Amazon Web Services

Broadcasters are now making active use of 5G in everyday production operations, usually alongside LTE in contribution feeds sent with bonded cellular systems. But the most exciting production applications to date for 5G have actually used private 5G networks that broadcasters have set up themselves for big-event coverage.

Noticeably heavier crowds filled a conference swinging back from the pandemic, while strategic partnerships between vendors signaled a new tack for the industry.

As the television industry looks for better ways to measure viewers, NBCUniversal wants the audience metrics used to buy and sell advertising to take into account the quality of the video and how much it engages consumers. NBCU on Wednesday is holding its annual pre-upfront presentation highlighting its data and technology capabilities for advertisers. This year’s event is called One23.

The fully remote production launches tonight with a new mobile fleet of 16 that’s producing the games in 1080p with High Dynamic Range with around 250 people onsite for each TNF game. (Courtesy of Prime Video)

Fox Corp. CTO and President of Digital Paul Cheesbrough and Jeff Dow, its EVP, media & broadcast operations, offered a rare glimpse into how the company built a new cloud-centric architecture that feeds all of its broadcast and digital streams in a TVNewsCheck webinar last week.

TV stations and groups are increasingly turning to the cloud for playout solutions, and vendors are meeting them there with SaaS options. Above: Imagine’s Aviator control interface. The cloud-based system is designed to support both linear and OTT playout.

While previous Devoncroft conferences took place at off-site hotels, the 2022 edition was co-located with the NAB Show and held on the Main Stage of the North Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It drew hundreds of senior executives for an afternoon of panel discussions on everything from cloud migration and IP connectivity to virtual production and blockchain technology. Above, Devoncroft Principal Analyst Josh Stinehour (left) and Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley talking technology.

Verizon, Bloomberg Media, Zixi and Amazon Web Services are all teaming up to test broadcast news that skips satellite delivery in favor of 5G.

Vendors say broadcasters are increasingly looking to expand virtualization of their operations across the whole chain, and they’re also seeking to take that virtualization off-premises, either in their own master control hubs or the public cloud.

The Federal Trade Commission is pushing forward with antitrust scrutiny of Amazon’s cloud computing business, according to people familiar with the matter. Lina Khan, the head of the agency and a vocal critic of the online retailer, is advancing a probe started several years ago by her predecessor.

December has been a rough month for Amazon — at least for Amazon Web Services. The massively popular cloud computing platform suffered its third outage of the month Wednesday, affecting Slack, the Epic Games Store and several other services. The AWS Service Health Dashboard shows the problem lies within a data center in northern Virginia and affects customers in the US-EAST-1 Availability Zone. The first outage was reported at 7:35 a.m. ET. 

Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday according to users. The company provides cloud computing services to individuals, universities, governments and companies including The Associated Press. Amazon has yet to comment on the outage and few details are available. People trying to use Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku and Disney+ are reporting issues.

Executives at a TVNewsCheck webinar last week said that broadcasters mulling investments in new cloud-based workflows should spend as much time thinking about inherent changes for their personnel as they do considering which software vendors and cloud platforms they might use.

For broadcasters, 5G represents both a potentially helpful new tool and a competitive threat. The reality of either prospect hinges on how quickly and deeply the technology gets rolled out.

Trends driven by the pandemic are likely to persist into 2021 and beyond, while transitions to IP infrastructures will accelerate and aging on-prem infrastructure will give way to increased reliance on the cloud. NextGen TV will also likely pick up speed after COVID’s cooling effect on its rollout this year.

Amazon’s widely used cloud computing service suffered a major outage in its eastern U.S. operations Wednesday, hampering everything from services for Web-connected security cameras to software applications that businesses use to design products.

Amazon Web Services is developing new technology — the Cloud Digital Interface — to support uncompressed production workflows in the cloud that should eliminate latency for remote productions looking to, among other things, switch between camera feeds, insert graphics or trigger replays.

New remote production techniques, distributed workflows and onsite safety protocols have dramatically reshaped sports production. As COVID-19 continues to be a threat, sports producers can expect less travel, trucks staying in place and a slowdown of UHD production until the crisis abates.

Broadcasters such as Sinclair and Vice are increasingly shifting playout functions to cloud platforms, seeking more flexibility and agility there and testing the waters with disaster recovery strategies, OTT channels and diginets. “In the cloud, you can build up a whole separate system in parallel, test it, then cut over to it,” says one consultant.

The coronavirus pandemic has amped up the transition to cloud-based workflows as broadcasters have employed as many remote operations as possible. The next frontier: an acceleration of live production applications in the cloud. Above, an Amazon Web Services Outpost cloud server.

Next year should see broadcasters making advances in the continuing move to IP, greater use of cloud platforms and significant progress for two new wireless technologies: ATSC 3.0 and the various 5G services being rolled out by wireless carriers. Above, a Sony camcorder and prototype 5G transmitter were used to test camera backhauls over Verizon’s 5G network during a recent NBC NFL broadcast.

Fox and AWS will collaborate on the construction of a “transformative 8K capable media platform on AWS to create, produce, and deliver live and on-demand content across traditional and digital platforms.”

Nielsen’s core national TV measurement processing modernizes its traditional on-premise servers to a cloud-based infrastructure.