The Switch Esports White Paper: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Esports TV But Were Afraid To Ask!

The COVID-19 pandemic has relegated live sports from the top of the podium as the most watched and lucrative part of TV schedules. At the same time, the enforced social distancing, school closures and home working has prompted audiences across all age groups to spend more time on video on demand, social media and, in a big way, gaming. As a result, new types of competitive electronic sports are gaining participants and, more importantly for TV, viewership. From drone racing to battle robots, the rise of alternative sports is blossoming. By far the most popular is video gaming esports, with 450+ million viewers globally – and figures show its following growing rapidly as it has emerged as the main live alternative to physical sports during the coronavirus crisis.

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In Conversation with GatesAir

In this IABM TV interview, Bruce Swail (CEO, GatesAir) discusses GatesAir’s role in getting ATSC 3.0 ready for the masses, their global strategy & the future of radio.

Q1. The U.S. Spectrum Repack reached a significant milestone on Friday, as its 10th and final phase of facility transition came to a close. A lot of new TV transmitters have been put online over the past two years in North America, and the largest percentage are from GatesAir. Tell me how you helped broadcasters handle such a monumental undertaking, and what comes next after repack.
Q2. As broadcasters around the world are planning to update their digital TV offerings, ATSC 3.0 is getting a lot of global interest, especially as trials are moving full-steam-ahead in the U.S., branded to consumers as “NextGen TV.” Can you speak about GatesAir’s role in getting ATSC 3.0 ready for the masses, as well as its continuing support for other digital standards like DVB-T2 and ISDB-Tb?
Q3. GatesAir is experiencing a lot of international awareness now, with its new European branch, expanded global sales team, and more dealers than ever before. Talk a bit about GatesAir’s global strategy and how it is helping more broadcasters around the world.
Q4. Radio is also seeing a lot of digital life, with DAB, DAB+, HD Radio, DRM, and more overshadowing their analog counterparts. There also seems to be a growing trend of countries that are considering or planning analog shutdowns. What does the future of radio look like to GatesAir, and what are you doing to help shape it?
Q5. The industry is embracing the integration of IP into virtually every aspect of the broadcasting process. More than ever, this includes getting high-fidelity signal safely from a studio to a transmitter, to a network of other studios, to streaming channels, and more. GatesAir’s Intraplex product line has been at the forefront of leveraging IP as a 21st century tool for signal transport. Tell me about what’s new with Intraplex.
Q6. Obviously the coronavirus pandemic has created massive waves in our economy, way of living, and plans for the future. How is GatesAir coping with the pandemic, and what are the biggest challenges that it sees for broadcasters moving forward?
Q7. Since IBC won’t be happening, what’s the thing you’ll miss most from Amsterdam this year?

In Conversation with Metaliquid

In this IABM TV interview, Maria Lodolo D’Oria (Head of Sales, Metaliquid) discusses the current state of recognition technology in the broadcast and media industry.

In Conversation with Amagi

In this IABM TV interview, Baskar Subramanian (Co-founder & CEO, Amagi) discusses the changes in cloud broadcasting technologies and streaming TV due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Q1. We are living in unprecedented times. How is the entertainment and media industry grappling with the changes? What are your customers saying?
Q2. Amagi, in many ways, has been a pioneer in cloud broadcast technologies. Do you see a higher adoption level now? Has the pandemic accelerated the transition?
Q3. We see a rise in Streaming TV. How is Amagi riding this new wave?
Q4. For executives who are aligning their business strategies in response to the current business climate, what’s your advice?
Q5. What are Amagi’s plans for the next 2-3 quarters?

TVU One with 5G Modems Case Study: Mount Everest

On May 27, 2020, a team of Chinese surveyors reached the summit of Mount Everest, sixty years after China first accomplished this feat. The climb was organized as a part of China’s mission to remeasure the height of the world’s highest mountain. There has been some question over whether the height has changed over the years.

In connection with this expedition, a leading Chinese communications technology company and a leading Chinese mobile company installed a fiber optic data network up the side of Mount Everest in order to create the world’s highest 5G network. 5G was deployed by the mobile company to make the network immediately accessible. When the network went live, it had base stations and 5G capabilities at 5300, 5800 and 6500 meters on the mountain. At an altitude of 5,300 meters, the 5G download speed was measured at more than 1.66 Gbps, with upload speed topping 215 Mbps.

This was more than sufficient bandwidth for media organizations such as China Central Television (CCTV) to do remote live broadcasting from Everest using TVU Networks transmitters. Three TVU One cellular mobile transmitters using new embedded 5G modems were set up at base camp for daily coverage. The TVU Anywhere mobile phone app was used at 5800, 6500, 7800 meters and also at the summit. Millions of viewers of the Chinese media broadcast were able to witness the event.

The TVU One mobile cellular transmitter features all of the following:

● Optional embedded 5G modems

● HEVC/H.265 for efficient encoding

● High-quality 1080p 10-bit HDR transmission as low as 800kbps

● 4K 60P, 10-bit HDR UHD transmission as low as 3.0Mb/s

● Supports HDR formats including HDR10 and HLG in 1080P and 4K

● Latency as low as 0.5s

● Encode rates up to 100Mbps

www.tvunetworks.com

Cost effective multi-DRM services for advanced video streaming

Presenters:

Ali Hodjat – Director Product Marketing, Intertrust
Gadi Ittah – Director Product Management, Intertrust

Intertrust was delighted to be part of Bitmovin Live: APAC Edition 2020, on June 17, with a particular focus on how to control costs, mitigate risk and manage your video workflow.

The presentation, which is available on demand, covers these important topics for OTT video streaming operators:

Advanced OTT streaming security challenges
Weighing “buy vs. build” options for a multi-DRM solution
Minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO)
CMAF and streamlined packaging workflow

Watch presentation on demand now. You can also read the associated blog post How CMAF can reduce multi-DRM service costs.

Will The Return Of Sports Be The Collapse Of Internet?

This spring has been different, in many ways. To control and minimize the pandemic, lockdowns and social restrictions have changed how we live, almost instantly. It has changed how we consume TV and video. In fact, we’re watching more TV than ever. But what we watch and how we watch it is quite different as we spend our time in quarantine exploring the wide and deep catalogues of VOD services.

For some, this change has been good. SVOD giants like Netflix and the new kid on the block Disney+ have onboarded subscribers in numbers well above expected, and streaming figures have risen as a result. For others, the economic set back has eroded advertising budgets drastically with tough consequences for Free To Air (FTA) services. In some places this has resulted in a higher load on the internet, but in most places the actual peaks have not been higher than before.

Sports – which gather audiences in their millions both at venues and via TV – have also been cancelled to help prevent the virus spreading. But as societies slowly open up again, sport will come back, albeit under different circumstances than before. To maintain social distancing, we can expect that our favorite sports will be played with no audience in the stadiums or in the local sports bar. Everyone who wants to experience the event will be referred to the TV. Despite there being fewer sports to watch on TV, we are likely to see sport viewing numbers increase – from the hardcore fans in hats and scarves who have been starved from watching their favorite team live to the general spectator. They’ll all turn to the TV, on whatever device they choose, as their only alternative for consuming sports content.

During the outbreak, streaming service usage via the internet has rocketed. New viewing habits are established in the absence of sports and many other local entertainment formats that are typically watched on traditional TV. This has made viewers cut the cord and turn to – and trust – internet-based streaming services as their go-to source for TV-based entertainment.

This means that when live sport does eventually return, it is going to join at a time when the overall internet traffic load is significantly higher than it was before the outbreak. In other words, the fight for capacity just got even more intense.

The animal kingdom of streaming

In a previous blog, I described the internet as a dancefloor and the streaming services as elephants. In contrast to ordinary nightclubs that are now temporarily closed, the streaming dancefloor is now more crowded than ever. So crowded in fact, that the EU had to ask a couple of the biggest elephants to adopt a (unnecessary blunt) bit-rate limitation diet.

So, with the return of sports, we will probably see an increased demand for live streaming sport events. Yes, we were able to live stream sport events before the pandemic. But with the lockdown stopping all live sports, streaming services will likely experience huge demand once the players can get back on the field.

For this reason, I want to introduce a new animal to join the elephants at the party. Since these animals represent the typical behavior of big live events, such as high traffic peaks during the start of the event, the new addition can be illustrated as blowfishes. Blowfishes have an unpleasant behavior of rapidly changing in size which makes their moves and tricks hard to predict.

What am I trying to get to, you might wonder? Well, this all boils down to the internet’s shared capacity. With another animal now trying to get onto the dancefloor, it has become more crowded, especially over the last four months. The fight for capacity is getting pretty fierce.

I have talked about how different parts of the internet impact the viewing experience in an earlier blog. I’m not so worried about access networks in general, but I’d like to raise a concern about cable and mobile networks as these are typically shared media and thus, can become easily congested. Even more challenging are the backhaul network and peering interfaces with CDNs calling for network upgrade investments and interconnect discussions.

I won’t go into detail about the different parts of the internet and how their technical characteristics dictate potential viewing issues. I will just point out that these play an important role here. It’s become extremely obvious during the last few months that with the internet being a shared resource and the foundation for delivering huge amounts of TV content, there is a need for more comprehensive and real-time means of control. A means where streams can be steered with precision and where actions to manage congestions are done with the network, the content and especially the viewer’s quality of experience in mind.

Improve Your Relevance With Regionalized Online Channels!

– without adding extra playout, encoder and storage capacity

Many broadcasters are used to producing regional versions of their main channels, where news and weather (for example) vary by broadcast locality. The basic model is well established. Typically, national channels destined for localization have segments defined where the regional content is “spliced in”, depending on the local area. Within Sweden for example, viewers who are based in Stockholm can watch a tailored version of a national channel that shows more content related to their city compared to viewers watching elsewhere. And as TV evolves, viewers who have grown used to this level of regionalization on certain channels will expect this to be replicated across all platforms and on all screens.

The ‘splicing’ has typically taken place in central broadcast facilities. The issue is that increasing the number of regional variations requires greater investment in production, encoding, storage resources and, depending on the distribution channel, broadcast spectrum.

Outside of public service broadcasting obligations, this poses something of a challenge, as the ‘value’ of a regional channel is inherently less (in terms of advertising reach) than a national channel. Yet, as broadcasting and TV distribution moves increasingly online, the possible applications for channel variations start to multiply. Regional weather and news, along with interest-based, content-based and advertising variations, are all possible, but creating them by investing in the traditional broadcast playout facility won’t pay back.

Each of these channels taken in isolation occupies a relatively small niche, but in aggregate all regional channels together offer significant upside in reach. So, is there a way to produce regionalized channels in a way which is cost effective?

REDUCE THE PRODUCTION COST AND LET REGIONALIZATION REALLY TAKE OFF!

Edgeware’s online TV origination system includes the Virtual Channel Creation solution, which has been conceived and developed to make the universe of customized channels available to broadcasters and content owners at realistic cost levels per channel.

Virtual Channel Creation is built on content stitching technology, which enables the stitching of channels in the segmented content domain prior to packaging into ABR formats for internet delivery. Way beyond a simple playlist function, Virtual Channel Creation results in the creation of a new dynamic manifest with each stitched piece of content indistinguishable from the others. With no change to the broadcast playout capacity, Virtual Channel Creation enables broadcasters or content owners to stitch together content from different sources to create new ‘virtual’ channels.

For content that varies by region – such as regional news or weather channels, or market-specific advertisements typically sharing national programming – the solution cuts costs by reducing playout, contribution, encoder and storage capacity needs. And, because of the API-driven nature of the Virtual Channel Creation solution, the option of creating new channels becomes computational rather than manual – opening up a new universe of possibilities.

HOW CAN ENCODER AND STORAGE CAPACITY BE MORE EFFICIENTLY USED?

In the broadcast model, regional channels take up a full 24×7 encoding resource and one full channel in the broadcast spectrum on the EPG, meaning the national content is encoded and stored multiple times. This storage obligation multiplies if the offer includes live-to-VOD / catchup or time-shift applications.

With Edgeware Virtual Channel Creation, national content only needs to be encoded and stored once. Regional content can then be stitched into the national channel in the IP playout from the origin to create each full regional channel. As a result, encoder needs are reduced. And if catch-up (Live to VoD) is required, the benefits multiply, as each unique piece of content is stored separately, and the channel is re-created on demand in the outgoing packaging process.

LOWER BITRATE OPTIONS BRING DOWN ENCODER AND STORAGE COST EVEN FURTHER

If this suits the application, lower bitrate variants of the regional content that is stitched in can be enforced at channel creation time. This reduces the encoder and storage capacity needs even further, while not noticeably impacting the quality for the viewer.

Use cases demonstrate a 95% encoder capacity saving for national channels and an 89% encoder saving for regional channels when using the option to use a lower bitrate variant for the regional channels.

IMPROVE YOUR RELEVANCE TO END USERS WITH REGIONALIZED AND/OR PERSONALIZED CONTENT

Creating theme-based channels around live events and pay-per-view is a way to increase viewing time and relevance for the end viewer. This is yet another use case for the Virtual Channel Creation solution and opens up unlimited possibilities for new innovative programming. Examples can include the concept of ‘fan-channels’, creating channels that address certain demographics or regions during big online music and/or sports events. The Virtual Channel Creation solution provides an easier and more cost-efficient approach to developing new revenue-generating TV services.

In addition, the Virtual Channel Creation technology sits before the final packaging step, which makes it possible to package virtual channels into all adaptive bitrate formats including Microsoft Smooth Streaming (MSS). Despite declining as a format at a global level, Smooth Streaming remains an important format in many markets and the Edgeware solution is unique in its ability to insert regionalized ads for Smooth devices.

The content stitching technology used in Virtual Channel Creation can also be used to efficiently manage restrictions in content distribution rights. Content distribution rights can include restrictions based on geographic region or TV delivery platform. By inserting replacement segments, programs or providing a blackout solution, the distribution rights can be fulfilled. The Edgeware solution supports this even for time-shifted content.

CONCLUSION

Virtual Channel Creation gives viewers an enhanced and more bespoke online TV experience with programming that is tailored to their home region or demographics. This makes the content more relevant and opens up the option of stitching content together in new and innovative TV service offerings, thereby increasing the value of broadcasters’ content.

Read more about Virtual Channel Creation through:

Our Solution Brief describing the Virtual Channel Creation
Our case study on the encoder savings
Our demo video showing how to stich in content

In Conversation with Accedo and SBS

Remote User Research on Video & TV Consumption

Recently, Accedo & SBS On Demand facilitated a large remote user research study on video & TV consumption in Australia, specifically focusing on the opportunities that lie within digital linear TV and if or how they should bring it to the SBS On Demand platform.

We spoke with Nikki Perugini & Ulf Sthamer to delve into their new ways of working during the COVID-19 lockdown, and gain some insight into the outcome of the study. Their UX team conducted a research study that included 5 different research methods and resulted in 68 customer backed insights & recommendations that will form the base of the SBS On Demand product roadmap over the coming months. Tune in to hear the process behind the study, and listen to some findings on the future of Linear TV in a digital, ‘on demand’ world.

The Switch Esports White Paper: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Esports TV But Were Afraid To Ask!