As the US and European economies begin to stabilise, technology budgets are returning to their pre-crash levels – but media companies’ investment habits have shifted significantly during the downturn.

One casualty has been broadcasters’ regular kit-replacement cycle.

“We see major technology decisions increasingly taken on the basis of return on investment and on a project-by-­project basis,”  says Blackmagic Design’s Channel Sales Director Tim Siddons.

Company finance chiefs and technical managers attending the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam this month will be focusing on the cost savings and revenue opportunities of any infrastructure deals.

The critical decision will frequently be about the timing of their investment. Three technology areas will be on most executives’ minds: Ultra-HDTV, the migration towards connectivity that uses IP (Internet Protocol) and the Cloud. All three are, to a degree, linked.

Pay-TV operators are under pressure to launch Ultra-HD services to combat the rising threat they perceive from Netflix, YouTube and other internet players that already offer such programming on-demand.

The challenge across the board is to be able to do more, do it better, and do it for less

There are indications that some groups, such as Sky, will launch Ultra-HD sometime in 2015 – but all broadcasters have reservations about how excited viewers are by higher-resolution pictures.

“Technically, one could probably launch Ultra-HD services today, with more pixels and up to 50 or 60 frames per second, but it wouldn’t be a major step forward from HD,” says Stephan Heimbecher, Head of Innovations & Standards for Sky Deutschland. “We want to make sure that consumers get a real benefit out of Ultra-HD.”

The European Broadcasting Union agrees. It recently issued a policy statement that declared the current crop of Ultra-HD TVs “unsatisfactory” and said that, without enhancements, Ultra-HD “is not a sufficiently big step for the introduction of successful new broadcasting services”.

The debate boils down to whether consumers will buy into 4K – an Ultra-HDTV standard that has four times the resolution of HDTV – without two other enhancements.

These would be pictures with a higher dynamic range (HDR), for greater contrast and improved colours, and higher frame rates.

The current 25 frames a second in most of Europe is fine for movies and TV drama – which is why Netflix has a head start – but is inadequate for capturing motion in live sports with sufficient clarity.

“The logic is absolutely sound, but putting those enhancements into practice is a more complicated matter,” says John Ive, Business Development and Technology Director at the manufacturers’ trade body, the IABM. “It is far easier to market higher resolution and for consumers to understand the concept [of higher numbers]. The other enhancements are more difficult to promote. In addition, consumer TV manufacturers want to get products out immediately to refresh the sagging HDTV market.”

Technologies to transfer HDR and higher frame rates to the screen do exist (one such, Dolby Vision, offers HDR post-production tools). But they have a cost implication because they need more bandwidth to route signals around a studio or to the home.

New compression systems, such as HEVC, will help squeeze more data into that bandwidth. The biggest help, though, will be the phasing out of the SDI interface that connects much of the specialist hardware in the broadcast production and distribution chain. 

It is now inevitable that the SDI-connected ecosystem will be displaced by off-the-shelf hardware communicating by IP (internet protocol). This shift promises cost savings and increased flexibility – but the technology needs further development to improve reliability in the most demanding broadcast environments, such as live events coverage. BBC trials during the Commonwealth Games confirmed the case for caution.

The industry’s move towards IP is part and parcel of the growing importance of software, the Cloud and mobility at the expense of bespoke hardware. Documentary productions already treat the storage, editing and export of rushes on remote servers as the norm.

IBC has addressed the trend head on by launching IBC Content Everywhere, a strand of events focused on the rise of video traffic over mobile devices. The first in a planned series of such events (followed by others in supposed world hot spots of mobile media, Dubai and São Paulo) is co-located with IBC. It will include a mini exhibition, dubbed Cloud Solutions, featuring case studies from Imagine, Blinkbox and Maverick TV.

Quantel’s Pablo Rio colour-correction and finishing system for HD and Ultra-HD output runs on off-the-shelf hardware (credit: Quantel)

IBC’s big themes

Steve Owen, Marketing Director, Quantel: The challenge across the board is to be able to do more, do it better, and do it for less… What everyone wants to hear at IBC is how we can build open, modular, flexible solutions that enable them to do exactly what they want to do.

Bruce Devlin, Chief Media Scientist, Dalet: The biggest issue is the need to do more work for less cost than before. In the transcoding world, this corresponds to creating a more automated, more reliable back-end process that works equally well for domestic, international and internet delivery.

 Tom Cordiner, VP, International Sales, Avid: Media organisations need to restructure to take advantage of a content-anywhere, anytime and on-any-device world. They essentially need one interconnected process that fuses content creation with distribution and monetisation, that brings them much closer to the people who enjoy their content. Our response is the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

Charlie Vogt, CEO, Imagine Communications: Video will represent more than 70% of all internet traffic by 2018. Valuable bandwidth, more content, more users, more devices and incrementally higher consumer expectations equals the perfect storm – those who ‘crack the code’ with innovation and new business models will be the market leaders of tomorrow.

Mark Wilson-Dunn, VP, Sales and Marketing, BT Media & Broadcast: Until 4K Ultra-HD content is widely available, it will halt adoption. Sports is a great hook to get the technology out there and for people to buy into. The danger, if you go down a single channel or sports route, is that you actually switch off a lot of people because it becomes another gimmick. Ultra-HD has got to be something that becomes mainstream and appeals to everybody. 

Ronen Artman, VP, Marketing, LiveU: Our customers want to be able to move quickly and provide exclusive live, or as-live, footage in as usable way as possible. In this respect, Cloud-based services – be that aggregation, production or distribution – will be very visible at IBC.

Stephen Baily, General Manager, New Systems, BBC R&D: New services and tools [will] enable the production of immersive content that can be easily personalised to meet the needs, preferences and context of the individual. We are researching these ourselves through our work on object-based content and IP-based architectures. 

Pascal Portelli, SVP, Solutions Strategy & Portfolio Management, Connected Home, Technicolor: The next generation of image quality will be a major point of discussion at IBC. With HDR, the industry will have a standards-based route to truly astounding images delivered to every kind of device.

 Philip Dalgoutte, Product Manager, Vinten: There’s been a slow take-up of Cloud services in broadcasting, but… it is likely to gain momentum. Customers’ questions centre on issues such as… video editing, transmission and file transfer, and ceding control of content to third parties, with security still playing a significant role.