“Standards bodies
and industry forums
are working together
to develop new
transport and viewing
technologies.” Peter
Oggel, Irdeto
“The industry still
has some hurdles to
overcome before it’s
ready for VR TV.”
– Ivan Verbesselt,
NAGRA
larger amounts of data required for AR and VR
streams. “This figure will stand at more than ten
times the typical requirement for a high-quality
4K movie; a resolution that is already proving
a challenge for providers. As a consequence,
standards bodies and industry forums are
working together to develop new transport
and viewing technologies which will be more
efficient and reduce the data overhead.”
In terms of devices, he notes that mobile
and tethered devices, “are evolving at an
ever-increasing rate, and both end users and
operators must judge the best format and
platforms to purchase. In order to ensure that
current choices do not become obsolete, the risk
of newer formats and hardware must also be
balanced,” he suggests.
“The industry still has some hurdles to
overcome before it’s ready for VR TV,” declares
“We see the VR
workflow similar to
our 4K workflow for
live and on demand
content.” – Chris
Wagner, NeuLion
OTT
Chris Wagner, executive vice president and
co-founder, NeuLion, suggests the industry is
certainly close to being ready, especially from
an OTT perspective. “We have already started
working with a number of VR companies to
integrate their camera and stitching technology
into our NeuLion Digital Platform. Most
recently, we have worked with Nokia OZO to
stream live and on demand 4K content that
has been produced in 360 or virtual reality.
The 360 content gets streamed by the NeuLion
Digital Platform across multiple CDNs and
played out on a mobile, tablet or VR headsets.
We are using HEVC MPEG-DASH for transport
and compression and the quality levels over
unmanaged networks like the Internet have
been really good.”
Lane Cooper, VP corporate communications,
“The key is to
develop a creative
which includes the
intimacy of the
technology, rather
than ignore this.” –
Richard Nockles, Sky
environments that will make is possible for
operators to execute interactivity features that
will define and support many of the emerging
high-end immersive experiences,” he notes. “I
would say that the entire ecosystem associated
with immersive content creation, distribution
and consumption is in its early days. In this
context, the broadcast community will play a
key role in bringing VR, AR, MR and beyond to
consumers.
“The industry is already built for high-end
delivery across a Cloud network, but one of the
biggest challenges is the lack of standards,”
suggests Richard Nockles, creative director,
Sky VR. “There isn’t currently one set of
standards that apply across the industry and are
recognised by content creators and hardware
manufacturers. There’s not yet an agreement on
how the industry delivers VR in the traditional
broadcast environment for all the permutations.
Ivan Verbesselt, senior vice president group Technicolor, suggests it all depends on what marketing, NAGRA. “While many elements, you mean by ‘broadcast’. “Environments like such as transmission over broadband and over-the-air (OTA), over-the-top (OTT) – content security, could be readily adapted; along with the infrastructures for broadband many other elements will need to be and broadcast – are colliding rapidly. This Game
redesigned for VR. For instance, there needs converging trend is laying the foundation “The rapid integration of Game engines into
to be a lot of standardisation to give the for the delivery of increasingly immersive the foundation of broadcast infrastructure
consumer a coherent experience. However, the experiences – such as virtual reality, augmented will certainly be a benefit to the industry. We
technical equipment is increasingly affordable, reality and mixed reality. For instance, the new should also expect to see Dynamic streaming
meaning it’s just a matter of time before the ATSC 3.0 standards are specifically designed being more widely adopted and standard for
industry is ready.” to integrate broadband and broadcast delivery Traditional content integrated into VR and
Part of the reason for this is that the technology
is moving so fast and constantly evolving.”
EUROMEDIA 15