Broadcasters are confident that they will hold on to the sub 700 MHz UHF band for digital terrestrial services in all regions of the world after the first week of the ITU 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15). This comes after a rearguard action by broadcasters spearheaded in Europe by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) to prevent further encroachment by cellular services into spectrum in the sub 700 (470-694/698 MHz) currently reserved for DTT services.
Today’s smartphone owners carry more powerful video technology in their pockets than the best state-of-the-art TV broadcast or production facilities could provide two decades ago at any price. The second decade of this century is when off-the-shelf computing matures to the point that it can facilitate and manage nearly all technology-based tasks in broadcast TV stations and TV networks in real-time.
Engineers face new challenges in measuring 12G-SDI signals, which require different techniques compared to those used with SD-SDI, HD-SDI and 3G-SDI signals. Here we will touch on the importance of signal shape, the impact of jitter and the complexities of the different interface formats.
Video over HDMI has proven for more than a decade it has a place in professional and broadcast TV infrastructures and its use continues to grow. Will HDMI replace the SDI interface?
The choice between systems for ATSC 3.0 audio is now down to MPEG-H versus Dolby AC-4 and there is about equal support for each system. It’s now mired in politics within the committee, though a decision is due by the end of 2015.
Italy is the latest European country to trial LTE Broadcast for local transmission of a major live event with streaming of a show by singer-songwriter Max Gazzè. Like many other trials to date it was limited to a selected group of users at Expo 2015, the World Trade Fair in Milan, spanning the 110 hectare (272 acre) site. The Gazzè show was multicast to the site over Italian operator TIM’s 4G/LTE network to LTE Broadcast enabled phablets (large smartphones the size of small tablets), allowing users to switch between several channels of live HD video as well as on-demand content within the Expo zone.
According to Forrester Research, cord cutting is on the rise with 24% of adults not paying for cable or satellite. But cutting the cord carries with it some downside. You may not have access to all of your favorite programs—and those you can receive are harder to find.
As the size of video files explode in size, it’s too expensive to keep building larger capacity distribution pipes. For that reason, the race to improve video compression technology has taken center stage. The only question today is how efficient can compression get?
