The future of TV broadcasting is in the air, but maybe not on the air. FCC repack auctions and ATSC 3.0 introduce new variables further complicating predictions of TV’s future, even with a UHD crystal ball and a good lawyer. A lot of people without call letters want to tell broadcasters what to do. To what destination are TV stations being lead?
Spectrum scarcity is giving TV channels and broadcast operators a real challenge to introduce 4K services for terrestrial television. Combining scalable coding with HEVC and hybrid broadcast/broadband distribution is an answer. In this solution, HDTV transmissions on DTT remains unchanged and an enhancement layer is sent over the internet to allow the TV set or the set top box to decode and display the 4K picture.
When Google deprecated the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) in their Chrome web browser, we entered a new era of DRM. NPAPI was ancient, in digital terms and widely derided for severely outdated security measures. But as one of the key technologies used by Java and Silverlight, this move has left many video content providers scrambling to find new ways to stream rights-controlled content.
Nine months before the 600 MHz auction is scheduled to open and proponents on all sides claim reasons and rights to spectrum territory. The drama leading up to the big auction has all the ingredients of a ratings-winning TV show. This is extreme reality TV nobody will see on TV.
You don’t need a “secret decoder ring” to understand IP terminology. However, if you think that a DAM involves water, that SOAP is for the shower, that PAM is your cousin’s name and ESB is short for Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, read on. You have some catching up to do.
A recent pricing announcement by HEVC Advance, one of two groups pooling patents for HEVC compression technology among rights holders, has done little to clarify the situation for device makers. The launch in April 2015 of HEVC Advance surprised many in the industry who are not close followers of the compression field since it had appeared until then that all patents would be administered by another group called MPEG LA.
Online video providers may be gaining subscribers from established pay TV operators but they are not having it all their own way with high churn rates among themselves. This applies to leaders such as Netflix and Amazon as well as smaller OTT players, according to the latest OTT Video Market Tracker from Parks Associates.
Without standards, the world would be a very difficult place to live in. There are many kinds of standards that affect almost every aspect of live – technology is just one of those areas. We can consider language as a kind of standard that allows people in one part of the world to communicate with each other. International finance uses standardised methods of accounting to try to provide a consistent framework for doing business. Currency itself is a symbolic representation of value that we use as a standard for exchange of goods and services.
So we need standards to get on with our daily lives. In our industry and many others, technological development is not regulated or centrally organised; it takes place in a free-for-all where commercial realities hold sway. But in order to build workable infrastructure for a national or international cellular phone system or a broadcasting network, these commercial interests have to be tempered by some kind of framework that allows competing energies to be channeled in roughly the same direction.
