roundtable_rt 26/11/2014 18:51 Page 1
Making the
most of
OTT TV
irst, the most basic of questions
for Over The Top TV: it is by
definition carried over
unmanaged networks and, therefore,
subject to the ‘best efforts’ of the
bandwidth that happens to be available
at any given point. With video traffic
lanes ever more crowded and with 4K
on the horizon, can OTT cope, can it
deliver a satisfactory QoS to the viewer?
“Yes, I think it certainly can,” declares Sam
Orton-Jay, director of business development &
strategy at DivX, “we’re seeing massive growth
in OTT delivery to Smart TV as more are sold
and people discover what’s underneath that
App button. Of course, bandwidth is a
challenge and it varies regionally but at DivX
we’ve enabled HEVC codec across the players
and that enables us to deliver up to 4K when
possible. Of course, it requires very advanced
adaptive streaming to go across networks from
a cell net in Africa up to a massive pipe in
South Korea, but it is doable.”
F
Until recently, defined as threat to
traditional pay-TV, OTT is now key to
most providers' TV Everywhere propositions. But
whether as part of a pay-TV package or as a direct-toviewer challenger service, has the full potential of OTT
been recognised and exploited? Advanced Television
brought together four expert practitioners to examine
the state of play and what the future holds.
and aggregates the bandwidth.”
“I used to work in IPTV when telcos were
trying to do 1080P HD and we worried about
being able to provide a single channel, so you
see how innovation has driven the technology
and vice versa, the most important thing is
people want to use it,” comments Alex
Hayward, senior business development
manager for Adobe Primetime, “and that’s
what will drive the bandwidth chain. From our
perspective it’s more about tailoring the service
to how people want to watch it and through
what devices. You are definitely going to want
to watch UHD on your 50-inch TV, but on your
iPhone...? The jury is still out, but the
important thing is it is a consistent
experience.”
“The bandwidth today is enough for SD or
“Soon, there may
not be much of a
top to go over.”
Alex Hayward,
Adobe
“In my opinion, it is true that OTT is not
very well suited for TV,” warns George
Mikeladze, CEO and founder of Qarva, “it was
not designed for this and the main problem is
the range, the distance between the server and
the viewer; we address this with our multipipe technology which sets up multiple
connections between consumers and servers
22 EUROMEDIA
HD, the next step is very tied up
with HEVC,” says Ben Gidley,
Director Multiscreen Solutions
for Irdeto, “that saves about 40
per cent of the bandwidth and that lets you
deliver 4K to those who want it but it also lets
you attract a much bigger audience from what
were marginal parts of the network. As far as
being happy to watch TV over the Internet –
we know people are very happy with this from
piracy – over the World Cup we reckon there
were 11 million people watching games,
illegally, live streaming. Pay-TV can build these
services now and they work now.”
Whether it was invented for the purpose or
not, all agree that IP will be the carrier for the
all video services in the future, and that means
services managed and delivered from the
cloud, but it doesn’t mean there will be
standard streaming formats. “It would be great
if there were some standardisation,” says
Mikiladze, “and it is important to make the
entry cost lower for smaller operators and
encourage innovation.”
“I struggle to see us ever getting a one
standard,” asserts Orton-Jay. “Certainly
MPEG-DASH and the savings it brings to
production and an ability to help rationalise
DRMs across device types means it will
continue to gain good traction, but there will
always be a fragmented world with device
proliferation.”
“It is hard to tell if there will ever be a
standard,” says Hayward. “In the meantime we
need to help broadcasters and operators with
the complication that does exist – they are not
interested in the problem and would like
someone else to manage it. If your OTT
workflow can manage that complexity it puts
the broadcaster in a better place.”
“We have to embrace multi-DRM,” says
Gidley. “We do every DRM there is from a
single headend now and with a single
packaging process for operators. It is exactly
the service needed as no operator can afford to
choose just one DRM because there are big
ecosystem vendors – like Apple – who will
always insist on their own DRM. We predict in
five years it will probably come down to two;
HLS and MPEG-DASH and common
encryption.”