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Confused about moving to IP? Don’t worry you are not alone. While recent moves by Evertz, chief promoter of the ASPEN live IP production protocol and Sony, architect of its own route to live IP, to join the Alliance for IP Media Solutions would seem to herald a break out of common sense on behalf of vendors, each continues to plough its own path.
The EU’s member states are reaching towards consensus over cross border portability of content between European countries with a transitional approach allowing broadcasters and media rights holders time to adjust to a more open market. This emerged during the EU’s recent Competitive Council meeting, where delegates showed favor of an opt-in for now so that the default would remain for cross border controls to remain in place.
A good test and measurement solution combines both smart test equipment and a trained operator.
Better pixels are coming, but there is much detail to be resolved. Will consumers be confused? Will a “4K” receiver also support high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR) and wide colour gamut (WGC)? And where will the content come from? Over-the-air looks a little way off, but fibre broadband offers an immediate solution. Several organisations are trying to cut though all the options and to offer a simple proposition to the consumer. CES 2016 saw several announcements to this end.
Just what are the practical aspects of improving delivered picture quality? They involve a complex combination of needing to increase both spatial and temporal resolution.
The EBU (European Broadcasting Union) has published its minimal set of cyber security guidelines for its members’ IT systems based on best practice already established in other industries. The recommendation known as EBU R143 has been developed in response to several high profile and damaging hacks on broadcasters and content owners, but also reflect the growing exposure to attacks from the Internet.
The Ultra HD Forum released its first set of guidelines for production workflows at NAB 2016 as promised, clearing the way for early deployments in 2016. But the Forum emphasized that these guidelines were still work in progress and that a future version would target later Ultra HD services in 2017 and beyond.
Subtitling multi-language media provides a specific challenge, namely that the person facilitating the subtitling has to be available at the broadcaster or post house facility. For one language this may be viable, but a feature film may require many language versions for international distribution, and the requirement to have localised multi-language subtitle authoring with many people becomes a logistical nightmare.
