In Broadcast - June 2014 - 76

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 32 - JUNE 2014

N E W S

InMEDIA
Extended Broadcast Channels Cont.
establishing catch-up and VoD
services, which Capablue's Cape
narrows down to:
* Different run-times across
platforms - HTML/HTML5/Flash;
* Different DRM - Playready/
Widevine/Access/Marlin;
* Different video formats - Smooth
Streaming, HLS, MPEG Dash;
* Different OS and SDK on each
of the target devices.
But this is a shifting picture, with
competing technologies collapsing
- or at least attempting to collapse -
around a standard, while the wider
industry meanwhile forges ahead
into new territory and makes new
demands of the technology.
On the coalescence front, MPEGDASH, the ﬁrst attempt to forge
an international standard adaptive
bit-rate HTTP-based streaming
solution, is at the forefront of
many endeavours. Its introduction
is, however, slightly complex.
"There is a great struggle between
VSPs wanting stability and
standardisation to allow them to
launch mass scale services (and
support end users) versus the rush
to introduce new technology by
large consumer electronics and

web vendors. So the situation
around MPEG-DASH adoption
is likely to remain complicated,"
explains Salo.
"Apple holds a lot of power, and
so its HLS format is popular," he
continues. "This is evident in
that support for its format is also
coming from both Microsoft and
Adobe, which have competing
technologies. The reverse - support
from Apple for Adobe or Microsoft
technologies - is unlikely. DASH
has strong support but other
potential issues (including the fact
that it's not exactly one format
but a collection of formats) further
complicate the issue."
More work is required. Then,
of course, there is the ongoing
rollout of HEVC and, beyond that,
the introduction of 4K. Imagine
Communications' Wheeles points to
the fact that the immediate beneﬁts
of HEVC adoption are applicable
to HD and even SD. "[It will] lead
to signiﬁcant bit rate reductions
relative to H.264 at similar quality
levels or higher quality levels at a
particular bit rate, thus enabling
higher-quality experiences on
bandwidth-constrained networks."

Charlie Good, CTO,
Wowza Media
Systems

will positively
"...HEVClive event
impact
streaming

"

This also has benefits for
productions. Charlie Good, is CoFounder and CTO at Wowza Media
Systems. "HEVC will positively
impact live event streaming by
enabling a higher quality feed to
be sent from a live event to a CDN
or cloud," he says. "Often at a live
venue you pay for the network link
in MB per second. With HEVC you'll
be able to stream higher quality
video in a more efficient way,
reducing the cost of high-quality
live event streaming."

4K Rollout

HE VC will also enable the
4K rollout to proceed apace,
though even Netflix - which

is now streaming 4K content
starting with series 2 of House
of Cards - acknowledges that 4K
as a mass market proposition is
ﬁve years away.
Perhaps more worryingly it says
that 20Mbps is the cut-off point
(16Mbps signal plus headroom),
which with the US and most other
Western territories tracking at
around 10Mbps currently means
that there is plenty of work to
be done. And that is without the
current threat to net neutrality
and the very real prospect of a
two or even three-speed internet
being established to cope with the
increase in video traffic.
One other thing should be
considered too: extending
channels into the online space isn't
just a technical challenge, it's also
a marketing one.
"Ask broadcasters how important
their brand is to attracting
audiences, advertisers, content
and you get an idea of why channel
branding should be higher up
the value list," comments James
Gilbert, CEO at Pixel Power.
"Without branding a channel is
simply a media feed."

76

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3G/HD/SD Data Inserter/Decoder/Transcoder/Bridge

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Bridge VBI/VANC data to avoid corruption from 3rd party devices
Mix and match, swap and shufﬂe data for any video format
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Simultaneously perform multiple data management processes
Remote control via TCP/IP, GPI/Os, Remote Panels
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Compact: up to 6 x HDB 300 cards ﬁt into a 1U chassis
OP47, EIA-608, EIA-708, NuFor, Teletext
* Insert/decode cue tones (including X32, WSS)
* Insert/decode RS-232/422 data
* Insert timecode
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* Blank, Pass, Copy and Shufﬂe data
* Bridge data between SDI feeds
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In Broadcast - June 2014

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