Cover Story
The
Cover Story
VR and AR: The new Reality TV?
AR and VR are seen by many as the next frontier in broadcasting, but while the benefits are clear for gaming and many b2b and b2c applications, is it ready for Live Television? Colin Mann dons his headset to look for some answers, with the help of a range of industry executives.
“ broadcasting industry has been on the front lines of changing how we consume entertainment, so you can bet there are many tech executives out there investing in the new challenges of VR,” notes Nelson Rodriguez, senior industry marketing manager, games, at Akamai Technologies.“ We talk to those people every day. Of course, however ready the industry is, the expectations are racing ahead, and it will be a complex process to develop the right standards for the future of the medium. There’ s a general sense that VR still has some barriers to immersion, and the quality can still improve. In a few years, we’ ll probably be talking about 4K 360 streams, pushed to fully-wireless high end headsets. That’ s not even factoring in volumetric video. Right now, you’ ve got two kinds of VR experiences; 360 video on the one end and gaming on the other. Video VR is still designed around a user sitting in a fixed position, while games are exploring what it means for the viewer to walk around and interact.”
Charles Cheevers, chief technology officer of customer premises equipment at ARRIS,
suggests that the terms‘ broadcast’ and‘ VR’ are probably oxymorons in the context of live viewing given the VR experience is meant to be your unique view of the scene.“ There is likely to be no full live broadcast of the entire 360 view but rather a combination of unicast services that show high resolution at the fovea [ a tiny pit located in the macula of the retina that provides the clearest vision of all ], where the person is looking, and multicast services showing less resolution where they are no looking.”
According to Cheevers, progress is steady on improving encoding and mapping to reduce bandwidth but to try and retain the VR experience, but it will not be until we get 4Kp60 and 90Hz performance that the viewer will feel truly immersed.“ This requires another level of bandwidth at 100-500Mbps and will be relying heavily on improvements in the ability to encode and map to the most applicable scenes. For now, live VR is still very much in its trial stages, but certainly sport and the ability for either the user to choose the view point or be taken‘ into’ the boxing match – where normally a camera would not go – are experiences there seems to value in creating,” he adds.
Early
“ It is still very early in the evolution of broadcast VR and while it is certainly possible to deliver VR content to viewers – YouTube 360 video provides a working example – we will see significant ongoing development over the coming years,” suggests Steve Plunkett, CTO, broadcast and media services, Ericsson.“ The current generation of VR devices, both mobile and tethered HMDs, vary significantly in terms of resolution, frame rates, bitrates and optical quality, placing greater constraints on what can be displayed compared to what can be captured. This variety at the point of
consumption increases complexity for the entire production and distribution chain, and mirrors the early days of OTT video. It will be some time before we reach a point of maturity, and in the meantime rapid evolution, innovation and experimentation will be the order of the day.” Thierry Fautier, VP of video strategy at Harmonic, Board Member and Co-founder of VR Industry Forum, notes that AR is being used in the professional broadcast space, but not yet in the consumer space.“ VR is being deployed by NBA and Turner. There are also a lot of trials underway, so VR is definitely going to be important for broadcast,” he asserts, nevertheless accepting that the broadcast workflow needs to be changed completely for capture, stitching, post production, encoding and FoV streaming.“ VR delivery will mostly be over unicast networks. In order to deliver a tiled approach, we need to resolve the problem of latency,” he states.
“ VR and AR have been on the minds of the industry for a few years, with the industry seeing a record $ 2 billion investment globally from 2015 to 2016,” notes Peter Oggel, VP product management and marketing at Irdeto.“ Consumer adoption rates are continuing to rise, with more than 20,000,000 VR headsets expected to be shipped in 2017, a number which is only expected to increase. As a consequence, it is essential for the market to have appropriate strategies in place to support the comprehensive broadcast infrastructure and technology that VR and AR content requires, while ensuring that consumer willingness to adopt these new dimensions is not diminished.”
Transport
Oggel sees three key challenges that the industry must address, including data rates, in particular the requirement to transport much
“ There’ s a general sense that VR still has some barriers to immersion, and the quality can still improve.” – Nelson Rodriguez, Akamai |
“ It will not be until we get 4Kp60 and 90Hz performance that the viewer will feel truly immersed.” – Charles Cheevers, ARRIS |
“ Storage challenges are similar to those of other forms of UHD content – large files and high bitrates.” – Steve Plunkett, Ericsson |
“ We need to define the right technology for production, encoding, networking and rendering.”-Thierry Fautier, Harmonic |
14 EUROMEDIA |
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