Video consumption has changed. Over-the-top (OTT) technologies have made the TV just one screen among many. The new reality has brought multiple new platforms and devices to consumers, which means reaching the masses requires big investments in both video delivery and application development.
A big chunk of the ATSC 3.0 standard — the “physical layer” — has finally graduated to candidate standard status. It’s a major achievement, but there are still many other components of the complex project ahead. As many as twenty components of the complete standard are still in play — scheduled to all be complete in the first quarter of 2017.
The growing ability of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) to enable live video streaming over the Internet was a major theme at the Content Delivery World 2015 forum in London on October 5-7. Vendors and operators agreed that virtualization of the CDN was essential for scaling high quality OTT services by separating network control from the underlying hardware, avoiding reliance on a specific configuration that might run out of capacity. With virtualization, a given service can call on large reserves of capacity as required to meet peak demand.
Semantically enhanced smart data, combined with analytics, can provide powerful business marketing tools for video distributors according to Spideo. In its white paper, “How Smart is your Data? the video recommendation engine provider explores several areas in which semantically enhanced smart data opens up new business opportunities and demonstrates the impact recommendation engines have on user experiences.
In September 2015, Hibernia Networks launched the first trans-Atlantic submarine cable since 2003. The new Hibernia Express cable is the first system optimized for low latency. This article focuses on the latency proposition of the new cable system.
In Part 1 of this series on preserving taped resources and moving them to an archive, we reviewed the typical problems that may be encountered and the tools needed to resolve them. With those identified, let’s see how it is possible to automate the process to ensure maximum throughput and quality.
Ultra HD data rates get astronomical for uncompressed formats. Moving to IP, we look at building cost effective and sustainable infrastructure.
The broadcast industry is once again going through both business and technology changes. At the heart of these changes is the need to move to IP-based infrastructure. There are many different codecs and standards being proposed but one that is key to this transition is H.264/AVC. It’s a good fit for end-to-end IP workflows because it provides a full spectrum of video quality and resolutions including support for low to high bitrates, proxy to 4K or even 8K, Intra or GOP formats, 8- and 10–bit depth and 4:2:0 to 4:4:4 colour sampling. It is widely used in broadcast and A/V so interoperability and compatibility are no longer concerns.
