Many broadcasters upgraded their program distribution technology in the past few years in response to the “C-band repack,” an FCC-mandated process to clear 300 MHz of C-band satellite spectrum so it could be repurposed for 5G wireless applications.
To deliver their programming to network affiliates and cable headends in a smaller slice of space segment, broadcast and cable networks upgraded to HEVC compression technology and more aggressive modulation schemes, and they’ve also installed special filters on their downlink antennas to combat 5G interference. Those moves have been successful so far, and the C-band regrooming is due to be complete by this December.
But some broadcasters are moving off satellite altogether and shifting to terrestrial IP distribution over the public internet. To do so they are working with transport vendors like LTN and Zixi that have developed specialized routing protocols and error-correction algorithms that support enterprise-class, managed delivery of live video feeds over the open internet. And with continued pressure on satellite capacity and steady improvement in connectivity, these vendors expect more networks to move at least some of their distribution to terrestrial IP over the next few years.
Distribution Questions Now ‘Fast And Furious’ For Broadcasters
Brad Wall
“The distribution questions are coming up fast and furious,” says Brad Wall, CTO of LTN.
LTN has created an “overlay” network on the public internet by placing its intelligent routing hardware in data centers across the globe that connect to various Tier-1 carriers, and Wall sees it as a direct competitor to traditional satellite and fiber operators given its high-quality monitoring and network reliability. He notes that terrestrial IP can much more easily support customized feeds or higher bit rates for formats like 1080p or 4K HDR than traditional satellite, where the same feed is broadly delivered across the continental United States (called CONUS coverage).
“The migration of those services over to LTN is happening,” Wall says. “Part of it is the C-band issue, part of it is the bitrate issue, and part of it is, ‘I have an explosion of different outputs I need to now support, and I can only do that in an IP-based ecosystem.’”
LTN delivered its one millionth live feed last month with a professional soccer match in Argentina. The Columbia, Md.-based company has handled national distribution for Sinclair’s diginets since 2014, and in April announced a major multi-deal with MSG Networks to move all five MSG channels off satellite to its “LTN Wave” live transmission product.
MSG cited the low latency (less than 200 milliseconds in North America) and “five-nines” SLA (Service Level Agreement for reliability) offered by LTN as major factors in moving its live sports programming, including New York Knicks, New York Rangers and New York Islanders games, to terrestrial IP. It also noted the flexibility of IP to easily customize feeds for different distribution partners.
Sinclair’s Progress
Sinclair first used LTN as a cost-effective way to distribute American Sports Network (now defunct) when the diginet launched back in 2014. ASN provided sports coverage from various small and mid-sized college conferences, often from rural venues that didn’t have broadcast-grade fiber links.
Del Parks
With uncertainty over the new channel’s prospective revenues, Sinclair couldn’t afford the expense (around $5,000) of rolling a satellite uplink truck to cover a game, says Sinclair President of Technology Del Parks. But as long as there was internet connectivity, LTN could install its LTN Leaf flypack appliance and get contribution video back to Sinclair. Sinclair then used LTN hardware at its network centers to distribute the signals and LTN appliances at the stations to receive them, a model it expanded to other diginets as they launched.
“We’ve sent a lot of traffic over LTN since then, because it connects all of our stations and it’s extremely reliable,” Parks says. “We’ve never had a problem.”
Sinclair currently uses LTN to deliver East and West Coast feeds of the diginets Comet, Stadium, Charge! and TBD to affiliate stations, as well as Sinclair’s The National Desk morning news block. It has also used LTN to help launch ATSC 3.0 broadcasts by providing backhauls of network programming within a local market to lighthouse stations. LTN says its network currently handles 3.0 backhauls in 54 markets for more than 200 channels.
Sinclair’s four diginets are sent as 1080i HD feeds at 10 Mbps with AVC (H.264) compression, allowing a station to either air them in HD if they have capacity or do a high-quality downconvert to SD. The National Desk is sent as 720p HD at 6 Mbps using HEVC compression. Since Sinclair plays Comet, Charge! and TBD from the AWS cloud, it uses a “direct connect” from AWS into the LTN network without bringing it back to a Sinclair facility first.
Shifts At Estrella Media
Zixi has developed a protocol for low-latency live streaming which has been integrated by various broadcast technology vendors. The Zixi protocol serves as the foundation of the company’s Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP) transport business, which according to Zixi is used to deliver over 100,000 live sporting events each year.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company helped Music Choice shift from satellite distribution to terrestrial IP in early 2021, and since then has been distributing the American music television service to MVPDs reaching 54 million households through linear channels and on-demand services.
Zixi got its own big broadcast win this spring, announcing a deal with Estrella Media to distribute the Estrella TV Spanish-language television network to 100 locations including 15 owned-and-operated stations, 35 broadcast affiliates and various cable and satellite operators. EstrellaTV’s switch to IP distribution through Zixi, managed through the ZEN Master control plane for monitoring and orchestration, should be complete by November. At that time the network’s current East and West Coast feeds on the Intelsat Galaxy-13 satellite will be terminated.
Estrella Media VP of Engineering Chris Buchanan says the second phase of the C-band repack, representing another 180 Mhz and due to be complete by Dec. 5, was a big driver for Estrella’s move to IP distribution as he expects satellite costs to climb due to reduced supply. Another factor was the flexibility of reaching new sites, as Estrella had a few affiliates that had difficulty placing a satellite receive dish at their facilities. Buchanan had actually tested IP contribution last year to solve that problem at one particular station, using technology from another vendor, and found that it worked very well.
“One of the biggest reasons is that we have satellite repack No. 2 coming,” Buchanan says. “They haven’t taken all the frequencies yet, they’re about to take a whole bunch more. So, that’s going to really reduce the capacity, and this became a way to reach perhaps even more people. Because I had people who couldn’t place satellite receivers at their studio locations and such to receive us. This is going to give us more opportunity to reach more people, and from a timing perspective, it just made sense because of when our contracts are coming up.”
One of Zixi’s big selling points was the ability to use existing Harmonic satellite IRDs at Estrella stations and affiliates. The IRDs can be modified to take an IP feed by upgrading the firmware and turning on an optional license key. While the input has changed from a coaxial cable from a dish to a Cat-5 input, the functionality is the same, Buchanan says.
Estrella uses MPEG-4 compression to transmit its East and West feeds as a 12 Mbps statistical multiplex. It will remain MPEG-4 after shifting to Zixi, but each feed will have more throughput, with each getting a fixed 10 Mbps. For its part, Zixi says it can support any MPEG-compliant protocol including HEVC, AVC, MPEG-2 and even JPEG-XS, and also transcode feeds to support legacy MPEG-2 plants.
Estrella is already running a test feed with Zixi to one cable operator and that is working well, Buchanan says. While stations and affiliates currently have adequate capacity to receive the network’s programming via IP, Estrella is installing new Internet circuits at its network centers in Burbank, Calif., and Irving, Texas, to keep its programming distribution separate from any other traffic on its corporate network.
Another technical benefit that Estrella is getting from going to IP is improved monitoring capabilities, as ZEN Master not only provides centralized access to devices in the field but also has a built-in alerting system and source graphs that visualize stream health and analytics. ZEN Master also monitors the video content as well as the IP data, drawing attention to even minor problems like picture artifacts or distorted audio.
“The only monitoring we could really do hands-on with satellite was to downlink the signal ourselves in order to judge the quality,” Buchanan says. “With the ZEN Master, you can see at very good level what the performance is at the receive locations. It provides a lot of data; it can tell you if it’s recovering all of the packets that are lost, what speeds [are], and tell you [about] dropouts. Plus, it gives you an alarm on a monitoring system.
“Right now, I have set up in master control two big monitors on the wall that display the Zixi information, and if something has an issue, it pops to the top and comes right up as the very first item on the display,” he says. “That’s giving me a monitoring level I never could have achieved with satellite.”
Alexandra Giusto
Alexandra Giusto, senior director of business development for Zixi, concedes that the C-band repack is the biggest impetus for broadcasters to switch from satellite to IP. But she says the growing acceptance of IP transport and the flexibility it affords is also important.
“The trust in IP is part of it as well,” Giusto says. “Obviously they’re being forced to move off [satellite], but technologies like Zixi allow them to pick and choose which channels go to which places. Where when you’re using satellite, it’s send all to everyone. If one location wants two channels, and another location wants six, the flexibility of this solution allows them to only send the channels the customer wants.”
Another selling point for IP is shorter-term contracts. Where satellite contracts might run five or six years, Zixi generally signs two-year deals for program distribution and its longest contract is three, says Giusto. Like satellite operators, the company also offers occasional-use transport to support event coverage.
Affiliate Education
LTN and Zixi concede that there are varying levels of enthusiasm for IP distribution among their customers’ distribution partners. While some cable and satellite operators are eager to adopt IP distribution, others are reluctant to adopt “open internet” technologies in their plant, particularly when they come in the form of unencrypted signals. Both vendors say that part of their job is to educate headend engineers about the reliability of IP transport as they try to help their customers fast-track their moves off satellite.
LTN already works with many of the big cable operators, including direct delivery into many of their plants and cross-connects with its own data centers, and is leveraging those relationships to help MSG meet its goal of fully transitioning off satellite before year-end. While the industry has been talking about a move to IP contribution for some time, LTN’s Wall views the MSG project as the “tip of the spear” in doing full-time distribution of 24/7 linear channels from a major cable programmer.
In some cases that has simply required education. In others, it has meant adapting LTN’s dynamic signal workflow to accommodate legacy IRDs, something LTN didn’t initially want to do from a technical point of view but compromised on in order to speed the process.
“We’re working really hard as the intermediary here and speaking directly to these cable operators to bring them along as quickly as possible,” Wall says.
Cost Considerations
Distribution costs are obviously a key factor in whether a programmer speeds to IP distribution or not, and much of that decision is based on how big of a footprint one needs to reach. The calculus is very different for new channels launching with only a few operators compared to established cable networks that need to reach small-to mid-sized cable operators as well as the biggest MVPDs.
The biggest MSOs have already consolidated their operations into “super headends,” which are fed directly by fiber connections from major programmers and can also easily be served via IP. But smaller MVPDs are still highly reliant on satellite downlinks and are often in rural locations that have relatively poor internet connectivity.
On a straight-up capacity basis, Sinclair estimates that IP contribution is about 22% cheaper than satellite for its diginets for the same bitrate and number of channels. Factoring in the investment in satellite antennas and other earth station equipment over a 10-year depreciation cycle makes IP about 35% cheaper, and it comes closer to a 50% savings when including costs for staffing, monitoring and support contracts. That said, Sinclair still distributes Tennis Channel, YES and Marquee Sports Network via satellite, where their greater scale makes the like-for-like distribution costs fairly even.
“Satellites certainly have their place,” Sinclair’s Parks says. “If you’re distributing to 5,000-subscriber cable companies in rural Idaho, you’re in that role. At some point though, the IP connections will go to all of your MVPDs or customers.”
Early Experimentation
Teleport operator and capacity reseller Globecast already has dedicated fiber links into the biggest headends, and also works with both LTN and Zixi to serve its programming clients with IP contribution. It will also set up its own IP contribution links using hardware from a vendor like Net Insight, which it has done successfully for several networks.
Tim Jackson
“What it’s come down to is definitely the technologies and reliability and competence of these companies has become very proven and is now something that is quite acceptable to a lot of the big providers as a very reliable means of taking channels,” says Tim Jackson, Globecast SVP sales and marketing, the Americas.
Jackson says that when talking to a client about launching a new channel the feasibility of IP distribution is always discussed first. The start-up cost is lower, running only several hundred dollars per month to deliver to one location. And with IP, Globecast can also offer new channels the flexibility of a 90-day or six-month contract, as opposed to the multi-year contracts that satellite operators have generally required.
“Generally, it’s the first choice because it makes it a better economic option for the customer,” Jackson says. “If you’re just delivering to three MSOs, then you’re looking at a couple thousand bucks per month versus a [satellite] channel, which could be $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000. It’s a cheaper option at the outset for somebody who doesn’t need to pay for the ubiquitous delivery of satellite. Certainly, with supply and demand, it’s not getting any cheaper to try to acquire satellite capacity.”
That said, Globecast continues to launch new channels on C-band capacity, including West Coast feeds as well as brand new networks. Once a channel finds carriage beyond a few big MSOs the scale of satellite makes sense, Jackson says, particularly since the receiver universe and month-to-month costs of satellite are well understood.
Jackson also notes that many established networks negotiated new satellite contracts as part of the C-band regrooming and are unlikely to make major changes to their primary distribution for several years. But he says Globecast is talking with customers about experimenting with partial distribution through terrestrial IP, given the long-term pressure on C-band capacity.
“It doesn’t have to be an either/or thing, where you’re either all on satellite or all on terrestrial,” Jackson says. “Let’s take some of your established distribution partners that have a lot of experience in taking in these feeds via generic IP, SRT, Zixi, LTN, whatever, and let’s move some of those over and play with that for a while. See how you like managing it, see how you like the relationship between you and your distributor managing it that way, and gradually go through that model.
“I think that’s what people are going to have to do, instead of saying I’m on satellite for five years, and in four-and-a-half years, I’ll start moving,” he adds. “That’s going to be too painful for everybody. The time to start that migration is now.”
16 May 2024
23 May 2024
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