Video Breakthroughs

The BBC Olympics sports broadcast service is one of the largest media events of 2012. It has brought the video service industry to a totally new level, earning for the 2012 Olympics the popularity of "truly digital games". In this context, it is critical to acknowledge the importance of expertise gained and leverage it in further growth. In this post, we are going to dwell into the project, its implementation, and valuable experience that you can apply to your own projects.

RelayCaster server appliances offer a turn-key solution that enables optimized transmission of IPTV streams. By using the RelayCaster Streaming Protocol (RSP), reliability and data rates of streaming live content along lossy long distance links, such as the public Internet, can be greatly improved.

Having proven its value for live distribution of streams between data centers, Motama's RSP has now taken the next step: At NAB, Motama will introduce the first deployment of the protocol on Broadcom-based set-top boxes. As a first reference, products from CIMA distributed by See-IP.tv will be demonstrated, in particular IP300 for operators and IND300 for Digital Signage and TV in public places.

Compared to streaming with UDP or RTP, Motama's RSP greatly reduces packet loss and thereby significantly increased the Quality of Experience for end-users. Compared to streaming with TCP or higher-level protocols, such as HTTP, much higher bandwidths can be achieved with Motama's RSP - in particular when streaming over lossy links.

The Open IPTV Forum and MPEG Industry Forum have reached agreement to merge the assets of MPEGIF into the OIPF in a move that increases consolidation in the standardisation landscape.

The pair say the activities of the MPEG Industry Forum have reached a natural and successful conclusion with the emergence of MPEG-4 Part 10, alternatively known as H.264, as the dominant codec in next generation video technology and the proven successor to MPEG-2.

As in 2011, when the Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum (BMCO) merged into OIPF, which followed the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) merging with the MPEGIF, these asset mergers represent natural consolidation in a maturing industry – the positive result of cross-industry consensus on fundamental technologies.

There is an industry consensus that HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), the draft compression standard, will have a dramatic impact on the industry thanks to its ability to eventually halve bit rates compared to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), the current encoding Gold Standard that it will complement but ultimately succeed. And as with all encoding, if you create sufficient extra coding efficiency to halve bit rates then you can also choose to leave bit rates the same but double picture quality, or turn the bandwidth/quality dial to any point in between. Encoder vendors are working towards deployments of the new codec as early as next year, probably starting with multi-screen TV services and fixed line IPTV.

The Open IPTV Forum successfully completed their latest interoperability test event at the Orange Labs in Rennes, France, where members successfully demonstrated an OIPF-based IPTV solution.

The scope and features demonstrated at this event were selected by Orange, and chosen as being representative of those which could constitute a viable commercial offering for a typical tier-one service provider. During 5 days of engineering, testing and demonstrations, OIPF members Ericsson, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Opera Software, Orange and Zenterio successfully resolved and demonstrated interoperability in the areas of service discovery, delivery of linear and on demand content, HTTP adaptive streaming and terminal based applications, all according to the published OIPF specifications.

Designed for broadcasters, webcasters, and content providers, the IPGuard is a seamless IP and MPEG-2 TS transport layer switching device that can convey MPEG-2 or MPEG-4/H.264 in SD or HD content. It delivers 1+1 redundancy with two parallel IP input sources and two mirrored IP outputs. When the system detects a failure on one input – such as no IP stream or MPEG-2 or H.264 transport stream failure – it automatically switches over to the other valid input to provide continual output.

The IPGuard offers a bypass mechanism via solid state relays that creates 100% service availability in case of power outage. It is designed to provide an automatic 1+1 redundancy of network equipment that delivers services over IP – such as encoders, multiplexers, gateways, ASI to IP adapters, etc. Additionally, the IPGuard can also be operated to re-synchronize and re-align the same MPEG-2 stream that is carried over redundant IP-based networks. The latter introducing different network propagation delay, the IPGuard is able to re-align both IP streams to provide a seamless change-over between redundant IP streams.

Imagine Communications announces a system upgrade to their award-winning ICE Video Platform. The new platform upgrade provides system operators with a single unified appliance for processing HD and SD IPTV streams as well as Adaptive Bit Rate streams for multiscreen delivery.

Available in a dense 1RU (Rack Unit) package or as a NEBS-compliant Blade System, the Imagine ICE Video Platform is the ideal solution for IPTV service providers who need to deploy more channels with higher picture quality, and then rapidly and seamlessly add support for multiple device types such as the iPad3, and other new mobile platforms with 1080p support.

OTT is increasingly being deployed in Europe for subscription services rather than just as part of TV Everywhere strategies for cable or satellite operators.

As well as providing a platform for new entrants, OTT is giving new life to IPTV operators that had previously not made much headway, or had been unable to afford the network upgrade required, involving building out of fiber closer to the premise.

There is a growing effort by broadcasters to make regular TV content available online. For example, the BBC has developed the BBC iPlayer and the bbc.co.uk website to support replication of most BBC broadcast material. The service has been outstandingly successful: 79.3 million requests were serviced in October 2009. NBC coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics included live and recently recorded content, complete with commercials.

Whenever there is the possibility of a large or dynamic viewer audience, a reliable CDN is required. CDNs once only used to replicate website content around the world. Now, they have expanded dramatically to handle streaming media. Research and markets estimated the value of CDN services for 2008 at $1.25 billion, up 32 percent from 2007. Top CDNs include Akamai, Mirror Image Internet, Limelight Networks, CDNetworks and Level 3. Streaming media services must deal with content collected from disparate sources and distributed to a growing number of devices.