The future of over-the-air broadcast TV is clouded by a lack of technical planning. There are no national frequency plans for Repack, nor are there any plans for simulcasting or subsidized converters for the ATSC 3.0 transition. Broadcast engineers must be keenly aware of and plan for known future scenarios that have no plan, such as Repack and ATSC 3.0. Every station and market is on literally its own.
In the world of pay-TV there is only one constant: the need for robust content protection. Despite standardization efforts across the industry, device fragmentation still poses a challenge for pay-TV service providers that want to offer secure premium content over the internet.
From PCs to tablets to smartphones, different video-enabled devices employ different security techniques to protect their content. While all platforms will implement a digital rights management (DRM) client or support a downloadable DRM component, the level of protection on offer differs widely.
In the last article on Cloud Broadcasting we looked at the concept of “Cloud Washed” and “Cloud Born” and the considerations vendors must look at when delivering true cloud systems. In this article, we look more at resilience and cloud system up time.
Video-on-demand (VOD) is here to stay. Almost two thirds of respondents to a Nielsen study of more than 60 countries say that they now watch some form of VOD content. The rise of over-the-top (OTT) video delivery has itself been astonishing. Simply put, traditional ways of watching TV have been changing fast. The steady shift from linear TV has led to an entirely new set of consumer habits and expectations. It is younger audiences, in particular, that are forcing the change: they are increasingly demanding with their desire to watch what they want, when they want, and on the device they have to hand.
There are more than 2.7 million adverts for devices that play out illegal streams of live content on e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba according to research by Irdeto. The value of the billions of dollars broadcasters and content owners spend on live sports and entertainment content is undermined by online piracy. Because of this, pay TV services have become more expensive than ever before because they need to compete for viewers and subscribers while spending huge amounts on media rights.
Implementation of software in public clouds might not be as straightforward as it seems. Outdated software licensing models restrict one of the fundamental advantages of cloud systems, that is their ability to grow and shrink as the dynamics of the business demands, sometimes by the hour.
Industry watchers will be analysing the latest product releases at CES to see where consumer technology is heading. For the broadcast sector, UHD and HDR featured heavily amongst the TV-related releases at CES 2017. Still wary after the failure of 3D to take TV viewing by storm, will UHD prove more successful? Early indications are that it will, especially when there are no worries about losing expensive eyewear down the back of the sofa. Through this series I take a look at acquisition through to delivery for UHD content.
Aesthetically pleasing 3D titles and graphics are integral to providing the wow factor that keeps today’s broadcast viewers glued to the screen. These visual elements—including 3D and 2D titles, animated graphics and real-time data-driven overlays—provide the vital contextual information that enables viewers to fully appreciate and understand the events they are watching.
