coverstory_cover story 09/05/2014 18:46 Page 3
services continue to rise
in popularity, advances
in Wi-Fi technology such
as 802.11ac (5G WiFi)
can further improve the
capability to deliver
content such as UltraHD to the home,
especially when you
consider that video
consumption is increasing not only in the
quality/resolution but also the number of
devices in the same household.”
For ARRIS’s Ciocirlan, the main factor
driving the adoption of HEVC is bitrate
reduction. “This gives telcos the ability to
expand the footprint of their IPTV services
with less investment in the network, and can
be used by cable operators as an enabler for
the migration to IPTV. HEVC reduces some
of the simulcast penalty that ‘pure’ IPTV
services tiers will impose on the network.
The second factor is the roll-out of 4K
services, which will likely be driven by
upcoming major sports events like the World
Cup, Commonwealth Games; the 2016
Olympics will probably herald the ‘coming of
age’ for 4K TV, with relatively widespread
availability of 4K HEVC content.”
AirTies’ Celebi expects to see mass
adoption of HEVC with deployments in place
by 2015. “HEVC has the capability to halve
the total amount of broadband capacity
required to run video. This has massive
ramifications for service providers in being
able to deploy HD video in areas with low
broadband connection speeds. It will have
the knock-on effect of increasing the number
of households globally able to enjoy good
quality HD video and overcoming the
restrictions of last mile capacity, which has
plagued the market for many years.
Furthermore it will allow open Internet
streaming to be elevated to the quality of a
pay-TV experience,” he suggests.
EQUATION. “It would be easy to say that
4K is the main driver for HEVC,” admits
ANEVIA’s Lucas. “However, the equation has
completely changed since the adoption of
MPEG-4 for 1920 x 1080 high-definition
delivery. For transition to MPEG-4
transition, the main barrier was to replace
legacy MPEG-2 set-top boxes. As soon as
retail devices are ready for
HEVC, and the number of
such devices deployed
becomes significant, I see
no reason why an operator
would not use HEVC to save
bandwidth. And this will
most probably be led by
portable devices (sales of
“There will be
stronger co-operation
between the network
and home devices.”
Nivedita Nouvel,
Broadpeak
making it unlikely that any content will be
exclusively HEVC any time soon,” he warns.
ADOPTION. “Traditionally, a new video
compression standard requires hardware
decoders to be introduced into the market to
gain widespread adoption,” notes Harmonic’s
Trow. “The advent of software-based players
implemented on gaming consoles, Smart
TVs, tablets, and PCs has allowed new
compression techniques to be more rapidly
applied to the market. This trend started
with the introduction of H.264 and largely
seeded the trend for OTT delivery of content.
For HEVC, the existence of software players
will certainly increase this trend and largely
explains why the benefits of improved
compression efficiency have been released
much more quickly for HEVC than for
preceding compression standards.”
According to Farncombe’s Racine, there
are two key factors, the first being the
enabling of Ultra HD video delivery. “There
are initial deployments on both regular
broadcast networks, and over streaming,
however it is still very early days for HEVC,
and it is clear that CE manufacturers are
pushing this feature, as it does produce a
‘wow’ effect on consumers. The other driving
factor for HEVC is to benefit from its
compression efficiency to distribute HD
channels, allowing it to reduce the required
bandwidth and therefore allowing to increase
the number of households able to stream
content to their main TV screen or their
connected devices.”
Red Bee Media’s Plunkett suggests the
roll-out of 4K will be largely dependent upon
HEVC, higher quality/lower bandwidth HD
would benefit from it and the general
availability of hardware accelerated decoders
will increase its viability. “However, H.264
has reached a level of ubiquity now (over a
period of 10 years) that will entrench its use
for some time to come,” he notes.
HEALTHY. “Broadcom sees healthy
adoption of HEVC as both a means to
immediately reduce HD bandwidth and
increase HD service offerings, as well as an
Ultra HD/4k enabler across all delivery
models,” says Nelson. “The bandwidth
efficiencies created by HEVC help to 8