
operators need the ability to monitor apps running on their STBs and stop the apps or add-ons associated with piracy or malicious acts. This requires a solution that leverages intelligent services which combine cutting edge IoT protocols with big data to detect and address app-based piracy and other security risks on open platforms. Such a
solution must follow the Android TV usage guidelines and be supported by Google, and will allow operators to conduct targeted, granular blocking of specific apps or add-ons used for piracy or malicious activities. With no impact to consumers’ ability to access apps like Kodi and other plugins for legitimate purposes, this will ensure that operators can maintain the consumer experience and make the move with confidence and secure their future.
The bottom line is that Android TV is an excellent option for operators who want to launch a hybrid STB quickly, with low development and operational costs. With Android TV, operators can let Google develop the investment-heavy features, and get them for free, while they focus on content and potentially UX differentiation through the Operator Tier. Securing open platforms requires careful planning, but it is well worth the work for the benefits that open platforms like Android TV offer operators both now and in the future as the pay TV evolution continues.
Irdeto will be showcasing Irdeto App Watch, a service in the Irdeto Armor for Android TV solution at IBC in Amsterdam, September 13-17. Visit us at Hall 1 Stand D51.
Piracy app monitoring – the key for balancing consumer choice and operator control on open platformsBy Frank Poppelsdorf, Vice President, Product Management, Irdeto
Advertorial feature
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 37
Frank Poppelsdorf is Vice President, Product Management at Irdeto
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With every mobile generation there comes a new wave of hype and in this regard
5G is no different, just as there was with 4G a decade ago and 3G in the early 2000s. The buzz around 5G is magnified further given its grand ambitions of transformative business models across industry, smart cities, automotive and IoT. This vision of cellular goes far beyond previous generations, which opened handheld devices to email and internet.
IHS Markit forecasts that 5G adoption will happen at a faster rate than both 3G and 4G. The analyst firm expects more than 1bn 5G mobile subscribers by 2023, driven largely by ApAc but also Europe and North America. According to IHS, during 4G’s first year of launch, there were only three smartphones available to consumers that supported the standard, while 5G boasts at least 20 smartphone designs available for release to the market this year. Motorola, Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, Oppo and Huawei are among those to have released commercial 5G handsets.
On August 21, SK Telecom reached the 1 million 5G subscriber mark, the
first operator to do so as deployment starts to ramp up (see chart, below).
The challenge that mobile network operators (MNOs) face is monetising their investments and network traffic, and the question is to what extent the improved QoE that comes with 5G will enable new applications that help them achieve this. There are high hopes that media & entertainment, in the form of mobile video, will provide this boon while at the same time benefiting from these developments, with 5G accelerating content consumption.
“We feel that video will be a good vehicle for helping with the monetisation,” says Simon Trudelle at Nagra. “5G is going to make video distribution better, faster and more attractive for consumers.”
Leaving consumer demand for these things aside for now, the hope here is that 5G will enable a new set of mobile video applications and experiences, including FoV, haptic experiences, VR, AR, 360 degree and volumetric video. Expanded AR and VR experiences may also enable a whole new channel for content producers to reach consumers. It is worth bearing in mind that even GSMA Intelligence highlighted that “for all its promise of new functionality,
especially in VR and AR applications, 5G is currently primarily a speed upgrade.”
Apart from the (theoretically at least) super fast download speeds and low latency, another advantage of 5G is network slicing (some call it splicing). With this, the features and performance of the network will adapt per session to the service provisioned.
“Network slicing will enable high bit
5G video
Will 5G transform mobile video?5G will open new opportunities for immersive experiences and live streaming, but mobile-broadcast convergence will remain as challenging as ever. Goran Nastic reports
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rate applications (100Mbps+) such as high resolution streaming with high latency and low latency applications (ping of few ms) for immersive use cases such as VR, cloud gaming or personalised HD/UHD/HDR streaming to mobile devices,” says Thierry Fautier of Harmonic. “We see the higher quality at scale being an evolutionary capability for 5G. The immersive part is the most revolutionary feature.”
Fautier argues that end-users should see some real value from the improvement offered by 5G. “Today with zero rating, we receive SD resolution at 1.5Mbps. This shows a limited quality on high-resolution (ie, 4K) screens. With 5G, we can safely plan to deliver high-quality 1080p60 video using the HEVC codec at bit rates of 3Mbps. With UHD-1 using HEVC, we will be able to achieve less than 20Mbps. 5G can bare the 20Mbps of UHD-1 (2160p60/120) bandwidth without any problems, at scale,” he says.
Yann Bégassat of Broadpeak agrees, noting that with expected downlink bit rates of 100-200 Mbps on average in a loaded 5G cell (at 3.5 GHz frequency, assuming 100 MHz bandwidth), 5G should easily provide UHD and 4K video to mobile devices. He also points out that operators can also deliver services such as high quality video to 5G-compliant STBs and TV screens, as the main screen is often better suited to viewing higher resolutions.
It is worth noting that, today, most devices are still 1080p, while Samsung and high Apple screens support 1440p resolution. Moreover, it can also be
argued that data caps when streaming even HD 1080p60, let alone 4K on the go, may be a problem that many users will experience, assuming their MNO does not provision zero-rating. It is estimated by Ovum that the average monthly traffic per 5G subscriber will grow from 11.7GB in 2019 to 84.4GB per month in 2028, at which point video will account for 90% of all 5G traffic. But as Fautier puts it, “You can say goodbye to the poor SD experiences provided at scale today when zero-rating is activated by MNOs.”
According to IHS, 22% of T-Mobile customers live stream video content out of the home on a daily basis. And it’s not just about clips, more than 50% watch long form content out of home.
Meanwhile, broadcasters like the BBC and France Televisions and telcos like SG Telecom and BT are now trialling video, including UHD, over 5G (more on this in the next article).
One report from Intel and Ovum boldly predicts that over the next decade M&E companies will benefit from experiences enabled by 5G networks of a revenue opportunity worth $1.3 trillion. “5G will inevitably shake up the media and entertainment landscape. It will be a major competitive asset if companies adapt. If not, they risk failure or even extinction. The low latency of these networks
means that no video will stall or stop – livestreaming and large downloads will happen in the blink of an eye. Immersive and new media applications – applications and capabilities that are currently nonexistent – will reach unprecedented scale by 2028, forecast to generate more than $67 billion annually or the value of the entire current global mobile media market – video, music and games – in 2017.”
Nagra’s Trudelle thinks 5G will also accelerate the shift to mobile-centric viewing in many markets. “It makes mobile even more central to the video experience for a lot of people. And we are starting to see, especially in emerging markets like India, mobile-first becoming very important and for many consumers mobile screens being the first access for a lot of video content. That’s a major shift. Properties like Hotsar in India are a clearly an example you can grow really fast really big. It’s a replacement product for traditional TV for some of these consumers.”
A new report by KPMG states that 5G could be the catalyst for India’s over-the-top players to provide rich content and threaten traditional linear TV consumption by 2022.
Equally in Europe, 5G broadcast is seen as a canvas technology for DTT, potentially acting as a replacement or a compliment to DVB.
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“We are doing a lot of studies into how DTT will become more expensive as channels and behaviours move to online. We are making sure we have everything we need and the possibility of it being a DTT-replacement candidate,” says Matt Stagg at telco and broadcaster BT Sport.
A final chance for mobile broadcasting with FeMBMS?Indeed, one of the most interesting questions is will 5G finally lead to the success of classic mobile TV, laying the ghosts of DVB-H, MediaFLO and other
failed mobile broadcast efforts to rest; the last active service (Finnish DVB-H) was shut down in 2012.
Thousands of people wanting to watch a live stream or even replay over adaptive bit rate (ABR) stresses the network so it is about ways of providing network optimisation solutions that will ensure QoS at lowest cost.
“You may have lots of bandwidth with 5G but it is finite and you don’t want to waste it,” says Stagg, who is a believer in LTE-Broadcast type services. “You want to provide a one-to-many service because it makes commercial
and technical sense to do that and frees up the bandwidth and those resources for everyone else. It could change the way people consume sport on mobile.”
5G does not formally support multicast/broadcast at this time (opinions vary on when it will), so only Rel14 (pre-5G) solutions are available as of now. However, work on eMBMS evolutions for 5G have started in 3GPP.
For live applications at scale, some form of multicast or broadcast will likely be needed to ease network capacity, with 5G Further evolved MBMS (FeMBMS) seen as an attractive solution. Bavaria is playing host to one of the most high-profile and important trials of 5G FeMBMS, called 5G Today.
“It is a waste of transmission capacity to overload IP networks designed for point-to-point connections with multicast transmissions,” argues Rohde & Schwarz, one of the project partners, which provided two modified terrestrial transmitters for the trial.
Using these high-power high-tower (HPHT) transmitters allows broadcasters to distribute video over 5G networks in downlink-only mode with all the advantages of classic broadcasting. This provides the high quality levels known from HDTV broadcasting, low-latency live content as well as enormous spectrum efficiency and wide coverage, according to the partners.
“Classical broadcasting is still the best solution for this, provided it is delivered to consumer devices in a modern form,” says R&S. The company adds that 5G can only provide significant support once 5G standalone networks in the millimeterwave bands become operational, which will take several years.
Due to a lack of commercial devices with the right support enabled, 5G Today project partners built a receiver on their own. It is a software-defined radio, embedded in a baby carriage (pictured) and connected with T&M equipment. Rohde & Schwarz told CSI
5G video
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the baby carriage has to explore the connection, quality, network coverage and other parameters. “While it may sound like an unusual approach, you can walk through a crowded pedestrian zone or a mall and do measurements in a real-life-scenario,” a company spokesperson said.
The participants - also involving IRT, Kathrein, Telefónica and Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) - are investigating the practical aspects of the system in a project that runs until the end of October 2019. They think the technical insights can be used to fine-tune FeMBMS standardisation in 5G and improve the launch conditions for a rollout of commercial FeMBMS networks.
If and when this happens, operators will be able to transport free-to-air video over 5G networks and media companies will be able to reach devices directly. This is expected to help scale up for live events and, in some cases, be an alternative to a terrestrial transmission.
“The EBU has put significant effort behind the specification and the field testing of TV over 5G networks. If this model works technically and commercially, there is a good chance this will be deployed commercially,” reckons Harmonic’s Fautier, who adds: “We expect that there will be sporting events where broadcasters will want to
leverage the broadcast capability of 5G networks.”
With 5G, multicast is more of a reality than LTE thanks to the capacity and throughput each individual can get, as Chiranjeev Singh of MediaKind points out. “If you are sitting inside the venue, you may want to see different angles or replays, and 5G multicast gives users that opportunity. Those benefits are expected to be enhanced with 5G.”
And yet, multicast technology has not been widely deployed yet (some expect this to change, others aren’t sure). Operators will have to make further investments there, assuming there is a business case, while handsets will have to support it. This remains a case of chicken-and-egg, something that LTE-B in 4G never managed to shake off and overcome.
BT’s Stagg is optimistic: “This time, the 5G Broadcast Working Group has worked on a proper alliance of broadcaster and operators so there is a firm vision and combined requirement to drive the industry,” he argues. “The difference now is broadcasters are fully on board and there is full alignment between the two and they are all in the processes of designing the requirements; that wasn’t there with 4G.”
For others, a dose of realism persists, as the business model for live broadcast is not straightforward.
“It is hard to predict whether eMBMS will play an important role in 5G. We believe it is far from being won. Many challenges of eMBMS in 4G will remain in 5G, such as the low number of supporting and enabled terminals, engineering complexity, new network elements/functions required,” warns Bégassat at Broadpeak. “Finally, despite the expected technical improvements a lot of architecture and protocol questions are open, which from our point of view, does not help provide reassurance on this technology.”
Opportunistic multicasting in Rel17So there are still the same question marks hanging around 5G broadcast, but one technologist shines a ray of light in upcoming releases of the 5G standard in the shape of ‘opportunistic multicasting’.
“Key here are solutions that allow for supporting today’s HTTP-based streaming solutions while providing efficient multicast delivery at the network level. Such ‘opportunistic multicast’ capability is currently under investigation in 3GPP for realisation in Rel17-based future 5G systems,” says Dirk Trossen, senior principal engineer at InterDigital, which has been contributing to the ‘vertical LAN’ capabilities of future 5G systems. These will allow for supporting this OM capability of 5G, including supporting available WiFi and fixed infrastructures.
These capabilities, demonstrated at MWC 2019 and trialled in Bristol and Barcelona deployments, enable significant bandwidth savings for mobile video experiences and will increase scalability of supported use cases, according to Trossen. “We expect first solutions based on those standards development to find entry into the next wave of 5G rollouts based on the Rel16 and 17 standard releases of 3GPP.”
Before that happens though, many users would just be happy for 5G to improve basic cellular connectivity, speeds and QoS whatever their location, outdoors or indoors.
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There is much speculation and anticipation to see what impact 5G will have on live video streaming and the end-user experience
(see previous feature), but another application that has the media world arguably even more excited is the potential of 5G in production environments.
One of the key factors driving experimentation with 5G in the field is flexibility, and maybe cost.
This is because contribution from the field is costly and remains based on technologies that were from the broadcast-centric (tier 1) event world. Currently, media workflows are dominated by hardware-based solutions that are expensive, inflexible and closed systems. Configuring the hardware for a live production is often a time consuming and labour intensive process. 5G won’t be a silver bullet could ease some of these pain points.
“What 5G gives you is a lot of flexibility, especially when you are covering live events, like sports,” explains Chiranjeev Singh of MediaKind. “The features that 5G brings to the table, especially from a production point of view, are going to be very helpful.”
In the media production world, delivering content from remote locations to the point of presence or master control room is a considerable logistical challenge.
Then there is the cost element: satellite trucks are expensive, while laying fibre is not cheap either. People are also limited by the satellite bandwidth and availability of satellite links.
“What came about is that people realised that – and news companies were first for breaking news – this is a perfect opportunity to be able to use it where they either couldn’t get a satellite truck or one wasn’t available or they couldn’t get one in quick enough,” says Matt Stagg of BT Sport.
For live broadcast, higher bandwidth and reduced latency will enable more remote production applications with de-centralised, agile teams. Reducing the latency for all communication and applications
between the station and the field crew will enable more to be done remotely.
Globecast is among those to consider 5G as an enabler of remote production. The company is conducting various tests of 5G-based production and contribution, with plans to eventually expand on these trials as a fully functional broadcast workflow taking in distribution too.
“It’s another network for us and we are testing the possibilities, for live events like football and tennis matches, sending channels to affiliates without using a satellite dish, only the terrestrial solution. We will conduct more tests, longer distance deployments (currently maxing at 100 metres). In 2020, we will also test the distribution side once we have the full feed, so a true end-to-end solution,” says Philippe Bernard, Globecasts’s CEO and Chairman.
“We don’t know yet what the cost will be. We need to test and improve the distance between SNG and receiver. Beyond 100m, there are still some questions to answer. What is good with 5G is the signal doesn’t spread. It is focused on identifying where the receiver is. The technology is quite clever in doing that,” Bernard says.
“5G could be an accelerator for remote production,” he adds. “It’s a way of challenging the existing ecosystem of production as it is today. It’s a way to get more flexibility to produce and capture pictures via remote production. For example, you can use 5G cameras with SIM cards and you can put the cameras where you want.”
Other say 5G-enabled cameramen can perform uplink image transfers from capture location to control room, studio or OB van with much more flexibility, with no need for a UHF or wireline transmission network.
“Following the uses we have seen so far for deployment of bonded cellular systems, 5G will make those applications more reliable while increasing capacity to handle more volume,” says David Anderson, Chief Technology Officer, The Switch, which
5G in media
Will 5G disrupt the production ecosystem?Goran Nastic examines the 5G use cases in Outside Broadcast and remote production
42 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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provides advanced video switching and local fibre circuit services, as well as remote production. “This will be particularly valuable in serving lots of wireless OB cameras in a venue, as sports coverage becomes more granular – for example, following individual players for personalised viewer experiences.”
BT’s Stagg agrees and speaks of his excitement about the freedom afforded by wire-free cameras. “What we wanted to look at is how we could use 5G or wireless techs to get into stadiums that didn’t’ have fibre. You will always use fibre if you have fibre, even if you are doing remote production but what changed my vision is the huge use case for having wireless 5 cameras in stadiums. The one thing that came out of it, which we hadn’t figured in and where I find the use-case really exciting, is the creativity that our directors and producers found with having untethered cameras. We did a remote production trial with wireless cameras at one of the national league games and found them easy to move between different locations and that freedom of movement can make a 4-camera production look like an 8-camera production. That was one of the really exciting things to come out of it.
“With untethered cameras you can get full 360 holographic displays and
6oF. And we will look at how you can use edge computing or network slicing to be able to break the camera feeds at the cell site in the stadium and then feed that back to the OB truck with all the fixed cameras. So you get the freedom and creativity of wireless cameras, but you still use the fibre and have your full production,” Stagg says.
There is also the environmental impact, according to Stagg. “We are sending huge OB trucks with teams of people and, with most of them back in the studio, there are advantages there.”
Guaranteeing SLAs and uplink/ downlink through network slicingAn added benefit of 5G over its predecessors is network slicing management and prioritisation, which should enable broadcasters to finally do what they couldn’t with 4G. It is possible that signals coming from news broadcasters could be prioritised, much in the same way as they could be for the emergency services. Network slicing will enable operators and media companies to overlay different 5G attributes and requirements they have for their needs, without being hampered by coverage stability and network contention at cell sites.
“5G prioritisation would give media networks the confidence to report from even the busiest locations, such as sports stadiums, concerts or even Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” says Joseph Hopkins of Make.TV. “This would enable news broadcasters with quick and cost-effectively reporter deployment and would allow them to secure stable, live footage over mobile networks, rather than satellite link-up or fixed line broadband networks.”
On top of increasing the speed of uplink, the use of slicing will help provide that broadcast-grade network, meeting certain bandwidth, latency and reliability requirements that are not negatively impacted by consumer services in dense environments like stadiums.
But as Bernard of Globecast argues,
securing the dedicated bandwidth will be critical. “If we consider operators dedicating bandwidth for the B2B sector, the real issue is whether they dedicate that resource, which could be quite expensive. We can demo that the technology is ready, but what is the real business model and drivers? What is the willingness of telcos to dedicate the bandwidth knowing it will be expensive? I’m not positive or negative, the technology works, but the business model is an open question. With 3G and 4G, operators didn’t succeed in dedicating spectrum resources for the B2B sector. It was in the standards but wasn’t implemented.”
Cost and power consumption are also major considerations, according to Todd Schneider, CTO of Dejero. “Especially at the outset, 5G equipment and air time are likely to be more expensive than LTE. Initially, 5G is expected to consume more power than LTE which will result in shorter device battery life; however, this should improve over time,” Schneider says.
Moreover, in order to guarantee the QoS for broadcast purposes, dedicated throughput will require the cooperation between broadcasters and telecoms operators. So establishing these partnerships will be key.
“People realised mobile wireless was quite good and actually it worked most of the time as the rollout came out but obviously you couldn’t use it as a primary broadcast contribution for production,” says Stagg. It was always a best-effort network and while uplink was good it wasn’t as good as downlink and people wanted to be able to have this service guarantee.
“We looked at it quite a lot and started doing tests with the BBC and Sky News. We ran a project internally where we looked to developing guaranteed QoS, but on the uplink that’s very complex and negatively impacts the customer experience.”
This is because places where companies can use 5G the most will also be places where 5G resources will
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Global spectrum pictureOn the spectrum allocation front, the sub 6GHz spectrum needs to be allocated or auctioned to enable global adoption of 5G. In early 2019 the EC announced the member states would harmonise across the 3.6 GHz spectrum for 5G deployments by the end of 2020. In the US, decisions regarding the C-band spectrum are expected to be settled by late 2019, while Canadian spectrum auctions for similar spectrum will occur in early 2020. An auction is expected in India before the end of this year.
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be in peak demand by other users when they need them for broadcast. So, for example, where sports fans at venues are accessing content on their 5G devices, broadband 5G Internet use will be peaking at those same venues. To deal with this issue, appropriate walled-gardens and SLA’s will need to be in place so that commercial users will be able to count on 5G resources being available when they need them.
BT Sport started to work on it for its own productions and then with customers in Media & Broadcast to get their requirements. “We realised it is a huge step change in the way that TV will be produced. We are using that almost as a way of incubating some of this technology,” says Stagg.
The next steps for BT Sport are more trials with its M&B customers and using 5G for live remote production of some
games in the 2019/20 Premier League season. Stagg thinks in 2020/ 21 BT will be in a position to start selling these broadcast-grade services.
Longer term, he thinks there is no reason
why the industry won’t get to a point where someone will be able to type their bandwidth and latency requirements into a portal and have a dedicated 5G service pop up straight away.
5G on the golf course and OlympicsThe US Open Project marked the first foray into assessing the performance and cost efficiencies of using 5G technology into the production workflows of a major sporting event. The project - completed with Fox Sports, Intel, AT&T and Ericsson - focused on production side cost efficiencies resulting from backhaul transmission savings and remote-prod.
Not having to lay cables will come as a welcome relief at live events. For the US Open, more than 39 miles of fibre was laid, and then removed, on the golf course. At some other sporting events, fibre demands can exceed 48 miles.
“With 5G, people won’t have to worry about that but will have to put a couple of mobile radio towers probably to cover the venue,” says MediaKind’s Singh, noting that the company is engaged with similar other trials.
An encoder was placed on a golf cart, connected via 5G to the clubhouse, where the main production equipment resided. Delivery of encoded 4K video feeds from the golf course to the production compound required data rates of 60 to 80Mbps. The 5G trial network demonstrated sustained uplink speeds of over 300Mbps throughout the
entire event, meeting the per UHD camera requirement of 80Mbps. Latency came in at under 10ms.
MMwave 5G was used for the trial, albeit being a limited and contained deployment. (MIMO implementations using millimetre wave gives more opportunities of providing dedicated bandwidth for a particular channel and better uplink/downlink).
“While this was a fairly simple trial, it indicated that 5G is a technology that could drive the savings of millions of dollars over the course of a production year in terms of fibre deployment and backhaul transmission,” said Mike Davies, Fox Sports SVP of Technical and Field Operations. Fox said the resulting in performance learnings will inform future, more complex use cases.
In another case study involving golf, South Korea’s SK Telecom offered live broadcast of this year’s ‘SK Telecom Open 2019’, using its commercial 5G network for selective areas of the golf course. It marked the world’s use of 5G for live TV broadcasting of a sports event (France Télévisions tested 4K and UHD over 5G at Roland-Garros).
Also in Korea, 5G was tested for mobile production during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, where it provided backhaul for mobile cameras worn by athletes, with low delay. It also enabled an 8K FoV capture of the content and multi 4K cameras.
The Tokyo Olympics 2020 will act as a further test ground for the technology. It is thought that Olympic Broadcast Services and the host broadcaster will look into using 5G for the broadcast and telecast of the live sporting events from the venue.
“It’s important to note, however, that 5G won’t be available everywhere for a while, therefore the ability to blend 5G with LTE, 4G and so on, will enable a smooth transition into 5G and enhance coverage in a seamless way during the rollout process,” says Dejero’s Schneider, with LTE and 5G coexisting for some time.
5G in media
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“Where I find it really exciting is the creativity that our directors and producers found with having untethered cameras.”
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Just over a decade ago, VOD services were part of the digital subscription package of your satellite TV or cable. At that time, one only had
access to a handful of movies that could be viewed after calling-in or sending a text message. As the appetite and the attitude of the consumer evolved, so did the nature of VOD services. The industry gave way to full-fledged video streaming platforms that now allow the viewers to grab the remote and binge watch a TV series or catch up on any of their favourite shows no matter the device or location.
The growing user demand for flexibility, personalisation, and freedom, to get the content they want, how they want, and where they want is leading to a much faster cord cutting phenomena. It is evident across major markets, as multiple studies conducted by Nielsen in the UK and the US, Ofcom shows that younger people in the age group of 16-30 prefer streaming video content over watching traditional TV broadcasts.
There is no shortage of OTT VOD services nowadays, but delivering a seamless experience to a geographically distributed audience of millions brings a new set of complexities. An overabundance of OTT offerings has made the user very critical of the value and the experience on offer. Besides a good content library, personalisation, quality of experience, and service remain a significant factor for viewers in VOD service selection. A service has to offer excellent value and quality to be able to gain user loyalty.
Building for scale and evolutionScaling up the services to go from thousands to millions, or for an audience that is distributed internationally involves a complete rethinking of the service workflow, including traffic management, localisations, and integrations. OTT services opting for an off-the-shelf solution for their media and delivery supply chain face an issue in scalability as such solutions are usually limited in their capacity and flexibility of expansion. Such challenges become even more pertinent for live streams such as sports, as during live transmission, there might be an unpredictable rise in viewership, which ultimately goes back down at the end of the event. Such scalability restrains many content owners from delivering their content to the viewers.
Besides scalability several localisation factors arise when going global, such as integrating different UI/UX, adding local metadata and languages, authorising local editors to edit and review the content and adding local services for payments, advertisements and more.
“OTT VOD services need to think like software providers and utilise modern development technologies. Such as the microservices architecture for services encapsulated in containers, utilising standard APIs to give the flexibility of extensibility, customisation and the advantage of scaling at a finger snap” says Mairika Haab of Axinom. “Such a planned architecture allows faster developmentand change cycles as well as easy deployment, integration, and full robustness.”
Delivering across screensTV to the phone was a critical
transition that took place in the media industry. Although it
made things convenient for the user, giving them many
choices, for providers, it became a significant issue. Providing a seamless and similar experience throughout the screens became a challenge due to the differences between hardware and software, causing a problem of fragmentation. Contending delivery protocols, video codecs, and media formats, also add complexity to the already intricate video streaming industry.
The advancements in the digital media processing services, provided by multiple experts in the industry along with Axinom, combine various technologies to offer multi-platform solutions. Such as the usage of modern industry standards in video encoding such as HLS, DASH with CMAF, encryption and protection standards such as Widevine, FairPlay and PlayRead and support for all operating systems such as Android, iOS and more.
Personalising with integrationsA plethora of OTT offerings has made the user very critical of the value and the experience on offer. According to DTG UK, in Europe alone, there are over 700 VOD service, with about 145 VOD/catchup services in just the UK.
Thereby, today, a service has to offer not only superb content but an exceptional quality of experience to the user to be able to gain their loyalty. For platform owners, this translates to a service that can quickly adopt new features and provide a personalised experience.
“The right content needs to reach the viewer at the press of a button,” says Mairika Haab. “Any OTT business with a global focus needs a solution that can increase content workflow efficiency, and an added focus on extensibility for future expansions as this industry is proliferating and anyone not keeping up
Advertorial feature
The evolving VOD landscapeHow to gain user loyalty and avoid customer churn
46 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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is bound to lose out.”This extensibility in managing content
is essential for working with multiple content rules and operating models, compliance and licensing issues, and the using of divergent brands to cater to different types of viewers. Managing these multiple layers of complexity is one of the basic requirements for any VOD backend solution. There needs to be streamlined, automated workflows and alignment with the business aspect of the platform, i.e., what monetary models to be used to generate revenues.
Axinom CMS, with its backend interfaces and services, allows unlimited integrations, be it external partners for content or the payment providers that are popular in a region. Through Axinom CMS, the customers can independently manage and personalise their OTT service for regions, geography, or audiences. It allows automated workflows for all processes: ingestion, transcoding, encryption, packaging, metadata management, advertisement insertions, publishing of content, and content pipeline and
storage management. It can also provide each user, whether internal or third-party, with a separate dashboard, customised for specific roles and data access policies. Moreover, various policies, access restrictions, and rules can be defined within the CMS to respect and comply with the regional regulations.
With the Axinom backend interfaces and services, the customers can integrate recommendation engines and advertising providers, check entitlement, collect payments, provide easy onboarding with social media logins, gather analytics, and much more.
New monetisation opportunitiesThe end goal for any VOD service, whether newly foraying into the industry or looking to expand, is monetisation. The monetisation opportunities in the last few years have risen, for instance, VOD advertising alone is speculated to grow to USD 47 billion by 2023, doubling the 2018 value, according to the World Advertising Research Center (WARC). Technical complexities in exploiting
these opportunities in the best possible way have risen as well.
The backend solutions need to be compatible with most common VOD revenue models to target different markets and audiences. In AVOD, it should also allow Dynamic Ad-insertion (DAI) or Client-side Ad-Insertion (CSAI) for personalised advertising.
“Being an experienced digital solutions provider in the media industry, Axinom understands that each company is different, each content piece is unique, and every market needs individual monetisation strategy” adds Mairika Haab. “Our architecture allows a good many integrations to facilitate customer systems, payment providers,bundling opportunities, marketing promotions through vouchers and promo codes.”
For more information on Axinom digital products, or to find out how Axinom solutions can help your OTT and VOD needs, visit www.axinom.com
Axinom can also be found at IBC 2019 in Hall 14 — F17
Advertorial feature
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 47
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How does live sports fit in the era of VOD and fragmentation?Sports has emerged as a strategically critical component of almost every media company’s
portfolio. As we see audiences continue to get fragmented and disaggregated across these new experiences available to them, sports still has this unbelievable power to drive somebody to the live moment. Most of the highest rated TV shows in the fall season last
year were NFL broadcasts. The nature of sports is to produce this highly perishable content that drives audiences to participate in sports in the moment. As we have moved to an increasingly VOD driven world sports has actually grown its relative influence in the media landscape. We at Yahoo are constantly looking for content categories that allow us to drive the deepest possible consumer relationships.
This is an unbelievable time to be a sports fan. The amount of access to players and teams and flexibility of that access is unprecedented. A generation ago, things were so constricted. While the proliferation of availability has created some degree of friction in terms of finding content, that’s a trade off any fan in the world would make.
How do you perceive streaming piracy and tackle that?Protecting partners’ IP is of fundamental importance to us and it means we work with all of them on making sure there are robust DRM systems in place to respect whether they be territorial or other delivery specifications we have for our deals.
That said, because of the highly perishable nature of what we do, sports probably is not as acutely impacted by the threat. It doesn’t mean it’s not there or people are not ripping off broadcasts, but relative to other forms of entertainment the nature of sports means it is a slightly less severe issue for us than a movie studio. That NBA game that ends at 11pm is not worth a whole lot 36 hours later.
Now, the biggest stumbling blocks for fans are time zones. It’s awfully hard for a European fan to watch an NFL or NBA game in the middle of the night.
Tell us about your partnership with the NFL and the impact it has had.Our access to the National Football League live games came about as part of a broader partnership that Verizon and the NFL have been involved in. Specifically, what the NFL were interested in working with us was our ability to help them in their quest to reach the younger viewer. The NFL is the powerhouse sport in the US and at the same time they are keenly interested in making sure they serve emerging generations of fans. They thought that working with us was a good way to continue to expand that fan base.
Sure enough, the first full season of NFL that we did on Yahoo demonstrated that around 60% of people who are watching live streams are 39 or younger. That’s interesting to me because there have been a lot of debates within the sports industry as to whether or not the NFL had a demographic problem and I would argue they don’t have a demo problem they have a use case problem. Younger fans, whether Millennials or Gen Zs, are committed to football, maybe not as much as previous generations, but if you make it portable and deliver it to native devices (phones and tablets), the majority of fans who watched that way were significantly younger than those on linear TV. And they will watch habitually; close to 80% of our audience were folks who came in week in and week out.
This is a powerful way for the proverbial cord-cutter and cord-never to access football. One of the value propositions we were looking to offer fans is the idea of frictionless football, regardless of wireless carrier or if you had an authenticated cable subscription. Removing those barriers were key to growing the sport and bringing these younger demos into live NFL games.
Reaching a new generation of sports fansGeoff Reiss of Yahoo Sports talks to CSI about helping the NFL reach younger viewers through multi-screen offers
Sports streaming
48 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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How worried should the industry be about the rise in online piracy?Pirates continue to steal valuable content for a number of reasons. There’s the ubiquitous nature of streaming services and the simplicity with which content can be taken from what were once considered secure devices and then share it online. HD video is now available everywhere, making it very straight-forward for pirates to offer a high-quality product. Pirates steal content with freely available software and broadcast it online within minutes. And pirates are doing this on an industrial scale and generating significant revenue. Friend MTS’s services help media and entertainment businesses see exactly where their content is being made available, and we work very effectively to secure live, PPV and VOD content against unauthorised distribution.
Are the big media companies aware of the scale of the problem?They are aware of piracy, especially with the increasing number of forums and articles dedicated to discussing it. Piracy is clearly becoming a key issue
for them to resolve. From our position, piracy is rampant. No one wants to see their valuable content stolen and it is our job to help the content owners, studios and broadcasters understand there is something they can do about it that will have a positive economic impact. Although the application of anti-piracy measures can be complex, our message is pretty simple, in that by applying robust technology and process to reduce consumption of pirated content, there will be a corresponding increase in revenue. We see this around the world, and everyone in the chain benefits – from the content originators to the distributors.
How can Friend MTS help in fighting this problem?Friend MTS has been in the sharp end of this business for a long time and developed extremely effective services to help our customers understand the scale of their problem and tackle it. We work with everyone in the content distribution chain and emphasise content protection as an ecosystem issue. It is a rapidly changing landscape, and where just a few years ago classical monitoring and DMCA takedown notices were relatively effective, pirates have become much more sophisticated and require a significantly increased level of technical complexity to defeat them. This is where we come in with our widely deployed and highly effective distribution and subscriber level watermarking solution known as ASiD, and our Piracy-iQ consumption measurement service. With Piracy-iQ, theft can be precisely measured and
additional security countermeasures can be deployed in a highly targeted manner based on accurate data. Our customers are able to assess the problem of piracy for their business, then confidently deploy our watermarking and track the impact on a near real-time basis.
How do you attain these fast speeds with client watermarking?Our speciality is live online sporting events where speed, scale and accuracy are essential. With client-side watermarking, we are able to deploy on client devices very simply with a very small software footprint and operate incredibly quickly at extremely large scale. We go beyond basic monitoring services with the technology we have developed, and are able to identify the source of the piracy with very small amounts of video. This allows the owner of the distribution chain to take meaningful action at the most economically opportune time for them. Piracy will remain a threat. Our goal is to raise the bar and partner on this complex problem with companies who want to make a difference to their bottom line.
Friend MTS can be found on stand 1.A58 at IBC 2019
Q&ASponsored
CSI talks to Simon Williamson, chief commercial officer, Friend MTS, about OTT sports and taking down live streaming piracy as quickly and effectively as possible
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Can you explain to our readers what is United Cloud and how do you fit into United Group?United Group is the leading multi-play telecoms and media provider in South East Europe with some 3.8 million RGUs. United Cloud is the R&D centre of United Group and is responsible for all technology innovation of the Group. We employ more than 100 developers in our main offices in Belgrade, Serbia and Ljubljana, Slovenia and we have plans to expand into other countries in the region in near future. United Cloud brings unified platforms, services and UX to be used by all Group members. Our first very successful product was video entertainment platform, EON, that was first launched as an OTT service across all UG markets back in 2017 and complemented with first screen Android TV devices in 2018 and 2019.
Why did you decide to do all your software development, end-to-end, in-house and what are the advantages of this approach?Typical networks of TV operators are very heterogeneous and it is not
uncommon to have up to half a dozen or more vendors and providers of different hardware and software solutions in the chain of video delivery. Until recently, United Group operators were no exception, with additional complexities brought by the fact that we operate across several countries, within and outside of EU, with different languages, different markets, different business models and sometimes different technologies running in the back. Such a diverse environment is not a very fertile ground for innovations - any change translates into request to every one of your vendors to implement it separately, each on their own system component, and then to integrate it with the others, perform testing and so on. Clearly, a tedious process. As a company who has innovation as one of our main focal points, we could not have afforded to innovate at a snail’s pace, so we have decided to start our own development and that is how United Cloud was born, back in 2016. Today, we are proud to say that our EON service runs end-to-end on United Cloud platform that is almost 100% developed in-house. From the business perspective, in-house development brought, not only much greater flexibility and much shorter time-to-market, but also significant savings in cost of running our day to day operations.
Would you consider opening up the EON app or other services on United Cloud platform to other service providers?United Cloud platform currently serves
the needs of United Group operators and EON is just first of the services to run on UC platform. However, we have seen significant interest from the industry in sourcing our services to various 3rd parties and that interest grew exponentially after EON service went live and EON brand became recognised by the industry. This obviously provides some solid new business opportunities that we intend to explore, and we will definitely consider making our services available for 3rd parties in near future.
In terms of hardware, do you have a particular strategy there and any partners you would like to highlight?United Cloud is focused on software development, so we do not make our own hardware, but we have teamed-up with various well-known names from the industry to create United Cloud platform and deliver best experience to our users. Some of those names include companies such as Google, Cisco, Broadcom, Kaon, Technicolor, SDMC, Tech4Home… For some, “partners” are just technology enablers and providers, or pure OEMs that deliver hardware only, but we always try to have deeper cooperation and true partnerships, to engage in a two-way know-how exchange that brings value to everybody. While one way is quite obvious - a vendor selling its solution to the operator, the opposite way is often neglected – operators can also provide valuable feedback to the vendors, allowing them to use operator networks and their business models as real-life testing
Q&ACSI talks to United Cloud’s Mladen Mijatovic about their experience of deploying an Android TV platform and what drove them to adopt an in-
house development approach for software needs
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grounds for their own future development. We always try to provide this feedback and in return we usually receive more than others, as our partners recognise this value.
You embarked on a project to deploy an Android TV box. What drove you to do this and how has this progressed since last year? Please give us an update.This was a difficult decision when we first decided to go with Android TV – a venture into unknown for us – but we can now confidently say that it was also the right decision. Android TV provides operators with a possibility to couple their own services with renowned Google TV services (GTVS) such as YouTube, Chromecast, PlayStore with abundance of apps etc, and offer it to their subscribers as a very tempting bundled package. Developing something of that magnitude was simply not possible for anyone but the biggest operators and even for them the question about feasibility of such projects is an open question. On the other hand, this opened up many questions on how life with a technology giant such as Google will look like in the future. Surprisingly, Google was
very cooperative and for us they are a prime example of a partner who is willing to listen to the feedback and to act upon it. Android TV is not without its challenges, but experience for us was mostly positive. We have already launched one hybrid DVB-C/OTT box in 2018. and another IP-only box in 2019, just
prior to IBC. We also intend to launch some more Android TV devices in near future.
What advice/recommendations would you give to other operator who want to go down the Android TV route?Our first Android TV SetTop Box project was completed in a record-breaking timespan of only eight months from project kick-off to product launch, which is a true Holy Grail of fast Time-To-Market, but this should not be taken as a benchmark. Actual results will vary, and predictions should be considered on a case-by-case basis. For example, we have already gathered a significant know-how by developing EON Android TV app for smart TVs, prior to the box project, which made it easier for us to develop and integrate our own STB app. On the other hand, we opted for a hybrid device which called for DVB and CAS integration and is far more complex design than any IP-only device. Another option to consider is a trade-off between using Android TV standard launcher which is available as an off-the-shelf solution and developing a custom launcher for a more unique operator look-and-feel but
with significant development effort. We worked closely with Google to implement a layer of ‘operator customisations’ into ATV standard launcher and managed to get the best of two worlds. The selection of OEM for the project is also very important, especially if you intend to do your own development – you need to make sure that your OEM has the necessary expertise and experience. Alternatively, you can choose a one-stop-shop and get the whole package: STB, integrated with the app and also possibly custom launcher from some vendor, in which case this applies to the vendor in question. Weigh all these options wisely, as each has its pros and cons.
And last, but not least - you need to remember that by choosing Android TV, you are becoming part of a living, breathing, ecosystem that is very dynamic and to be prepared for a constant change. New Android ‘letter’ is coming out every year!
Finally, what innovation can we expect from United Cloud in the next few months and into 2020? Are there any plans you can share with us?Being at a forefront of United Group technology innovation, you can expect many new things coming out of United Cloud in 2020 such as new TV viewing devices, app support for new OS platforms and expansion of existing services to more United Group operators. Some of the new stuff we are working on is not even directly related to TV, but rather to TV supporting services such as broadband. We also put a lot of effort into developing etter user experience by implementing tailor made content discovery and recommendations based on user profiles.
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In its 52nd year, IBC will for the first time in years have the conference and exhibition start and finish on the same day, both running from Friday 13-17 September.
Also new this year is the Media-Telecom Convergence Catalyst, a new collaboration between IBC and the TM Forum, showcasing open innovation between the telecoms and media industries.
In 2019, esports is set to be an even bigger part of the IBC experience, including a new esports showcase and live tournament.
The popularity of last year’s esports focused events and activities have led IBC to create a dedicated platform for this sector on Tuesday 17 September. On that day, the RAI Auditorium will be turned into an esports arena, with live tournament matches of ‘Counter-Strike’, as well as conference sessions around it.
This will explore the technical and
commercial opportunities and challenges of esports, as well as the technical delivery of esports programmes and production challenges. Speakers include senior execs from the British Esports Association, GINX Esports TV Canada, ProSiebenSat.1 Sports, EVS, Twitch and Blizzard.
The main conference will feature a mix of legacy media companies and new disruptors. Some of the main speakers in 2019 include the CEOs of Vivendi, All3Media and the Consumer Technology Association, as well as representatives from YouTube EMEA, RTÉ, Mediaset, Sony, BBC Studios, Amazon Alexa and the EBU. Others newly added include MovieLabs, Mediaset, Pluto TV, VICE, Netflix, Britbox, Sony, and Facebook.
MovieLabs will be hosting a keynote conference on Sunday 15 September bringing together technology leaders from major Hollywood studios unveiling their vision for the future of content production, post and creative
technologies – in the first public discussion of the 2030 Vision Paper that lays out the disruptive technologies and software-defined workflows that will become the new mainstream.
Over the five days, 1,700 delegates will get to hear from over 300 speakers.
The opening of the new Noord/Zuid (North-South) metro line last year was welcome news for attendees, cutting travel times from central Amsterdam to the RAI to an estimated 8 minutes, providing an alternative means of public transport to the city’s tram networks. Like NAB, IBC provides a free shuttle bus service to and from a selection of the major hotels in Amsterdam directly to the RAI as well as from Schiphol Airport to the RAI and back.
The other news is that IBC recently renewed its agreement with the RAI, signing a new three-year contract with RAI Amsterdam and its partners to stay in the Dutch city.
An interactive floor plan to help visitors navigate the booths and conference is available to download as part of the wider IBC mobile app on iOS and Android. The 2019 version of the app boasts ‘AI-powered matchmaking’ that suggests people you may want to meet with while at the show.
Show preview
IBC 2019 preview
Now in its sixth year, registration is open for the 4K 4Charity Fun Run at IBC 2019.Proceeds this time benefit Iridescent, a global education non-profit for underrepresented young people, helping them through engineering and technology.
Since the inaugural event took place at IBC in 2014 (there are others at NAB etc), the series has raised more than $1 million for good causes.
More information on how to take part is available at https://4k4charity.com/ibc
It’s that time of the year again…
52 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
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Next-generation codecs
Video compression special
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Plotting technology strategies for broadcasters, operators or other video service providers is made immeasurably more
complicated by the sheer quantity of different ways to consume video content. The proliferation of devices and distribution channels means anyone seeking to provide the best service to consumers in the optimum formats for any viewing device needs a multi-codec strategy.
The list of codecs in use has lengthened significantly during the past 15 years, cursing the industry with yet more confusing acronyms. The most significant has been MPEG-4/ H.264, launched in 2003 and currently the most widely used codec; its designated successor H.265/HEVC, introduced in 2013 is also widely used, although adoption has been slower than expected.
Those codecs have been joined by some designed for streamed content: VP9, released by Google in 2013; and AV1, launched in 2018 by the Alliance for Open Media (members include Netflix, Amazon, Google, Intel, Mozilla, Cisco and Microsoft).
MPEG is now working on two more new codecs, Versatile Video Coding (VVC), developed by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), a joint MPEG/ITU initiative; and Essential Video Coding (MPEG-5 EVC). In July 2019, MPEG announced that both would go forward to the Committee Draft stage of the ISO/IEC approval process. An MPEG statement said that although the amount of improvement in coding efficiency VVC will deliver had not yet been formally measured it “is expected to be quite substantial – eg. in the range
of 35 to 60 per cent bit rate reduction relative to [use of HEVC].”
The statement also drew attention to EVC’s baseline profile tools, which are based on royalty-free technologies; and its main profile, which comprises tools that can be activated or deactivated individually. It added that: “Organisations making proposals for the main profile have agreed to publish applicable licensing terms within two years of FDIS [Final Draft International Standard] stage”. In practice, those organisations will include major mobile technology companies like Samsung and Huawei.
On the streaming side, VP9 is widely supported in web browsers and is used by content providers including esports and gaming streamer Twitch, which uses VP9 to support live content distribution, alongside other codecs. Twitch engineers are also on record saying it intends to move to using AV1 for all content in the longer term (the same goes for Netflix).
Nathan Egge, head of the codec engineering team at Mozilla working on AV1, says the codec is designed for mass adoption and will offer some of the qualities that made H.264 adopted so widely.
“Historically, H.264 was sold very broadly, because it plays with all the devices, it’s got a known cost and it’s easy to use,” says Egge. “With AV1 we also wanted to create a codec that can use lots of different content and will be used as much as 264. The idea is that you can encode into one format for all your audience.
“We’re not there yet, but over the past 12 months, if you look at all the people considering AV1, we are getting there. The decoder is already integrated into Firefox and Chromium, so that’s a significant portion of the desktop environment. Android Q has it as a
recommended technology today and we expect that
for Android R it will be required, so that portion
of the mobile space will support it.” The codec has been criticised for
complexity that increases encoding costs, but Egge claims progress has been made in reducing that complexity. He highlights interest within the industry in the development of rav1e, an experimental AV1 encoder; and work underway at “maybe a dozen other companies” on other AV1 encoders.
“That seems like a very healthy step in term of getting adoption,” he says. “There is a significant case for operators to move to AV1. There’s been a lot of interest from broadcasters.”
But Reinhard Grandl, director of product management at Bitmovin, points out that the speed of AV1 adoption will also be determined largely by the speed at which chipsets with AV1 decoding capabilities are built into devices. “That’s key to the experience: for the quality gain which AV1 promises you need hardware decoding support,” he says. It may be more than a year before AV1-compatible chips are added to set top boxes or mobile phones.
So adoption of AV1, VVC and EVC will be impeded by practical, technical and financial obstacles. On the MPEG side, one initiative underway that should prove helpful to some operators is the MPEG-5 Part 2 Low Complexity Enhancement Video Codec (LCEVC), which incorporates compression technology from V-Nova and effectively enhances the efficiency of other codecs. It is examined in more depth in the article that follows.
“LCEVC is a codec-agnostic enhancement,” says Fabio Murra, senior vice-president, product and marketing, at V-Nova. “It’s a response to a market need for approaches that enable enhancement of existing and future codecs to give them a similar performance to that of the next generation codecs. It can also
Advanced codecs
Living in a multi-codec world
54 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
David Adams shines a light on the future of codecs
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significantly reduce computational complexity of new formats. This can speed up adoption, without having to wait for devices with new capabilities to be available. It will help operators and broadcasters move faster.”
Murra also believes the enthusiasm being shown by device manufacturers for VVC and EVC suggests they will be adopted reasonably quickly. “I suspect that in 2020 we will see devices that will support at least one of these formats, given the fact that important device manufacturers are involved,” he says. “We will see adoption more quickly in areas with the highest replacement cycle of devices, with the largest demand for improvements in delivery performance. Streaming services for mobile will be one place to look.”
But even with the assistance of innovative technologies like these, Thierry Fautier, vice-president of video strategy at Harmonic, believes licensing issues may cause further delays in adoption of the new MPEG codecs.
“VVC and MPEG-5 EVC are advanced technical solutions that offer better bandwidth efficiency than AV1 … but in order to be considered for deployment by the industry, we need to know the licensing terms,” he told CSI in July. “It’s important to wait and learn the licensing terms before considering the deployment of those technologies. We cannot reproduce the same mistakes as in the past.”
We can expect further announcements in relation to all the new codecs soon (including IBC 2019), but whatever happens next one thing is certain: we will be living in a multi-codec world for the foreseeable future.
“The battle of codecs in the market will continue,” says Grandl. “I think competition is generally a positive, but from an encoding perspective … it gives us some headaches. But there is a need to use more than one codec to satisfy all users across all devices.”
Murra suggests that operators and broadcasters deciding which of these
technologies to use and where to use them will weigh up three key factors: the support a codec has in terms of devices in the market, the quality or cost savings it can bring; and the complexity of implementation, including new encoding/decoding requirements.
But he also points out that multi-codec strategies are not necessarily a bad thing. “With new codecs and tools being made available there will be more shades of grey,” he says. “Providers will be able to fine-tune things to meet their needs.”
Ibrahim Nassar, manager of broadcast engineering at Al Jazeera, says the company is monitoring developments related to the new codecs closely. “From the distribution point of view, new codecs will help us with UHD, but we need to build a business case for that, because there is a cost involved,” he says. “We are considering using MPEG-5 technologies for UHD – this may be a possibility in the future. We are considering technology that will bring more quality and cost efficiency and will reduce costs.”
Even when the newest codecs are in use on a wider scale, there will still be a need to support HEVC, H.264 and
older codecs still being used in legacy equipment throughout a provider/broadcaster’s operations and in customers’ homes and pockets.
“I think they’ll be around forever,” says Murra. “If you’re in the set-top box business you’re still dealing with MPEG-2 legacy. 50 years in the future it may disappear, but for any business decision window today these things are here to stay.”
Egge agrees. “Some basic codecs will always be supported,” he says. “But I think you’re going to find that as more and more endpoints become capable of using these next generation codecs, if you’ve got a superior product to offer using these technologies you will offer it.”
“We’re not going towards simplification of the codec world – the opposite is the case,” says Grandl. “We will see the need for more codecs being supported by operators, because of the [variety of] devices, because of [industry] politics and because of licensing issues.
“But I see this fragmented codec world having positive aspects, because competition drives technology. And that should mean that in the future more of the end users will benefit from the best experiences.”
Advanced codecs
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Advanced codecs
56 September 2019 www.csimagazine.com
To address the growing demand for high quality video amidst challenges of deploying new codecs, the industry called for a new
approach to video compression. MPEG listened by developing an innovative new standard, MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC (Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding).
LCEVC represents a very new approach to video delivery for the industry. Unlike everything that came before, it is not an independent codec, but the combination of multiple compression techniques to create a codec-agnostic extension to enhance all other codecs. LCEVC improves coding efficiency and can be readily deployed via software with sustainable power consumption. Importantly, LCEVC has the same device compatibility as whatever underlying codec it is being used to enhance.
The fact that LCEVC works with any other codec, MPEG or otherwise, bears repeating. This is a significant break from the past for video compression standards, for one body to define a standard that can benefit all players is unprecedented and acknowledges the fact that we’re operating in a world with many compression standards, all of which have key strengths that are applicable to different use cases for services operators and device manufacturers alike.
LCEVC incorporates core technology that has already been widely proven by a number of deployments with major operators. The benefits provided by delivering higher quality at lower bitrates are perhaps obvious. Better quality results in reduced churn, longer
viewing times for better monetisation in ad-based services, and the ability to reach larger audiences on limited or congested networks. On top of all of this, a reduction in computational complexity of up to 4x massively reduces the operating costs of encoding and crucially means that LCEVC can help to accelerate the rollout of future (and inevitably more complex) codecs by making them both economically and practically viable sooner.
But how have we reached this point and why is it worth our immediate attention?
BackgroundVideo compression is an asset that the broadcast industry heavily relies on to deliver content to audiences. With increasing demand for higher resolutions and more immersive content, there is a need to look for new and innovative solutions to produce further advances in compression given the well documented limitations of the networks we have today.
With the demand for video rocketing upwards and on target to account for nearly 80% of total Internet traffic by 2020 according to Cisco, the market is not standing still.
New video-rich applications from virtual reality to cloud gaming and interactive entertainment all have the potential to offer users higher calibre experiences with higher resolution video, a wider range of colours, high dynamic range and higher frame rates if the underlying technology is available and of sufficiently good value.
The relatively sedate progression of compression technologies over the last couple of decades has been outpaced by demand and what our internet infrastructure can cope with.
Video compression evolution has been led for as long as anyone can remember by standards bodies like the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and ISO/IEC.
MPEG-2 was the de-facto format of digital TV signals before MPEG delivered a more efficient scheme, MPEG-4/ H.264 AVC, in 2004. MPEG-4 cut the bandwidth needed to deliver programming roughly by half. Wind the clock forward to 2013 and both HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) from JVET (a combined MPEG/ITU consortium) and VP9 from Google managed something approaching the same 50% saving trick again.
Today, MPEG-4/H.264 AVC is still the most widely deployed codec, but HEVC hasn’t done badly either, achieving a hardware decoder base of over 2 billion devices and VP9 has very broad usage particularly in web-based applications.
New codec adoptionHEVC and VP9 represented excellent progress and provided the higher compression-efficiency options to enable new use cases and greater scale for video operators. But rolling out new codecs takes time. CE device manufacturers must move through long cycles of hardware design and manufacture from the chips to the boxes that house them, typically taking at least two years. The customer base must adopt the new decoder devices, replacing the older ones. Meanwhile, service operators need to install new encoding equipment and architect new workflows to support the deployments of new codecs, often in parallel with the old ones.
Now, as we come to the present day, the options for the industry are multiplying once again with a new generation of codecs in the pipeline: AV1, from the Alliance for Open Media formed by big video operators like Google and Netflix; VVC (Versatile Video Coding) from JVET; and MPEG-5 Part 1 EVC (Essential Video Coding),
MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC A game-changing complementary solution to improve the performance of all codecs
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from large device manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei.
Great choice, and great opportunities for operatorsWhen considering codec strategies, operators must look at three key dimensions: What devices will a codec support? What are the potential compression efficiency or quality benefits? And what will the costs of deployment and ongoing use be? These emerging codecs represent great innovation and choice and also a very welcome acceleration in the technological progression of video compression generally. Operators must strive to offer more premium services, with higher quality to retain and acquire customers. However, with video codecs this means multiplying their transcoding workflows to keep serving legacy devices whilst adding the new services alongside which is costly. Meanwhile it’s important to note that new codecs drive significant increases in computational costs. This can be acceptable for offline encoded video but is often impractical for real-time video or battery-powered devices. That’s because for real-time linear channel or event encoding, it is often necessary to switch off certain tools within a codec to reduce the computational complexity and enable the encoder to run on cost-effective server hardware, thus sacrificing some of the efficiency gains of the codec. Similarly, greater
complexity can equate to increased battery consumption in devices which operators need to be wary of to avoid annoying customers.
As a result, a broad array of industry leaders asked MPEG to pursue a new direction. Namely, alongside the continued innovation for standalone codecs, to find a way to enhance the compression efficiency and reduce the complexity of all compression standards, past and future, to always enable faster rollouts of premium video experiences for consumers.
LCEVC – how does it work?LCEVC will specify a data stream structure defined by two component streams: stream 1 is a conventional encode in the existing ‘base’ codec (typically at a lower resolution than the final output signal) which is decodable by the existing hardware decoder. Stream 2 is the enhancement codec that can be decoded via light software processing, and even via scripted decoding in an HTML5 browser, meaning that the vast majority of devices and browsers on the planet can already support next-generation video experiences. The enhancement codec is efficient in using the ‘base’ at varying resolutions, effectively incrementing the bits-per-pixel (bpp) it has available at any given bitrate. The higher frequency, sparse, information is instead encoded using new techniques that are extremely efficient and light.
In all cases, the presence of the enhancement codec stream improves compression, or video quality at a given bit rate, while reducing processing power consumed.
Summary - A future-proof approachRather than throwing another codec
into the mix, LCEVC is a new tool to improve any subsequent generation of codecs, past, present and future.
The business implications of this new approach for streaming providers are game-changing. In many cases they will be able to readily halve their encoding operating expenditure whilst in parallel reaching a larger target audience by streaming to customers on lower bandwidths. This in turn helps to better monetise the service by delivering a better quality-of-experience. Furthermore, as soon as next generation codecs become deployable, LCEVC can enhance their performance and reduce their computational complexity too.
LCEVC is progressing well towards standardisation through the MPEG committees by early next year. Given that operators and broadcasters need not replace their legacy investments, adoption can be swift. The rapid uptake will also be encouraged by the standard being based on proven and existing technology. This has the advantage that optimised implementations of encoders and decoders supporting the standard are already being made available via a range of commercial and open-source products and solutions.
Elegant, effective, efficient and proven. LCEVC provides a compelling and future-proof solution for services looking to deliver next-generation video applications at scale without waiting for the lengthy rollout of new codecs and without the need to duplicate content delivery workflows.
Guido Meardi is CEO and Co-founder, V-Nova. Come see V-Nova at IBC 2019 on stand 14.A07
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Television subscriber numbers at the end of June 2019 for the leading 10 pay-television services in the United States that report figures.
Source: informitv Multiscreen Index
Pay-TV stats
www.csimagazine.com September 2019 59
In association with the informitv Multiscreen Index
Together with the Multiscreen Index from informitv, CSI brings you the latest data on the top 10 television services across Europe and
the United States.According to the Multiscreen Index,
the leading European operators had 81.49 million TV customers between them at the end of June 2019.
This is about the same number as the top 10 services in the US. However, there is a long tail of European services that do not make the top 10, including Virgin Media, with 3.85 million subscribers in the UK.
Now part of Comcast, Sky accounted for the majority of customer gains across the top 10 services across Europe as tracked by the informitv Multiscreen Index.
“So far the loss of television
subscribers in Europe has been less significant than in the United States, with many European providers continuing to report net gains,” says Dr William Cooper, the editor of the informitv Multiscreen Index. “Nevertheless, it is notable that a number of operators no longer report their television subscriber numbers separately, which they were happy to provide when they were gaining customers.”
Service Parent company Platform Change quarter Subscribers m
1 Sky Comcast Satellite 304,000 24.02
2 Tricolor National Satellite Company Satellite 2,000 12.23
3 Vodafone Germany Vodafone Cable -38,000 7.54
4 Orange France Orange Telco 50,570 7.15
5 Free Illiad Telco - 6.41
6 Rostelecom telco Rostelecom Telco 68,105 5.43
7 Cyfrowy Polsat Cyfrowy Polsat Satellite - 5.24
8 Rostelecom cable Rostelecom Cable -74,615 4.77
9 Canal+ France Vivendi Satellite -60,000 4.58
10 Telefónica España Telefónica Telco 11,300 4.11
265,360 81,48
Service Parent company Platform Change quarter Subscribers m
1 AT&T Premium TV AT&T Corporation Satellite -778,000 21.58
2 Comcast Comcast Communications Cable -210,000 20.64
3 Charter Spectrum Charter Communications Cable -150,000 15.80
4 DISH Network DISH Network Corporation Satellite -79,000 9.56
5 Verizon Fios Verizon Communications Telco -52,000 4.27
6 Altice USA Altice USA Cable -20,800 3.28
7 Sling TV DISH Network Corporation Online 48,000 2.47
8 DIRECTV NOW AT&T Corporation Online -105,000 1.33
9 Frontier Frontier Communications Cable -17,000 0.75
10 Mediacom Mediacom Communications Cable -46,000 0.74
-1,409,800 80.42
The top 10 pay-TV services in Europe
The top 10 pay-TV services in the US
Television subscriber numbers at the end of June 2019 for the leading 10 pay-television services in Europe that report figures. Illiad and Cyfrowy Polsat still to report at time of printing.
59_Op Stats.indd 3 29/08/2019 12:48:00
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