availability and cost.”“ Real-life trials and deployments of V- Nova PERSEUS have proven that coverage of events in 4K / UHD can be done extremely cost-effectively alongside premium HD services without the need to invest in expanded connectivity while maintaining the near-lossless quality and lowlatency these services demand. Examples include the first live 4K broadcast of the El Clásico football match late last year and the recent announcement of the Eutelsat deployment of PERSEUSpowered P. Link 4K equipment to cover Euro 2016 matches in 4K,” he notes. BURDEN. Will aspects such as graphics rendering, video and audio decoding and processing reside at the point of media consumption rather than in the network in the future, easing the burden?“ I think that we will continue to see high power graphics rendering in the hand of the end user. Or in his living room,” says Ciocirlan.“ That’ s how you deliver these very fluid user experiences that subscribers are becoming accustomed to when they use their smartphones or tablets. The networks of today can’ t provide this zero lag interaction without significant penalties.”
“ At same time, that power will be assisted increasingly by cloud processing and cloud-based streaming. That will provide a complete user experience that people are looking for. The intelligence of the cloud, the ability to stream anything in any format you might need, regardless of where you are, from your library or subscription service – those types of cloud services will continue to evolve. Operators have to evolve their User Experience in order to remain competitive – otherwise more and more people will take the path of least resistance and use their smartphone / tablet to search and play content … with the‘ big screen’ becoming just a player. Operators have to deliver great user experiences in order to stay competitive, and that will require having
“ This new multiple in bandwidth consumption is hugely compounded by the trend from‘ multicast’ to‘ unicast’ traffic.” – Richard Brandon, Edgeware
powerful rendering and processing capabilities on the device itself,” he advises.“ There is a difference between doing something and doing something well. In order to do something well, if its computationally complex( and might change over time) you typically need to avoid trying to do that in consumer electronics, where the emphasis is keeping costs down and volumes up,” observes Wilson. TENDENCY.“ The tendency today is to move towards just-intime packaging, putting all the content together at the point it is requested by the receiving device,” says Bringuier.“ While it is possible for the device to call for each element separately, it does raise significant quality of experience challenges. The server providing one part of the content might have a longer latency than the rest, or might deliver content in a different codec or bit budget, resulting in a jump in quality.”
“ When adding advertising to video streams, in particular, by making the insertion on the server side all content arrives at the consumer’ s device from the same source. This provides a consistent user experience with no freezes or glitches. It makes sense, therefore, for all content to be tailored at the point of delivery from the service provider, to achieve a single stream. The just-in-time packaging software will select the appropriate elements as required. Those might include stereo or surround audio tracks; different language versions, either in subtitles or in dubbing; and graphics appropriate for the specific consumer as well as advertising targeted to the demographic or even the individual.”“ Further, the just-in-time packaging could deliver a complex, rich output stream which would in turn use the power of the home network and the receiving device to tune into the appropriate set of parameters. What flows from the content delivery network to the home could be 4K and surround sound, encoded with HEVC and delivered as MPEG- DASH, which could be viewed on the main television. But it could use processing in the home to trans-package it into 4K and HLS for
an iPad Pro, or 1080 and HLS for a phone, and so on,” he suggests.
“ That involves just a single connection from the source through the CDN and the last mile, minimising bandwidth requirements while giving the consumer a great deal of flexibility. At present there are no real standards for home network processing which would make this practical, but all of the technology elements are there and ready to be deployed. Whatever the application, softwaredefined workflows ensure all content owners, broadcasters and network operators meet their customers’ expectations of consistent delivery at a quality and resolution appropriate for the viewing device, while at the same time ensuring revenues are protected and optimised.” TRADITIONAL.“ There is no one-size-fitsall answer to this scenario,” admits Trow.“ Topologies will vary depending on legacy infrastructure, type of service contemplated and channel funding mechanism. The idea of format-independent delivery has been an aspiration of video providers and aggregators for some time. The limiting factor has frequently been addressing the numerous playout profiles expected, not only for multiscreen, but also catch-up and OTT variants. Another factor is the trend to concentrate on content production and distribution in a mezzanine format, relying on downstream transcoding to handle conditioning for the target distribution format. Of particular relevance to pay-TV is the rise of targeted advertising, which has a significant pull on functionality to reside close to consumption. So while centralising processing within a network has obvious appeal, there are plenty of operational reasons to pull functionality downstream,” he adds.
“ In traditional approaches to TV delivery, the processing capabilities of the point of media consumption( the set-top box) have been kept purposely limited, principally to reduce cost. However, new video-capable connected devices come with higher-processing power and graphic processing units( GPUs) that provide a lot more functionality including graphics rendering previously only available to powerful games consoles. This will certainly increase the possibility for more creativity in service provision,” concludes Murra.
22 EUROMEDIA