Innovation, Progress In Large Supply At IBC

The sun shone bright and warm for IBC in Amsterdam, which wrapped up Tuesday — unusual for September event where jackets and umbrellas are the norm.

Perhaps the conditions, as IBC Exhibition Committee Chairman Roger Thornton said, may portend a brighter, more vibrant future for TV broadcasters.

In fact, for those among the record-setting 55,796 attendees who knew where to look there were abundant signs of significant progress on pressing technology, business and standards issues.

When it comes to standards, there was greater cooperation among vendors to ensure that the IP-based equipment of one plays nicely with that of another — also known as IP interoperability.

On the business front, there was talk of zoned advertising and hyperlocal content delivery over the air with OFDM-based transmission systems such as ATSC 3.0.

And on the technology frontier, all of the work to make Ultra HD a reality has begun to pay off with real-world applications, novel 360-degree acquisition and new 8K implementations of OLED display technology that Japanese national broadcaster NHK envisions one day soon being stored like a rolled up window shade.

OTT advances played an important role as well, especially in the context of over-the-air broadcasters who are looking to interesting new ways to continue reaching viewers as they turn to smartphones and tablets for television.

Growing Importance Of IP Reflected At IBC

IBC 2016 did its part to promote the unraveling of a problem that left unaddressed could have meant disaster for what’s seen by many as the foundation upon which the future of the television industry is being built, namely IP.

“This [the interoperability of IP among equipment from different vendors] is a complex subject, but it probably is the most burning hot topic for all of our exhibitors and customers,” said Phil White, director of technology and events at IBC.

To do its part in advancing the state of IP in media, IBC 2016 dedicated a sizable piece of Hall 8 at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Center to the IP Interoperability Zone. The area reflected today’s IP reality — two major, different approaches, namely the AIMS Alliance and the ASPEN Community — and the ongoing effort to harmonize the two, which ultimately will take shape in the adoption of the SMPTE 2110 standard.

In the ASPEN Community display about 10 vendors, including camera, production switcher, graphics engine and test equipment manufacturers demoed interoperability.

“Some of our experiences have been very helpful and allowed us to create a harmonized format with elements of ASPEN and elements of [Video Services Forum, VSF] TR-03 and TR-04 … being considered into that standard,” said Mo Goyal, director of product marketing at Evertz.

Andy Warman, AIMS marketing work group chair, and Harmonic, director of P&P strategy and market development, applauded the developments aimed at bringing the two approaches into alignment. “It is in everybody’s interest to be in the same ballpark and be able to interoperate,” he said.

About 35 proponents of the AIMS Alliance road map, which includes support today for SMPTE 2022-6 and AES67 as well as TR-03 and TR-04 with the goal of the SMPTE 2110 standard, demoed in the zone.

Other industry players, like the EBU’s Joint Task Force on Networked Media, took part as well. It is focused on IP ecosystem components like discovery and registration, virtualization, command and control and monitoring.

Broader support for this emerging IP ecosystem can only strengthen the final standard, said Mark Hilton, VP of infrastructure products at Grass Valley.

“I have been pleased to see the addition of the AMWA organization with NMOS IS-04 [Discovery and Registration API] into the roadmap for AIMS,” he said.

However, don’t confuse these initial successes with having achieved full interoperability, said David Ross, president-CEO of Ross Video.

“It’s early days still,” he said. “If you wanted to go out and buy a live production control room with everything being IP and having the same sort of vendor choice that you have today [with SDI], … we’re not there yet.”

To beef up its IP networking resources and to promote IP adoption, Ross Video announced it had acquired Coveloz Technologies, immediately making available “35 hardcore network engineers” to Ross Video and other vendors.

“If we found it hard, I am sure there are about 500 companies in the business that are wondering what to do [about IP],” he said, adding that the Coveloz team will continue to offer its services to third parties.

Unlike the SMPTE 2022-6 and AES67 portions of the AIMS road map that are well developed, VSF TR-03 is still in development, with work remaining to be done on what to do with metadata as well as control, said Grass Valley’s Hilton.

In the IP Interoperability Zone, Belgian public broadcaster VRT, the EBU and multiple vendors showed just what can be accomplished with SMPTE 2022-6 for video, AES-67 for audio, the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for synchronization, SDM for network management and OpenFlow.

The demo, the latest endeavor tackled by the LiveIP Studio Project, showcased live IP production with an IP-based TV studio, production control room and data center. It was a special incarnation just for the show.

The overall aim of the project, which has produced live single- and multi-camera productions as well as a daily children’s show using IP-based kit during its 18-months life, is to demonstrate that IP technology can be used in a best-of-breed TV production environment, said Karel De Bondt, project manager.

The project was honored at the show with an Innovation Award for Content Creation.

At the Imagine Communications IBC press conference, company CEO-President Charlie Vogt took the opportunity to address what he thinks will be the benefits the industry will enjoy from the baseband-video-to-IP transition.

“Once you get to an IP-based network architecture, once you get to a software-defined network architecture, the possibilities for new applications become almost endless,” he said.

In the next three to five years, much innovation industrywide will come from smaller companies that can focus on one particular area by taking advantage of this new open IP network architecture rather than being cut off from development by proprietary black boxes, he predicted.

NewTek, which has support for its Network Device Interface, NDI, protocol among the ASPEN Community, but not AIMS, announced significant market headway since announcing the protocol at IBC 2015.

“Since then, [there have been] more than 1,000 downloads of the SDK [software development kit], with over 300 companies using NDI for some type of commercially available product,” said Will Waters, NewTek director of product marketing and sales enablement.

In one years’ time, more than 1 million devices in the field are using the NDI protocol, he added.

Show Me The Money

ATSC 3.0, the next-generation digital TV standard, is so sophisticated that it offers many potential new sources of revenue, ranging for renting bit delivery to personalized ads delivered over-the-top to smart TVs and gateways.

However, at IBC Jon Montalban, senior researcher at the University of the Basque Country in northern Spain, laid out the technical underpinnings of what just might be easiest money-maker for TV general sales manager and management to grasp: over-the-air zoned advertising and hyperlocal content.

During a two-and-half-hour session devoted to the Future of Broadcast Television (FoBTV), Montalban discussed how an ATSC 3.0 (or other OFDM-based TV system) single-frequency network can leverage Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM) to transmit different signals in the same channel.

“The idea is simple, you assign about 99% of your power to the main service and you reserve 1% of your power to local content,” he explained.

Each SFN site thus can deliver its own zoned advertising and hyperlocal content without causing interference to the main signal blanketing the market.

On the show floor, Rich Redmond, chief product officer at GatesAir, elaborated on the concept. The company has been conducting some tests with the cooperation of the FCC to break up an FM radio signal into delivery zones, he said.

GatesAir, working with Geo Broadcast Solutions, has validated the idea that small business in large metro areas typically cannot afford to buy the whole metro; however, there are many that would want to advertise if they could simply buy a portion of the audience covered for a commensurately lower rate.

“When you look at ATSC 3.0, LDM really allows you on an SFN to deliver different content on the same frequency without interfering,” he said.

For example, a TV station with a signal covering New York City can deliver over the air hyperlocal content and zoned ads to people on Long Island, in Westchester, New Jersey and mid-town Manhattan if it has SFN sites in those locations, he explained.

“A TV station sales manager could give you 10 people off the top of his head who would advertise to a smaller zone in a metro at a discount,” he said.

Enabling LDM for zoned ads and hyperlocal content requires no change to the ATSC 3.0 standard, Montalban added.

To Infinity And Beyond
Ultra HD played a significant role at IBC 2016 in production, distribution, display and acquisition.

Japan’s national broadcaster, NHK, showed off spectacular footage from its Super Hi-Vision 8K production of select sports and ceremonies during the Rio Olympics at its IBC Future Zone exhibit.

Two four-camera NHK crews shot the footage — both with and without Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) high dynamic range. Two 8K OB trucks and two 22.2 multichannel audio trailers were onsite in Rio for the production.

Within two years, Japan plans to convert to 4K and 8K satellite broadcasting in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics from Tokyo. To complete the loop, the public in Japan will need some sort of display.

One solution is what NHK calls “sheet-type OLED display” technology. The broadcaster demoed the technology at its Future Zone stand. For IBC, the broadcaster used four ultrathin 65-inch OLED (organic light emitting diode) panels arranged two-by-two to display 8K Super Hi-Vision.

The goal is to have a single, super-skinny 8K panel that can be rolled up and down like an old-fashioned AV projector screen on the walls of consumer homes in time for the Summer Games.

For 22.2 multichannel surround sound, the broadcaster used paired line array speakers to create an immersive sound experience.

On the exhibit floor, UHD was prominently displayed. Vendors like Cinegy touted resolution independence — beyond 8K — for its IP-based approach to production and playout.

Similarly, many of the same vendors participating in the IBC Interoperability Zone pointed to 4K as a factor nudging along interest in IP-based production, routing and playout.

There were new developments in UHD image acquisition. For instance, Grass Valley featured its new imagers for the LDX 86N series camera with native support for 4K or HD.

Another 4K imaging development was the presence of 360-degree cameras from multiple vendors, including Panasonic, Nokia and startup Sphericam.

Depending on the manufacturer, these cameras arrange between four and eight 4K cameras, lenses and microphones around their bodies — balls in the case of Nokia and Sphericam and a cylinder for the Panasonic camera. Captured imagery is stitched together — in real-time depending on the manufacturer — to provide 360-degree imagery for VR headsets as well as smartphones and tablet.

News delivered over-the-top to viewers is a good application for television newsrooms, said Sphericam Chief Revenue Officer Gaja Zornada at the company’s IBC Future Zone display.

For now, while ATSC 3.0 reaches its final stages in the standards process and the broadcast industry awaits action by the FCC, such over-the-top delivery may offer U.S. broadcasters their best avenue for 4K delivery, especially if doing so creates an opportunity to gain experience with the format.

Speaking at an IBC session on the business case for 4K in broadcasting, TV Globo CTO Raymundo Barros laid out how OTT made it possible for the broadcaster to deliver the Rio Olympics to viewers in 4K.

TV Globo, which helped NBC Olympics with its own 4K OTT delivery project from Rio, also delivers primetime dramas over the top on a subscription basis to viewers.

“We have 500,000 TV sets in Brazil that have access to that [premium] content,” he said. “If you want to watch one of our series in 4K you pay 3 euros — not that much.”

However, for TV Globo, the real benefit isn’t financial, he said. “We are inventing for the future, and we are learning along the way…. [That’s] of way more value than the subscription.”

To see all of TVNewsCheck’s IBC 2016 coverage, click here.

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