tvbe november 2015

www.tvbeurope.com

November 2015Business, insight and intelligence for the media and entertainment industry

Adrian Scott: lifetime achievement winner Does RGBW qualify as UHD? | IBC acquisition feature

Is high dynamic range the best thing sincethe introduction of colour?

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TVBEurope 3November 2015 www.tvbeurope.com

High dynamic range

(HDR): from afar,

it sounds like the

defi ning quality of a leading

soprano. Similarly, to us,

it may just represent the

closest thing we have to a

defi ning measure of image

quality running at the top

of its game. Not that we’re

leaving resolution at the

door, but HDR is being

trumpeted, loudly

in some parts, as a key

value proposition in the

evolution from HD.

Is it the most marked

staging post in technical development

since the introduction of colour some 80 years

ago? Some think so. Simon Fell, the EBU’s

director of technology, termed it

‘the new black’. (Many thanks to him for

our cover slogan.)

SMPTE has recently published its Study

Group report into the HDR ecosystem in

which it pinpoints the need for new standards,

an investigation into the effects of content

conversion on HDR material, and states its

uncertainty that future HDR content

delivery/transmission systems will be

capable of supporting “dynamic, content-

dependent metadata”.

We take up the discussion in this issue, as

Adrian Pennington gets to the bottom of

the challenges and

opportunities of this much

talked about area.

We also refl ect on the

career of Adrian Scott,

who was the recipient of

our lifetime achievement

honour at the TVBAwards

at the end of October.

Adrian’s qualities as an

evangelist for newsroom

computer systems and

non-linear editing, and

his dedication to roles

with IBC, IABM and

G-SAM, mark him out as

one the industry’s fi nest

ambassadors. Equally, his qualities as a human

being puts all of those technicalities into some

degree of insignifi cance: a much admired, and

widely respected character who is renowned

for his generosity, loyalty, and abilities as a

storyteller. Congratulations, Adrian: a well

deserved recognition.

Congratulations are also due to my

colleague, Holly Ashford, who, from the

December issue, will sit in the mighty deputy

editor’s chair following an internal reshuffl e. It is

a well-earned step up in her blossoming career,

and I’m delighted that she will be taking a more

prominent role with the TVBEurope brand.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue.

James McKeown Editor-in-chief

Welcome

There’s nothing black and white about HDR

EDITORIAL

Content Director and Editor-in-Chief: James [email protected] Staff Writer: Holly [email protected]: Chris Forrester, David Fox, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Will Strauss, Catherine WrightHead of Digital: Tim FrostHuman Resources & Offi ce Manager: Lianne DaveyHead of Design, Hertford: Kelly Sambridge

Senior Production Executive: Alistair Taylor

Sales Manager: Ben [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Account Manager: Richard [email protected]+44 207 354 6000

Sales Executive: Nicola [email protected]+44 207 354 6000

Sales Director: Mark [email protected]+44 207 354 6000

Managing Director: Mark Burton

US Sales: Michael [email protected]+1 (631) 673 0072

Japan and Korea Sales: Sho [email protected]+81 6 4790 2222

CirculationFree [email protected] Tel +44 1580 883848

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High dynamic range has fully emerged from the (increased) shadow of the UHD debate

In this issue4 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

Will Strauss elaborates on the industry’s trending issues over the last 12 months, and off ers some ‘questionable’ predictions about the future

Workfl ow6 1234

Women in TVOn-screen, off -screen, and leadership: Jessica Hawkes reports from the latest conference to directly address the challenges facing women in media

Does RGBW qualify as UHD? The International Committee for Display Metrology is urgently considering revisions to its Measurement Specifi cations, in this TVBEurope exclusive

18

Feature

FeatureTranscoding forum

2036

HDR is the new black. The best thing since the introduction of colour? Will all HDR versions be equal? Adrian Pennington fi nds out

Philip Stevens chairs the debate as authorities from across the industry come together to discuss the increasingly innovative world of transcoding

How IMG tackled the Rugby World Cup. Philip Stevens went behind the scenes at the year’s biggest international sporting event

Opinion and Analysis

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Opinion and Analysis6 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

It was the year that UHD went live, IP took

over and everyone started to worry about

security. But how will history remember 2015

and, perhaps more importantly, what happens

next?

As fun as it was, it is unlikely that historians will

look back on 2015 as a signifi cant year in the

on-going development (and transformation)

of television. Yes, we’ve seen the fi rst ultra high

defi nition channels go live in Europe but even

that could be considered merely another notch

in the resolution bedpost.

Odd-numbered years, those without a major

sporting event (with apologies to the Rugby

World Cup), tend to be less evolutionary than

those that feature a football World Cup or

Olympic Games. It has always been thus.

What 2015 did show us, however, is that there has

been a major mind-shift amongst broadcasters.

There is now a genuine desire on their part

to move away from the reliance on closed,

proprietary and specialist broadcast equipment

and adopt a neutral platform for video data.

It won’t happen overnight but the powers-

that-be no longer want to have to invest in

hardware and upgrade their internal and

external networks every few years. They have

said so, at every conference, and in every

interview, you care to name.

Now, they want to use advanced IP-based

systems and IP networks for production and

broadcasting (even in a live environment),

potentially making them more effi cient and

more nimble. In the future, it will simply be the

software on top of the IP layer that determines

what that video data does, how it appears,

and where it goes.

Several broadcasters are already making

plans for cloud and IP-based broadcast facilities

that will look nothing like they do now. In fact,

they will look an awful lot like data centres.

As such, perhaps history will look upon 2015

as the beginning of a new era: the era of

software-defi ned broadcasting. Maybe it was

signifi cant after all?

Remote productionOn the same subject, one of the many

potential upsides of the television industry

Broadcast industry trends in 2015 (and some questionable predictions about the future), by Will Strauss

TODAY

sometime

tomorrow

NEVER

‘As personalisation takes hold in 2016, someone needs to come up with an idea

that creates on-demand experiences that combine the benefi ts of immediacy with the

magic of scheduling’



embracing IP is the opportunity that it presents

for live remote production.

By that I mean having cameras, operators and

very little else on location and then whisking the

live feeds instantly (or as near as dammit) via an

IP network to a gallery (conceivably) anywhere

in the world, where pictures and sound can be

switched, manipulated and distributed.

The immediate cost benefi ts of working this

way are obvious. With less movement of people

and kit required – and little need for OB trucks

– it could make certain types of live production

more cost effective. This, in turn, could potentially

allow for coverage of niche, lengthy, or less-

well-known events that might not be otherwise

affordable using a truck.

Various demos were shown at NAB and IBC this

year to prove that point, with the manufacturer

EVS particularly keen on making it work. It’s

not just vapourware either, as illustrated by

Gearhouse Broadcast’s successful demonstration

and ChyronHego’s VidiGo selling a working

remote production system to Euro Media Group.

Large multi-camera productions are still tricky,

especially when you start cranking up resolution

and frame rate, so trying to send live 4K at

60fps from 16 cameras over IP is probably

pushing your luck. But, on a general level, it is

technically feasible, and there are cost savings

from a production perspective. However, the

price of bandwidth still makes remote

production expensive.

My prediction is that next year, a forward-

thinking telco will come up with a package

that makes it cost effective for broadcasters.

Then we will really see if remote production

lives up to its billing.

SecurityUsing IP might be more effi cient but it does

have its downsides, not least that it makes

broadcasters potentially more vulnerable

than ever before.

With everything existing virtually, in the cloud

and across IP networks, hacking becomes a

far bigger consideration. Cutting an SDI cable

would cause disruption, of course. But hacking

into a broadcaster’s network could bring far

greater problems. As such, security has to be in

every conversation about the future. It was a

key theme in 2015.

In some cases, the solutions are simple.

Despite all the phishing attacks and probing

that happens in the media world, 75 per cent of

all security breaches occur via a valid network

username and password, and in many cases

authorised administrator access.

This is not unique to television, of course. But

having passwords will soon become a thing of

the past. It may take a serious security breach for

a broadcaster to take action, and this may well

happen in 2016, but either way, systems need to

be put in place, if they haven’t been already,

to avoid the adoption of IP becoming an open

invitation to would-be criminals.

PersonalisationThis is a ‘biggie’. As VoD services continue to

take hold of the broadcast world, profi t-seeking

service providers are looking to capitalise by

offering a more personalised experience to the

viewer, both in programming terms and with

targeted advertising.

This will, it is believed, help to keep a viewer

within a network, introduce them to the full

range of available content and, importantly,

make them happier and more likely to respond

to commercials (in turn, making media

companies more money).

Personalisation is relevant up and down the

programming chain. It can be as simple as

a marketing tweet telling a viewer that their

favourite show is now available to download.

Or as complex as being able to individually

customise the on-screen graphics that are

visible while watching a sporting event. Access

to data and the ability to manipulate and use

it is, of course, crucial here. Without information

about a viewer, experiences cannot be

personalised. Broadcasters continue to work

hard on gathering and disseminating viewer

data, and encouraging customers to make their

relationship a two-way thing.

Technology also plays a vital part. This year,

we have seen a signifi cant rise in the number

of platforms and services that are able to

automatically insert or splice relevant local

content and adverts into on-demand and live

streams. They use audio, watermarking, and

other cues to pinpoint when to personalise, and

both personal data and viewing records/trends

to decide what goes where. Previously very

expensive to deploy, these technologies are now

considered affordable and practical.

In the UK this year, Sky’s AdSmart personalised

linear TV ad service – in which adverts are stored

on set-top boxes and transmitted during live

viewing – was rolled out onto the broadcaster’s

on-demand services, where ads that were

previously stitched into VoD fi les can now be

refreshed or replaced.

As VoD grows in popularity, it doesn’t take

Nostradamus to predict that this will become a

major ‘thing’. We can expect other broadcasters

to follow suit in 2016, as Viacom, the owner of

Channel 5, did this year.

But while technology is key to allowing this

personalisation, the really successful exponents

will be those that bring a human element to

it too. The editorial skills that make (or made)

channels great need to be incorporated into

VoD products so that they avoid the hideous

problems that can be prevalent with computer

algorithms. Anyone that has ever bought

something from Amazon.com for a friend

or loved one, and is now bombarded with

inappropriate banner ads promoting similar

wares, will know what I mean.

As personalisation really takes hold in 2016,

someone needs to come up with an idea that

creates on-demand experiences that combine

the benefi ts of immediacy with the magic of

scheduling. We live in hope.

‘Next year, a forward-thinking telco will come up with a package that makes it

cost effective for broadcasters. Then we will really see if remote production lives

up to its billing’


At the end of Q2 2015, there were

just under 63 million paying Netflix

subscribers globally. There are few rivals

of comparable scale: Netflix accounted for just

over half of global SVoD contracts at the end

of Q2 2015. Its closest peers include Amazon,

which operates Prime Instant Video in a handful

of markets including the USA, Germany, UK and

Japan; Hulu, which has begun to transition from

catch-up platform to fully-fledged subscription

video library; and local market players like the

UK’s Now TV, Germany’s Maxdome, France’s

CanalPlay, and others.

Yet Netflix and Amazon come from a different

background to that of most of their peers:

they’re not backed by traditional broadcast

or pay-TV groups. As a consequence, their

emergence onto the online video scene, while

a cause for consternation for many B2C TV and

film companies, was greeted happily by many

content distributors as another outlet and buyer

for their titles. Additional competition spurred on

inflated rights values, and a mini flush of cash for

those able to tap into the new revenue stream.

Netflix has spent roughly $8.5 billion since 2010

to obtain streaming content for its service. The

company coughed up $3.1 billion on content in

2014 alone and expects to expand its spend to

roughly $5 billion by 2016. Amazon has spent less

on content, but still paid out $1.3 billion in 2014,

according to CEO Jeff Bezos.

Some of the cash goes on competing for

high value premium content. Netflix typically

has at least one major ‘first window’ movie

licensing agreement in each market in order to

provide a steady flow of high-profile content. But

due to the opportunistic nature of such deals,

the company’s offering changes noticeably

between countries. In the USA, deals brokered

with Disney and the Weinstein Company

beginning in 2016 bode well for the streaming

service and build on early window arrangements

with Sony Animations, Relativity Media and

Dreamworks Animation, among many others.

In Europe, Netflix gained the lion’s share of the

MGM, Miramax and Lionsgate catalogues in

the UK, Disney in the Netherlands and Warner

in Scandinavia.

Amazon has taken a similar approach,

targeting a small selective set of higher-cost

rights, supplemented by a large catalogue

of library titles. In the USA, Amazon inked an

exclusive multi-year deal with HBO, the first time

that HBO content has ever been licensed for

an online-only SVoD service. However, the deal

excludes new shows from Amazon’s catalogue

for three years from first release and despite this

was widely reported to have cost $300 million.

Amazon’s other competitive US content deals

include an estimated $200 million deal with

Viacom as well as smaller agreements with

MGM and Lionsgate and access to the

Disney Movies Anywhere application as of

September 2015.

In Europe, Amazon has struck various deals

including a first window agreement with

Paramount in Germany and second window

deals with Sony, Universal and Warner in the UK.

A series of expensive events: The growing role of SVoD

By Richard Broughton, research director, Ampere Analysis

‘Netflix coughed up $3.1 billion on content in 2014 alone and expects to expand its spend to roughly $5 billion

by 2016’



Furthermore, the content acquisition strategies

represent separate pots. Subscription VoD

services exhibit relatively little overlap in terms

of title availability. Just 13 per cent of Netflix’s

US catalogue is shared with Amazon Prime

Instant Video, and just 6 per cent of Amazon’s

catalogue is also available on Netflix. Genres

are also differentially represented: Amazon has

a much higher proportion of documentaries in its

library than Netflix, which has a higher proportion

of comedy shows.

The catalogue differences have been picked

up on by consumers. Netflix’s US subscriber base

is more likely to choose comedy as a favourite

genre of show. And Amazon’s customers have

a higher propensity to prefer documentaries

and lifestyle shows. The content differences,

combined with a low pricepoint, mean that the

two services are not mutually exclusive. Roughly

a quarter of Netflix’s US subscriber base also

watches videos via Amazon Prime.

But the (brief) days of excess may soon be

coming to an end. Netflix is determined to build

itself into a brand associated with high-quality

exclusive content. And rather than spend its

cash furnishing the pockets of third parties,

it is increasingly placing its bets on original

productions. Amazon has followed suit, via both

its existing pilots scheme and also high-profile

moves such as securing the ex-BBC Top Gear

team’s services. Both companies are pushing

to increase the proportion of content spend

devoted to original titles.

Netflix has indicated it is aiming to reach a

position at which half of its business revolves

around the company’s ‘own’ content, albeit

over an undefined time period. If the subscription

VoD company reaches this target within the

next four to five years, peak spend on acquired

content could arrive as soon as 2016 or 2017,

meaning content distributors may soon face

dwindling budgets. Yet even as Netflix’s outlay

begins to switch source, Amazon’s content

spend is picking up, and Ampere expects that

even if a decline in Netflix acquisitions occurs in

2016-2017, Amazon Prime content acquisitions

should roughly offset the effect, despite its own

increasing focus on originals.

Ampere estimates that combined, Amazon

Prime and Netflix will be spending $1 billion on

original content in 2016. Furthermore, the race

for more ‘originals’ has begun to pull in runners

from adjacent markets, such as pay-TV operators

keen to ensure they don’t lose out to upstart

online rivals. UK pay-TV operator Sky hit nearly $1

bilion per year in original British programming in

2014 and has indicated it expects the figure to

grow still further.

So while the market for acquired content

remains robust, savvy content suppliers should be

preparing for a possible switch in spend from key

clients. Positioning themselves to take advantage

of the burgeoning ‘originals’ market will ensure

that they are shielded should the worst happen,

and the cash cow move onto pastures new.

The Window for Broadcast Evolution

SD

HDFHD UHD

www.tvlogic.tv

‘Netflix has indicated it is aiming to reach a position at which half of its business revolves around the company’s ‘own’

content’


The growth of video delivered over IP

networks is showing no signs of slowing

down. The industry shift towards IP,

combined with consumer demand for the

highest quality video streamed to any device, at

any time, anywhere, is forcing service providers

and broadcasters to adapt to stay competitive

in this evolving video landscape.

HTTP-based adaptive streaming was

developed to enable high-quality video delivery

over the internet, and proved to be an efficient

method for delivering content to smartphones,

tablets and connected devices. Today, it is

increasingly replacing traditional IPTV solutions

for delivering even the prime video services

for the living room.

To ensure the best possible user experience,

video service providers must address bandwidth,

latency, and packet loss in order to avoid quality

issues such as buffering, slow responsiveness, low

resolution and glitches. HTTP adaptive streaming

is based on two main technologies that impact

the quality management: the use of TCP as

the transport protocol and the provisioning of

content at multiple quality levels.

TCP is a bi-directional protocol, allowing

clients to adapt to changing network conditions

by requesting a suitable quality level. The TCP

protocol also offers inherent retransmission

capabilities, which enables it to efficiently

deal with packet losses, preventing noticeable

glitches. However, to maintain a certain

bandwidth capacity in the presence of packet

loss requires over-provisioned networks. Another

issue impacting the available bandwidth is

latency. Despite not being a major issue with

user interactivity, increased latency will lower

the available bandwidth. This may prevent high

bitrate streaming (UHD and HD) over long-haul

networks. To ensure optimal video delivery,

service providers need to consider the following

techniques to address these challenges.

Resource managementProperly tracking and allocating bandwidth is

required in order to deliver high or continuous

quality content to a large number of viewers,

without over-provisioning the network. This is

challenging for adaptive streaming sessions,

which consist of hundreds or thousands of small

fragments instead of a single continuous stream.

A solution is to use ‘virtual sessions’. Deploying an

agile software defined network management

solution makes it possible to allocate resources,

provide load balancing and monitor functions

that are scaled on demand.

Proximity to clientOriginating streams as close as possible

to the viewers makes it possible for

operators to ensure high-quality video delivery.

A distributed hierarchical network stores the

most popular content closest to the end user

and the least valuable content deeper in

the network. In addition to improving quality,

caching can be a cost saver by reducing

upstream bandwidth requirements.

Multicast of HTTP live streamsPopular live content often causes peaks in

network traffic. To overcome this issue, distributed

caching servers can fan-out streams closer to the

end user. However, this may still be inefficient in

larger networks. There are several ways multicast

can be used to deliver live streams, at least to a

nearby cache. File fragments can be delivered

over multicast, or video can be delivered as

several synchronised transport streams. The

first option requires less intelligent caches, but

consumes more network bandwidth. The latter

option requires intelligent caches that can

segment, encrypt and re-package content,

but requires only one format to be delivered

through the network.

Pushing live streams over multicast to

edge caches is also an efficient way to

minimise the end-to-end latency for live

delivery, by avoiding intermediate cache

traversals. For some live events, like sports,

short latency is crucial.

Measure and analyseSince quality decisions are made by the clients,

the only way to verify the quality experienced

by end users and to evaluate the impact of

any optimisations introduced is to measure and

analyse the traffic that was actually delivered.

This can be challenging if the delivery of every

little chunk needs to be monitored. A video-

aware analytics tool that abstracts the data at a

meaningful level is key.

HTTP-based adaptive streaming enables

service providers to deliver premium content to

a growing number of devices and over different

network types. Yet, the issue of quality is still top

of mind. By considering the aforementioned

techniques, service providers can address these

issues and keep pace with industry demand.

Ensuring quality in IP video delivery systemsBy Göran Appelquist, chief technology officer, Edgeware

‘To ensure the best possible user experience, video service providers must address bandwidth, latency, and packet

loss in order to avoid quality issues’

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Every four years, the Rugby World Cup (RWC)

tournament involves 20 nations competing

in 48 matches for the coveted William

Webb Ellis cup. (Ellis was the Rugby School pupil

credited with inventing the game by picking up

the ball during a football game and running to

the goal. Not everyone is convinced of that origin,

however.)

But there is no doubt about the popularity of

the event, with organisers of the 2015 tournament

in England calling it the world’s third largest

sporting event, following the FIFA World Cup and

the Olympics. In fact, global television audiences

are measured in the billions. And with Rugby

Sevens’ entry into the Olympics in 2016, the sport

is likely to grow more rapidly.

Coverage in the UK for the 2015 tournament

which started on 18 September and ran through

to the end of October has been provided by

ITV, which also acted as host broadcaster. Working

with ITV and the broadcasters from around the

world who showed some or all of the matches

was IMG. Alongside supporting the Rugby

World Cup in many areas, including through

sponsorship, commercial ticketing, television rights

distribution and licensing, IMG is providing the

International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) at its

Stockley Park, west London, facility.

Making plans“As with most major events, we had the first

World Broadcaster Meeting (WBM) sometime

in advance - in fact, March 2014 in this case,”

explains David Shield, senior vice president,

IMG Studios. “At that meeting we outlined our

production plans, gave the rate card, plus

booking deadlines. The IBC became operational

on 14 September, with the second WBM held at

the Lord’s Cricket Ground a day later where all

the broadcasters came along for a final briefing.”

The signal from all the matches was available

at the IBC and The London Gateway (BT Tower)

and IMG arranged a satellite distribution path on

a cost share basis.

IMG received four feeds per match: Dirty Main,

Dirty Backup, Dirty Tertiary and Clean. In some

cases, there were up to four matches taking

place on a single day.

When it comes to ISO feeds, Shield says that

IMG relied on using the half and full time melts

provided by ITV. “The good old fashioned way,”

he quips. “Having said that, we did have access

to eight ISO angles as a by-product of the

TMO (Television Match Official) system used by

officials to check for infringement of rules and so

on. The citing commissioners used a remote

login to those systems to view the ISOs – but

they are low resolution and so not suitable for

broadcast quality. But they do provide useful

insights of incidents that we used for the highlights

programmes we produced.”

Not studio-boundShield reports that the main broadcasters to

utilise the IBC have been TF1, Canal+ and ESPN

Latin America. “We made a five camera studio

available at Stockley Park for all rights holding

broadcasters. However, these days broadcasters

don’t really want to be in studios at IBC. They all

want to be in amongst the atmosphere at pitch

side, presenting their output from the ground.

For the opening game featuring England and

Fiji, we saw 15 pitch side presentations. That

meant a great many elaborate set ups, but once

the broadcasters had handed to the match

commentators, there was some hasty de-rigging

as the teams emerged.”

In the case of broadcasters TF1 and Canal+

(who have been sharing feeds), IMG produced

French language graphics at the IBC. “Those

broadcasters took the graphics feed from us

and used Globecast to get the signals back to

their studios. Using a separate link, the studio

component – which came from each stadium –

was also sent to Paris, where the live pictures and

Workflow12 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

Philip Stevens talks to the provider of IBC services for this major sporting tournament

How IMG tackled the Rugby World Cup


Workflow

graphics were synchronised and combined.”

This meant that when, for example, the host

broadcaster inserted a lower third graphic in

English, a trigger sent to Paris allowed the French

language information to be inserted at the

same time. For those broadcasters who lacked

the resources to send commentators around

the UK for every match, IMG provided off-tube

facilities at the IBC.

Highlighting the actionAs mentioned earlier, IMG was responsible for

producing the official daily 26-minute highlights

programmes. In addition, there have been

52-minute programmes every Sunday night and

now a 60- and 120-minute overall tournament

round up. Avid and EVS were used for editing the

programmes, utilising IP Director and Ardome

Media Asset Management systems. Forscene has

also been used for producing clips.

“We also took the Opta data feed which

not only drives the live graphics feed, but also

produces the tournament data system,” reveals

Shield. “We used that information to populate our

logs for all the major incidents leaving our loggers

free to concentrate on visual aspects of the

games. That meant there was no need for them

to worry about numbers of tries, tackles and so on.

It is easier then to list shots such as cutaways to the

crowds that might be useful in the final edit.”

Using IPShield says that a dedicated tournament IP

(Internet Protocol) network was in place for all the

venues, including the IBC, used for the RWC. “We

made use of that network for the comms from

the host broadcaster. That VoIP technology was

utilised to create all the four wires needed for such

a complex operation. In all, there were five four-

wire circuits to every venue.” That IP network also

carried the Hawkeye system in place for each

match. “We also used it to carry the simultaneous

translations for the press conferences. Similar to

the systems used at the FIFA World Cups, we set

up booths within the IBC for the translators. They

could do their work here and so avoid the need

to travel around the country, something that

would have been impossible for just one translator

when there were four matches on some days.”

Alongside its television commitments, IMG also

serviced radio rights holders on site and produced

a radio World Feed.

The control room at the IMG production centre and inset, David Shield, senior vice president, IMG Studios

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One of the main themes at IBC this

year was the need for broadcasters

to better get to grips with viewers’

desire to watch their favourite programmes

wherever and whenever they want, and from

any device. Accessing programmes seamlessly

on mobile phones or tablets outside the home

remains difficut mainly because some of the

biggest broadcasters and producers out there

do not want to let go of the rights. But tailoring

programmes to better suit their audience’s tastes

in this increasingly on-demand world is one of the

areas where European broadcasters are making

big strides in their fight to rival US giants Netflix or

Amazon. They are playing catch-up, but some

are making interesting technology choices that

should help them compete.

Two of France’s main broadcasters, France

Télévisions and Canal Plus, have adopted

sophisticated software tools which enable them

to very finely tune programmes to match each

viewer’s specific requirements.

Somewhat surprisingly, pubcaster France

Télévisions, which used to be known as a worthy

but slow bureaucratic giant and certainly not

at the forefront of technological innovation, has

overtaken most of its gaul rivals with the launch

of franctv zoom just before the summer. To be

fair, the pubcaster has morphed over the last five

years from being a late technology adopter into

a serious player, paving the way with its its user-

friendly catch-up service Pluzz.

The mammoth organisation, home to

around 10,000 employees, spread across four

TV channels (France 2, France 3, France 4 and

France ô) changed management teams at

the end of the summer and is now led by

Delphine Ernotte who has put digital strategy

at the centre of her agenda.

The personalised channel which is available as

an app on Apple’s iPhone uses software designed

by French startup Cognik. Viewers who have

downloaded the app on their iPhone will be

able to choose whether and when they want to

watch a short YouTube-style teaser, a longer ten

or 20-minute extract or the full-length programme,

in a personalised selection of France Télévisions

content. The pubcaster has been working on

francetv zoom since January 2014, and has tested

it on various focus groups before launching what

it calls an initial prototype, which is due to evolve

according to viewer input. The broadcaster is also

planning to launch other versions of the channel

on all smartphones and tablets by the end of the

year. France Télévisions may be at the forefront

of technological innovation, but it has not

broken the bank: Cognik had to work within a

very tight €1.4 million to develop, test and launch

the prototype.

Stéphane Reynaud, the company’s CEO,

admits its software engineers went far beyond

the call of duty to meet the broadcaster’s

requirements but thinks that it is an effort that will

pay in the long run. “We are just at the beginning

of the process, new versions will be launched and

the publicity is great!” he enthuses.

The company already hit the headlines in

2012 when it won a Mipcom technology award

for software used by Canal Plus to launch Mon

Nickelodeon Junior for its Canalsat subscribers,

a personalised TV channel for kids, that parents

could programme according to their children’s

tastes. But, according to Stéphane Reynaud,

francetv zoom is another kettle of fish altogether.

“It is much easier to create software for a


To rival US companies such as Netflix, French broadcasters are increasingly betting on advanced search engine tools and personalised channels to better tailor programmes and advertising to their audience, writes Catherine Wright

Lucas Serralta, MD of Canal + digital

Stéphane Reynaud, CEO, Cognik

French broadcasters get personal

specialised TV channel, targeted at sport lovers or

kids, for instance. But France Télévisions’ audience

is much wider, and our profiling techniques are

much more finely tuned than they were a couple

of years ago: we now select psychological traits

according to a pre-defined list. We combine these

with the editorial input of France Télévisions, and

the end result is a tool that is very close to what

the viewer really is.”

Among Cognik‘s founding scientists, Kristine

Lund, who studied at the CNRS (Centre National

de Recherche Scientifique), France’s biggest

state-owned research body, has become one of

the leading gaul experts in the area of artificial

intelligence and how it can relate to human

beings. Her input in the development of Cognik

software has been essential. As Reynaud readily

admits, Cognik’s profiling tools could become

handy for advertisers as well. Francetv zoom

includes a wide number of pre-roll adverts, but no

profiling can be used unless the viewer specifically

agrees to it. The company is working with a

number of other European broadcasters on similar

tools and is expected to make some important

announcements towards the end of the year.

The huge elephant in the room remains Netflix.

The US-based OTT operator’s recommendation

engine is one of the key reasons for its huge

success: the service is user-friendly and gets better

each year. Around 800 research engineers work

on its recommendation tools, whereas France

Télévisions dispatched a team of 25, to which one

can add Cognik’s five software engineers, to work

on francetv zoom. The fight is unequal, but then

David did win against Goliath.

A company that has employed a bigger team

of software engineers is Canal Plus. The satcaster

has recently hired 200 new technical recruits,

which puts it at least on a par with the US giant.

Also just before the summer and before a change

in leadership, Canal Plus announced the launch

of Cube S, an OTT set-top box. The satcaster also

debuted a new software engine named Suggest,

which is initially available for the company’s

CanalPlay VoD service – essentially films – but

which will eventually be extended to other

services such as Canal + à la demande, which

also offers sport and entertainment.

Until now, the gaul satcaster used Eureka,

which simply compiled ‘historical’ information (ie

which programmes viewers have watched over

a period of time) and flagged up playlists based

on that basic input. But Suggest uses a much

wider base of information to create more precise

programme recommendations. “We try to assess

the viewer’s mood: is he emotional or in a zen-like

contemplative mood,” describes Lucas Serralta,

MD of Canal + digital experience. “We believe

that people still want to watch films and other

forms of content together in front of a TV screen,

even if they will look at stuff on other devices

as well. The idea is to be able to show content

that will bring people together, based on their

individual preference,” he concludes.


Workflow

Rai Expo was Italy’s national broadcaster’s

cross-media structure launched to ensure

Expo 2015 worldwide coverage. The

website (in nine languages) and multi-platform

production provided web documentaries,

interactive timelines, infographics, apps,

documentaries, events, streaming, blog and – of

course – TV programmes.

As the event’s host broadcaster, Rai produced

a series of events for the organisers, including

‘live’ events put at the disposal of interested

broadcasters in the form of an international HD

feed compressed in MPEG-4 AVC HD 1080i at

50fps 4:2:2 and scrambled in Clear. Multilateral

feeds were accessible over Europe via Eutelsat

7B. Thirty minutes of daily highlights were

also produced and fed out at 2.30pm and

5.30pm every day.

Rai also offered a 360-degree immersive

experience of the Expo, viewable on mobile

devices by downloading Kolor Eyes 360° by

France’s Kolor, a reference point in panoramic

imagery solutions, including panorama

software, virtual tour software, video-stitching

software and a full range of hardware products.

The broadcaster’s Il Mondo di Expo app, on

the other hand, offered users the ability

to discover the countries participating

in the event.

At the Expo site, Rai’s work included the

coverage of all the daily events held in various

locations: from the National Days to parades,

conferences, and countless visits by famous

personalities from all over the world.

Rai had an on-site multi-function studio

used for a variety of transmissions: Rai 1, the

broadcaster’s flagship channel, had live

coverage from the studio during its Uno Mattina


Rai’s food for thoughtMike Clarke reports on Italy’s state broadcaster’s in-depth coverage of Expo 2015

‘At the Expo site, Rai’s work included the coverage of all the daily events held in

various locations’

The Cooking Show – The World on

a Plate was produced for the Rai3

channel from Monday to Friday for

the first five months of the Expo


Workflow

morning news programme, its Mezzogiorno

Italiano lunchtime show and Vita in Diretta in

the afternoon. As well as live coverage for the

various channels’ TG newsreels, the studio also

hosted the conclusive evening of the Prix Italia

international awards.

Among the other programmes produced

by Rai Expo for its channel, TGR Expo News

on Rai3, Ricette a Colori for Rai Gulp, on the

topic of correct nutrition and Experia, a journey

round Italy in the Expo year, a series of 12

documentaries on the various Italian areas’

excellent products, aired on Rai2.

The most viewed on-site Expo production was,

however, The Cooking Show – The World on a

Plate, produced for Rai3 channel from Monday

to Friday for the first five months of the Expo and

weekly in October.

Hosted by Lisa Casali, expert in sustainable

cuisine and well-known food blogger, the show’s

format featured two different chefs every

day, one Italian and the other from another

country, preparing dishes that emphasised both

individual creativity and local or national origin.

In coherence with the themes of Expo Milano

2015, once the two chefs finished their dishes,

Lisa Casali and her celebrity guest of the day

took their leftovers and invented a new dish,

thus combining different gastronomic cultures

and sensitising the public to issues of cultural

dialogue, sustainability and food waste, a

fundamental message of the Expo itself.

The six HD cameras used in the studio were

four Grass Valley LDX 80p HD cameras and

two Panasonic AW HE 120 units.

Rai’s Milan Production Centre’s team had a

Sony MVS-8000 video switcher, two Sony XDCam

HD PDW-HD1500 disc recorders and BLT’s SMS

Teca 2U at its disposal. Audio was handled by

a Stagetec Aurus console, Stagetech Nexus

audio matrix and D.O.Tec converters and

the studio’s lighting was controlled by

Compulite Vector Red R8000 and Compulite

Spark 4D consoles.

L-Acoustics Kiva and JBL VRX loudspeakers

provided in-studio sound for the live audience

and shows’ hosts and guests used Sennheiser

series 5000 wireless microphones.

A key feature of the studio’s design was

the huge curved LED screen, for which

specialist firm STS Communication

(headquartered in Bresso, Milan) handled the

installation of 293 of Eurosell’s 5mm pitch Acronn

Air-LED tiles) with variable curvature, as well

as content management and live playout,

via two six-output Dataton Watchout systems.

The screen was controlled by six Linsn controllers

and featured active back-up with Barco DVI

and remote control with a (MIDI programmed)

digital pad. Rai3 director Andrea Vianello

enthused, “Our channel didn’t have a lot

of cookery on its schedules, but with this

programme it made up for lost time, and did

so from the perspective of eco-compatibility

and intercultural encounters.”

‘Rai produced a series of events for the organisers, including ‘live’ events put at

the disposal of interested broadcasters in the form of an international HD feed’

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The International Committee for Display

Metrology (ICDM), which is part of the

Society for Information Display’s Defi nitions

and Standards Committee, and which

defi nes performance measurements, quality

and fundamental parameters of all display

technologies, is urgently considering revising

its Measurement Specifi cations to prevent low

resolution TV panels being misleadingly sold as 4K

UHD TVs.

In many ways the current problem is similar

to the early days of HDTV when so-called ‘HD

Ready’ lower-cost displays fl ooded the market

with less-than-perfect technology. Today, the

current crop of (mostly) Chinese-manufactured

displays available are generally failing to deliver

true 4K resolution. Many TVs marketed as 4K or

UHD in reality only contain 2,880 lines of pixels,

and fall well short of the ‘active’ 3,840 pixels

required to be truly Ultra HDTV.

Industry stakeholders have highlighted to

ICDM that its current Measurement Specifi cations

were being deliberately misused by some

manufacturers to market ‘RGBW’ panels as

supporting the UHD requirement for 3,840 pixels

per line. In a modern display, the display raster

is comprised of individual pixels each made up

by a red/green/blue sub-pixel. However, ‘RGBW’

panels include a white pixel sub-pixel alongside

each red/green/blue sub-pixel triplet to make

each individual pixel. The technique comes with

a penalty of an effective 25 per cent reduction

in the number of pixels in each line of the display.

This in effect reduces the native resolution of

RGBW panels to 2,880 pixels instead of the UHD

requirement for 3,840 pixels and can also impact

the colour performance of the display. Critics

of the technology say that the fi nal image is

simply diluted and that colour fi delity information

is lost, and the ‘premium’ offering damaged.

One negative comment from the well-regarded

Vincent Teoh of HDTV Test, suggested: “[They

are] trying to shoehorn RGB video signals into an

RGBW matrix, [where] colour information is lost,

and users will never be able to enjoy movies in

Feature18 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

Chris Forrester offers this exclusive ICDM report for TVBEurope

Does RGBW TV qualify as UHD?

Data: NSR, SES

Data: GfK September 2015

1

20

19

67

56

74

158

242

426

509

481

14Sep 13 - Aug 14

Sep 14 - Aug 15

IE

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

ES

IT

FR

GB

DE

International year-on-year volume growthThousands of units, UHD

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

EUROPE

MENA

LATAM

US

APAC

Forecast of Ultra HD channels until 2025

RGBW matrix, [where] colour information is lost,

and users will never be able to enjoy movies in

the manner intended by the director.” Indeed,

informed sources say these low resolution displays

will not qualify as being approved to carry the

Digital Europe UHD Logo.

While there’s plenty of blame attached to

some TV makers which do not conform to the full

UHD resolution requirement. Even if the current

ICDM Specifications are correctly applied today,

then if these display are measured as having

25 per cent fewer individual pixels per line than

3,840 then these RGBW displays should not

qualify as UHD.

Worse, perhaps, is that the buying public has

no way of identifying these less-than-perfect

units. There is simply no notification or labelling to

indicate the display’s core structure.

The ‘RGBW’ issue has been highlighted at

the recent Eurodisplay 2015 – the International

Display Research Conference – held from 21

to 23 September in Ghent, Belgium. ICDM is

now contemplating revising its Measurement

Specifications to prevent RGBW based panels

being misrepresented as supporting 3,840 pixels

per line and thereby qualifying as ‘true’ UHD TVs.

It is widely agreed that in these early stages

of the UHD market the entire value chain has to

deliver the best experience to consumers. These

lower resolution RGBW displays are not delivering

the premium experience that UHD demands.

This latest development comes on top of the

latest GfK research into 4K/UHD sales, and which

shows that Ultra HD popularity is booming in

terms of retail sales.

By the end of 2015, GfK estimates that already

more than 9.3 per cent of all screens sold in

Europe in 2015 alone will be UHD capable and a

potential installed base of 6.2 million Ultra HD TV

sets will be acquired.

Nick Simon, GfK’s senior analyst for consumer

electronics, said the UK alone will see one million

‘UHD’ units sold this year “and it could be more”.

The UK will see 1.8 million units sold in 2016, and

three million during 2017. Across Europe the

sales picture is much the same, with the UK

leading the way in UHD sales (509,000 in the 12

calendar months to the end of August 2015).

Germany is just behind, with 481,000 units sold,

and France 426,000.

The consensus is that next year’s Rio Olympics

will again boost sales with a growing consumer

awareness of UHD. GfK forecasts that Ultra HD

screens in 2020 will represent more than 70 per

cent of total sales across Europe and almost 60

per cent in the Middle East and North Africa.

The annual volume of screens sold in these

markets is expected by then to have reached

37 million. Satellite operator SES is already

transmitting a handful of UHD channels (NASA TV,

Insight, Pearl.tv, Fashion 1, plus demo channels)

and COO Ferdinand Kayser says SES expects

around 220 UHD channels to be available over

Europe within the next ten years. n


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18 19 TVBE Nov Workflow_ RGBW-UHD_finalamended.indd 19 12/11/2015 10:15

The potential to offer high dynamic range

(HDR) is considered by many broadcasters

and OTT players as a key value proposition

in the move to upgrade viewers from HD. Both

Netflix and Amazon Prime are offering UHD

HDR remastered videos and shooting original

content in the format. For little to no additional

bandwidth, viewers can see a difference over

normal HD at any viewing distance. There can

be few if any manufacturers with a stake in Ultra

HD not also offering a means of getting HDR

through the chain. As Simon Fell, EBU director of

technology and innovation neatly put it: “HDR is

the new black”.

While the average TV today has a brightness

range of around 100 candela per square

metre (known as nits), HDR displays could offer

1,000 nits, 1,500 nits or more. That’s still far less

bright than some things you might see in real

life, but the increased luminosity will still mean

a far more realistic picture. The difference is

immediately apparent when looking at images

of water, or of clouds, for example.

The introduction of HDR also ramps up the colour.

HDTV is based on an 8-bit system, meaning there

are up to 256 shades of each colour available

(in theory – in practice around 220, for historical

technical reasons). But with HDR, a 10-bit system

allows an increase in the colour gamut to 1,024

shades of each colour. Combine increased

luminosity and richer colour with the greater

resolution 4K can provide and HDR could be as

important an experience as the introduction of

colour was 80 years ago.

“It’s hard to believe unless you experience it,”

claimed Dominic Glynn, Pixar’s senior scientist

who guided the HDR finish for Inside Out. “We

can show the audience colours they’ve never

seen before.”

But any mainstream TV industry shift towards

HDR will be delayed as technical standards are

agreed. “How you create that HDR data chain is

a question that needs a lot more attention,” said

Sean McCarthy, engineering fellow at Arris. “It’s

not as interesting as the pretty colours and stuff,

but it is important.”

“HDR is the area with the least agreement

across the board for a single standard,” notes

Rowan de Pomerai, senior technical manager,

Digital Production Partnership, which wants

to design a single UHD HDR specification for


HDR is the new black

High dynamic range is touted by some as the best thing since the introduction of colour, but will all HDR versions of it be equal? Adrian Pennington finds out

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‘HDR could be as important an experience as the introduction of

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Technicolor at IBC2015


Feature

programme delivery. SMPTE will publish a

Study Group report on the current state of the

HDR ecosystem for content mastering and

broadcast shortly. It has already published two

HDR standards related to content mastering: ST-

2084, for the Electrical Optical Transfer Function

(EOTF); and ST-2086, to define static metadata.

SMPTE is now working on a standard for dynamic

metadata needed to support SDR and HDR

content at the same time.

Dolby helped deliver SMPTE 2984 implemented

in its own Dolby Vision system – this SMPTE

standard has been adopted in the Blu Ray Disc

Association. Content owners including most of

the studios are starting to remaster older content

for HDR-compatible UHD Blu-Ray.

However broadcasters BBC and NHK have

expressed concerns that this standard is not

ideal for the workflow of live TV where a single

broadcast version needs to deliver acceptable

quality on both HDR and standard dynamic

range (SDR) displays, minimising additional

bandwidth. This is a different challenge to on-

demand content or packaged media, where

different versions can be created to optimise the

quality for both SDR and HDR, and selected for

playback appropriately. So, NHK and BBC have

created the Hybrid Log-Gamma HDR solution to

try and solve this issue. It intends to ensure that

an UHD HDR signal can be displayed not only

by HDR-enabled devices but in the vast majority

of household sets with the SDR range of HD. It is

one of a number of options being considered by

the ITU for standardisation, but even then it then

needs to be implemented into TV sets.

“We can show the audience colours they’ve never seen before”Dominic Glynn, Pixar

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7680/8192 4320 120 60 [8] 80 [8] 120 [16] 72 [8] 95.5 [16] 144 [16]

7680/8192 4320 60 30 [4] 40 [4] 60 [8] 36 [4] 48 [8] 72 [8]

7680/8192 4320 50 25 [4] 33 [4] 50 [8] 30 [4] 40 [8] 60 [8]

7680/8192 4320 30 15 [2] 20 [2] 30 [4] 18 [2] 24 [4] 36 [4]

7680/8192 4320 25 12.4 [2] 16.6 [2] 25 [4] 15 [2] 20 [4] 30 [4]

7680/8192 4320 24 12 [2] 16 [2] 24 [4] 14.4 [2] 19 [4] 29 [4]

3840/4096 2160 120 15 [2] 20 [2] 30 [4] 18 [2] 23 [4] 36 [4]

3840/4096 2160 60 7.5 [1] 10 [1] 15[2] 9 [1] 12 [2] 18 [2]

3840/4096 2160 50 6 [1] 8 [1] 12 [2] 7.5 [1] 10 [2] 15 [2]

3840/4096 2160 30 3.7 [1] 5 [1] 7.5 [1] 4.5 [1] 6 [1] 9 [1]

3840/4096 2160 25 3.1 [1] 4.2 [1] 6.2 [1] 3.7 [1] 5 [1] 7.5 [1]

3840/4096 2160 24 3 [1] 4 [1] 6 [1] 3.6 [1] 4.8 [1] 7.2 [1]

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22 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

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Which brings us around to the consumer

messaging: TVs are already being marketed as

supporting HDR, but which standards are they

supporting? How ‘high’ is the dynamic range,

with brightness levels of displays varying from 400

nits to over 1,000 nits and giving dramatically

different experiences for the viewer?

“Currently, the clearest

proposition is the BDA, with Ultra HD

Blu-Rays reportedly launching before

the end of the year,” says DTG chief

technology officer Simon Gauntlett.

“The HDMI specification was updated

to 2.0a, to deliver the metadata to the

displays to enable SMPTE 2084 presentation.

This suggests that if the display supports

HDMI 2.0a it should decode HDR content

correctly. However the message to

consumers is far from clear.”

Peter White, CEO and co-founder,

Rethink Technology Research, agrees: “HDR

is being seen by many TV manufacturers

as something that they will introduce after

4K. That’s the wrong approach, but the TV

manufacturers hold a lot of sway. In the US,

manufacturers are selling ‘4K’ devices that are

not UHD. The fight to differentiate among those

players is pushing ‘4K’ rather than UHD, in the

same way that they tried to push 3D when no-

one was ready for it.”

The UHD Alliance which includes members

of the consumer electronics community and

Netflix is also trying to specify UHD, which will

include HDR requirements. All eyes will be on

the CES show in las Vegas in January where

the next crucial stage of the UHD HDR

debate will be played out.

LDX Series camera

‘BT TV said at IBC that the company is looking to add HDR capabilities to its Ultra

HD 4K channel within two years’

Feature


Feature

Live HDR For live broadcasting the issue is more complex.

The main outside broadcasters including Visions,

Telegenic and Arena, are testing live HDR

(UHD and HD chains) for clients including BT

Sport. Delia Bushell, managing director at

BT TV said at IBC that the company is looking

to add HDR capabilities to its Ultra HD 4K

channel within two years.

How might live HDR broadcasting be handled?

Technicolor has a new server-based version of

its Intelligent Tone Management software that

scales standard dynamic range source material

(such as 4K 60p) for HDR use. The aim is to allow

sports or live event productions to continue to

use current cameras and infrastructure at a

venue with the upscaling occurring on the

final output mix.

Importantly, the upscaled signal is routed

through an Elemental encoder which spits

out a single stream which can be received

in HDR and SDR which for a broadcaster

reaching the mass of households with plain

old SDR screens is a must.

“You can’t justify the cost of running two

infrastructures so the distribution system needs

to be combined,” says Mark Turner VP, business

development and relationships. “The cheapest

way of implementing HDR live is for the mix to

happen as normal with the final mix upscaled.

OB engineers can adjust the settings in real time

or apply different HDR settings to different sports.”

Dolby offers an alternate route to HDR. It has

worked with Grass Valley to introduce a process

for individual camera feeds. Grass Valley has

an XDR software-upgrade option for all LDX 86

Series cameras working in single-speed formats

(HD/3G/4K). This is claimed to deliver 15 F-stops of

sensitivity to the home with a suitably equipped

HDR set. At IBC the feed was encoded along

with the HDR information by a Muse Live encoder

from Envivio (now an Ericsson company). A

licence upgrade from Grass Valley is required

to unlock it on all LDX series, plus you need a

monitor to view it on – and Dolby has those.

Sony pledged its commitment to incorporate

HDR capabilities into more of its production

equipment. It has trialled 4K HDR capture with

Dorna Sports using HDC-4300s at the 2015 British

Grand Prix MotoGP.

Michael Harrit, marketing director, Sony

Europe, said, “We have built HDR into leading

production tools to create an HDR end to end

production workflow from acquisition to delivery

to the living room.”

RED Digital Cinema also has a live HDR output

solution allowing users to simultaneously monitor

both the standard dynamic range and HDR

images of the same shot on-set, in real-time. That

will allow users to see more of what the sensors

on their cameras are capturing – from the deep

shadows to bright highlights. Like Dolby, the RED

solution meets the SMPTE 2084 standard.

Creatively, what can HDR do?There are also some obvious ways in which

HDR could enhance specific types of

programming like sports: it means you can

actually see a flying golf ball against the sky;

or watch a football match in a stadium half

in and half out of bright sunlight without

experiencing that clunky moment when the

camera has to jump through five or six stops as

the play moves in or out of light or shade.

Pixar’s Rick Sayre says that on Tomorrowland,

on which he was digital imaging consultant,

the HDR “revealed a gleam in the eyes of

the actors which it has not been possible to

show before.”

“The eye tends to be drawn to the highlights

which can pull a viewer out of the story,” says

cinematographer Steven Poster. “We may see

some gimmicky HDR that has nothing to do

with storytelling. Just because we can now see

through a brightly lit window exterior doesn’t

mean that we should.”

“As time goes on, filmmakers will take

advantage of the expanded colour space

offered by the use of laser light source

technology to bring colours and contrast

never seen before on a cinema screen,” says

Stuart Bowling, director, content and creative

relations at Dolby.

“Animation is an amazing way to apply

wider colour gamut to audiences,” he adds,

highlighting a scene in Inside Out which

exploited Dolby Vision’s wider colour gamut

capabilities. This is when Joy and Sadness enter

the Subconscious and the production design

called for the look of a black-light room: glowing,

colourful, and highly saturated.

“The cheapest way of implementing HDR live is for the mix to happen as normal with

the final mix upscaled” Mark Turner, Technicolor

Mark Turner, Technicolor

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Feature

With Ultra HD channels going live, buying UHD and 4K capable equipment is no longer a matter of mere future-proofing. Fortunately, there is now a wide choice of cameras available, and it can even make financial sense to buy one if you only use it for HD, writes David Fox

T he camera that attracted most attention

at IBC was Sony’s compact new Super

35 handheld UHD camcorder, the

PWX-FS5, a smaller, and less feature-full, brother

to its best selling FS7.

Its body weighs just 0.8kg, light enough to

consider for drone use, and it is well designed,

with a very comfortable rotating hand grip,

six custom buttons (three on the grip), and a

really nice electronic variable ND filter (which

retracts out of the way completely when not in

use, to make the most of the sensor’s low light

performance, ISO 3200 to 32,000). Its 3.5-inch LCD

screen can be positioned on

nine different mounting points on the body.

Its main drawback is that

it only goes up to 30p in

UHD, however it can do

eight second bursts at up

to 240fps in HD. It records

internally (to SD cards) using

XAVC Long-GoP 4:2:0, but can

output 10-bit 4:2:2 to an external

recorder. It can record S-Log2 and

S-Log3, with up to 14 stops dynamic range. It

should cost €5,800 (body only) or €6,300 (with 18-

105mm E-mount lens) inc VAT in November.

Blackmagic Design’s Ursa Mini also attracted

crowds, as the €3,395-€6,225 (£2,025-£3,699)

camcorder has only recently started shipping. For

broadcast users, the more expensive PL-mount

Minis are the ones to get, as they can be fitted

with a $295 B4 mount (shipping November) to

take ENG lenses, complete with power and

control from the camera. The mount includes

optics, to give full sensor coverage, but “we

don’t lose any light or have vignetting,” claims

Capturing the imagination in UHD

‘With Japan’s NHK committed to test transmissions of 8K next year, and full

coverage by the 2020 Olympics, anyone that wants to sell it cameras must be able

to offer 8K’

ENG ready: Caniglia shows

off Blackmagic’s Ursa Mini

with B4 Mount

Bob Caniglia, a senior regional manager. Thanks

to upgrades since it was shown at NAB, the

camera can also now do both SDI in AND out

as well as timecode and intercom, and can be

controlled from Blackmagic’s Atem switcher

like a studio camera. The 4.6K Mini offers 15

stops of dynamic range (compared to the 4K

version’s 12), and also affords room for cropping/

stabilisation for 4K or UHD production. There is also

EF mount versions of both.

Little or no aliasingCanon’s recently released XC10 is one of the

least expensive UHD camcorders (under £1,600

inc VAT), but may not be the ideal form factor

for many as it tries to be a camcorder in a DSLR

body. However, it does show how the extra

resolution of UHD can make for an excellent HD

camera, as an independent test against the

EBU’s standards for HD content acquisition found

that the 1-inch CMOS sensor and DIGIC DV5

image processor provides “little or no aliasing”

and meets Tier 1 for HD production, making it

suitable for use on even high-end productions.


UHD on tap: Grass Valley’s LDX 86 Universe offers UHD and 6x HD slo-mo Red’s new forged carbon fibre 8K Weapon with Zeiss lens


Feature

JVC’s GY-LS300 handheld Super 35 4K camcorder

has received a version 2.0 update, and now

includes: a film-look JVC Log mode; Cinema

4K/2K recording (4096x2160 and 2048x1080);

Prime Zoom allowing zooming using prime

lenses without losing resolution, offering 2.3x

maximum zoom for HD or 1.25x zoom for 4K;

and a histogram. It can also now

trigger recordings via HDMI/SDI, has JVC LUT

support for the Atomos Shogun recorder, and

HD output via HDMI/SDI when doing 4K

recording, for HD monitoring.

V2.0 also adds colour matrix adjustment, spot

meter for exposure, and a black paint setting to

precisely adjust the colour temperature of master

black. A new 70Mbps recording mode allows 4K

recording on economical Class 10 SDHC/SDXC

cards. The GY-LS300 includes HD streaming with

WiFi and 3G/4G for live HD transmission.

The 2/3-inch conundrumSport is where Ultra HD is taking off, and outside

broadcasts require greater depth of field to keep

everything in focus, which is why all the

major manufacturers have been intent on

releasing models with 2/3-inch sensors that

take B4-mount lenses.

Hitachi was first last year with its SK-UHD4000

four-chip camera (two green sensors), and

has now been followed by more traditional

three-sensor cameras from Grass Valley (LDX 86

range), Sony (HDC-4300) and Ikegami (Unicam

UHD). Panasonic has taken a single-sensor

approach (B4 mount with convertor and slight

light loss) for its AK-UB300 and AK-UC3000 box

and studio cameras.

The HDC-4300 will also address one of the

biggest sports requirements, live slo-mo replay,

via a software update, to offer 2x (100 or 120fps

shooting: it will also do up to 8x super-slow-mo

in HD). The camera can also be used for high

dynamic range shooting (it will get S-Log3 output

in the update), something that the LDX 86 will

also be able to offer via its new XF fibre

transmission base station.

This will not only provide 15-stops of dynamic

range but also one-wire UHD transmission (instead

of 4x 3G-SDI), using Tico compression, “which

is getting a lot of momentum because it is low

latency and can be virtually lossless at 4:1,” said

‘The FS5 is well designed, with a very comfortable rotating hand grip, six custom buttons and a really nice electronic variable

ND filter’

Sony’s new FS5 is light enough for use on a drone

www.tvbeurope.com November 2015

Feature28 TVBEurope

Mike Cronk, Grass Valley’s senior vice president of

strategic marketing.

Small and mightyAnother problem that broadcasters need solving

for UHD is miniature cameras capable of 50/60p.

Here Bradley Engineering has been

working with AltaSens (JVC Kenwood’s sensor

manufacturer), and is using its Super 35 4K sensor

in the new fibre-based Bradley 4K PTZ (3840x2160

50p) remote camera, which was demonstrated

in a small spider-cam type rig at IBC but can also

be housed in Bradley’s usual remote heads.

The tiny IO Industries 4K SDI camera offers

50/60p in both UHD and 4K in a tiny package,

and received several updates at IBC. It now

supports Camera Corps and TV Skyline remote

control panels, with full control of focus and iris

for Canon EF lenses, as well as all the standard

camera functions. The camera has a Super 35,

global shutter CMOS sensor, outputting 4:2:2, 4:4:4

or Raw. Panasonic’s new AW-UE70 is claimed

to be the industry’s first integrated UHD pan/

tilt/zoom camera, but it only delivers 3840x2160

25p (via HDMI), although this might be OK for a

commentary camera. It can stream UHD IP and

record to microSD. It also delivers various HD

formats including 1080 at 50p, 50i and 25p.

To a greater XtendFor high-end production, the new Alexa SXT

(Super Xtended Technology) adds electronics

from Arri’s Alexa 65 camera to the existing Alexa

XT sensor for in-camera recording of ProRes 4K

UHD (3840x2160) and ProRes 4K Cine (4096x2637).

It can do live colour grading, so no need for a

separate LUT box, and can output to an on-set

monitor as well as doing the final grading and

dailies creation, “so the people in post will know

what the intended look was,” said Stephan

Schenk, Arri’s managing director. It also has

SXR (Super Xtended Recording) with new 1TB

or 2TB capture drives. “That gives you massive

capabilities to shoot without stop,” up to seven

hours in ProRes. SXT ships later this year, and “we

have already a lot of orders”, anyone taking

delivery of an XT now gets a free upgrade to SXT.

Its Amira documentary camera will get a free

new software update (3.0) enabling ProRes 4444

XQ recording, plus MPEG-2 HD 4:2:2 to match the

XDCAM workflow. It will also connect

via Ethernet to a Sony box to be controlled

by a standard Sony RCP-1500 for multicam

capability. A new Amira Slot developed with

Ambient for wireless audio has a two-minute

battery to allow hot swapping the camera

battery without interrupting the signal. There will

be a paid update for the Alexa Mini

made available later this year, adding Arriraw

and 4:3 capability.

Rolling in the deepCanon’s new EOS C300 Mark II shoots 4K and

UHD, and offers wider dynamic range (up to

15 stops). It uses a new Canon-designed Super

35mm CMOS sensor that has twice the readout

speed (reducing rolling shutter effects), and a

JVC’s upgraded GY-LS300 4KCAM

The Videosys 2cm HD cam

more advanced imaging engine

with dual DIGIC DV5 processors. The

extra dynamic range is courtesy

of a new Canon Log2 codec

that retains more

highlight and shadow

information. It also has

the Wide DR setting

from the C100 MkII,

which requires less

work in post.

Other new features include:

improved auto focus; extended ND

filters; an increased ISO range of

up to 102,400 for low light use; and

dual CFast 2.0 card slots. It has new

XF-AVC recording codecs based

on H.264 compression and MXF

wrapping, with 10-bit 4:2:2 XF-AVC

intra for 4K/UHD at 410, 225, 220,

or 110Mbps, while HD and 2K can

be recorded in 10-bit 4:4:4 at

210Mbps, or 12-bit at 225Mbps. It

won’t shoot at more than 30p in

4K/UHD, although it can go up to

100/120p in 2K/HD.

Beyond UHDWith Japan’s NHK committed to test

transmissions of 8K next year, and

full coverage by the 2020 Olympics,

anyone that wants to sell it cameras

must be able to offer 8K, so camera

manufacturers are ramping up

their development efforts. Canon

announced at IBC that it will commit

to 8K, it just wouldn’t commit to any

timescale for this.

Ikegami is already on its fourth

generation 8K/Super Hi-Vision

camera. The new SHL-810 is one

tenth the size and weight (less than

9kg) of its first model from 2002.

It uses a

single 33-megapixel Super 35 CMOS

sensor, achieving 4,000TVL horizontal

and vertical resolution, and provides

8K, 4K and 2K output, all in native

quality. It can be used in a fully 8K

production environment or alongside

UHD and/or HD cameras.

It can use regular PL-mount lenses,

while a System Expander enables

the use of large viewfinders and

full studio lenses, converting the

portable camera into a full facility

studio/OB camera. Output from

camera head to the control unit is

40Gbps via standard SMPTE hybrid

fibre, allowing long-distance links

for live broadcasting. The SHK-810

employs a dual-green colour filter to

deliver SHV’s wider dynamic range.

Red alertRed was showing its first 8K Weapon,

with its new lighter, stronger forged

carbon fibre body, fitted with a 70-

200mm Zeiss Compact Zoom, as

this gives the most complete

coverage of the Weapon’s 8K

sensor. It uses the small new Weapon

body (also available in magnesium

and woven carbon fibre), but with a

larger new sensor, and should ship

by the end of the year.

Unlike the Dragon, which had its

fan inlet at the front (which

could cause noise on set),

the Weapon has its fan

inlet at the back, using the

front to house two on-board

microphones, so users always have

a reference audio track. Red was

also showing live monitoring of

high dynamic range. Its HDR-

2084 option uses the quad

outputs of the Redcast module

(developed for live broadcast use)

to offer four different LUTs at

once, and supports HDR monitors,

such as Dolby.

TVBEurope 29

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Neat touches on Sony’s FS5 include rotating hand grip and numerous mounting points

The Sony FS5

C anon’s global showcase takes place

once every five years, with 15,000 square

metres devoted to new and improved

products demonstrating the breadth of consumer

and business industries the company covers, and

the vision of its R&D teams.

At Expo 2015, Canon stressed how rapidly the

world of imaging is expanding in our age of the

Internet of Things (IoT), in which we are seeing an

increasing number of objects being connected

through smart devices. These rely on built-in

cameras or sensors and the data they generate,

and although the company “cannot predict how

this will play out”, according to chairman and

CEO Fujio Mitarai, “The possibilities are big, they

are real, and they are ours for the taking.”

Canon does predict that IoT will largely

depend on developing the “imaging of things”

and to deliver its new developments in the

world of imaging, Canon is building a network

of companies with regional headquarters

managing local R&D and manufacturing. It

is hoped this will deliver its ambitious goal, of

a future in which “every image should have

a connection with Canon,” according to

Rokus van Iperen, president and CEO,

Canon EMEA.

“Whether it is taking the image, recording,

storing, editing or printing it, we want to play a

part and are building businesses to do this.”

The Grande Halle de la Villette which hosted

the Expo was divided into ‘zones’ covering

life, professional, work and society, though

perhaps most impressive was its World Imaging

Gallery. Before seeing the technology capable

of producing 8K content, Expo visitors were

treated to the end result: a huge screen

showing footage captured with 8K cameras,

offering a roller-coaster point-of-view ‘ride’

through different scenery. The incredible detail

created a rather impressive and unexpectedly

immersive experience.

Visitors were also able to try out Canon’s first 8K

camera, its Cinema EOS System, which captures

8192x4320 resolution video at up to 60fps. The low

aberration 8K lens gave clarity and sharpness to

the image, while a high dynamic range and wide

colour gamut created an intense vibrancy which

even a non-filmmaker like myself was impressed

by. Still images taken from RAW videos are 35

megapixel, and the camera system can be

battery powered, with the 4K 10.1-inch

LCD monitor connected by a single cable.

Incorporating Canon image-processing

technology, the UHD 8K reference display

supports the production of 8K video content,

with a pixel density exceeding 300 pixels

per inch – a level approaching the limit of

human visibility, according to the company –

achieving high brightness, high contrast, and

a wide colour gamut.

From vibrant brights to a dark room at the

Expo, where Canon was demoing another new

development, an ultra-high sensitivity 35mm

full-frame CMOS sensor. The Canon ME20F-SH

camera boasts a maximum ISO in excess of

four million, and despite the near darkness in

the demo space, the video captured showed

objects indiscernible to the naked eye. The

technology can shoot videos in condition of

only 0.03 lux – which Canon said was comparable

to the amount of light provided by a crescent

moon – and, in the broadcast space, the

company sees it being used primarily for

wildlife documentary filmmaking.

Also on show was Canon’s ultra-high resolution

250 megapixel CMOS sensor, which allows for

the detailed capture of images from a great

distance. According to Canon, it boasts the

world’s largest number of pixels in its lens size,

and five times more than the amount currently

available in the company’s EOS 5DS. Its use for

security and surveillance was highlighted at

the Expo, which was a somewhat unnerving

prospect, as the sensor technology allows the

user to clearly see letters on a building 15km

away. According to the IHS Security Systems


A resin-based 3D printer, a camera that can “see in the dark”, an immersive 8K theatre, and Super Machine Vision were just some of the innovations on show at the Canon EXPO in Paris in October. Holly Ashford reports

“We have mastered imaging technology. Our lenses and sensor

together with our processor are the best in the world” Fujio Mitarai

Canon’s ecosystem of innovation

Canon’s ME20F-SH boasts a maximum ISO in excess of four million


Feature

Integrations Report 2015, the video surveillance

market is estimated to be close to €18 billion

by 2018, so its no wonder Canon is ploughing

money and resources into its network video

solutions (NVS) business.

“We have mastered imaging technology. Our

lenses and sensor together with our processor

are the best in the world,” stated Mitarai, boldly,

in his keynote speech. And the technology at

the Expo was a clear attempt to demonstrate

this, using advances we’ve seen in broadcast

markets and using these to branch into

new target markets, including NVS. “It is this

technology that keeps Canon ahead of the

competition,” Mitarai concluded.

In addition to technological networks and

development at the Expo, there was also an

emphasis on developing human networks.

Canon is working to build a network of Canon

companies, an “ecosystem of innovation” which

Mitarai described as “a dream that is very special

to me”. Much of the futuristic 8K kit at the Expo

is yet to hit the market, but it did demonstrate

what the next generation of video technology

may look like. And as for the future of the Canon

business? Mitarai said the company “will seek

further M&A” in Europe, and by 2020 “you will see

the Canon you know and trust, plus a brand new

Canon built around partnerships with some of the

world’s best known companies, and some you

may not even know yet.”

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Canon’s global showcase devotes 15,000 square metres to new and improved products

Canon’s POV ‘ride experience’ immersed viewers in 8K footage

Canon’s 8K Cinema EOS System captures 8192x4320 resolution video at up to 60fps

AAdrian Scott had a fairly unusual

education, so he relays, having

started out at a small preparatory

school in Scotland, followed by

Rugby School for which he says “a prior reading

of Tom Brown’s Schooldays was a perfectly

adequate preparation”. His summers were spent

in France, and then came the University of North

Carolina thanks to a “very generous American

scholarship programme. I did a degree in

journalism, which involved working in both radio

and television…my start in the industry.”

Scott’s return to the UK coincided with the

start of independent local radio. “I managed to

get myself a job in the newsroom at Radio Clyde

in Glasgow, not easy when your hometown is

Edinburgh. After a couple of years, I moved to

London to work as a presenter and producer at

Independent Radio News and LBC, from where I

went to TV-am as one of the launch team.”

It was there he first came into contact with

broadcast technology. TV-am was pioneering

in several respects, he says, being one of the

first all-ENG news operations (three quarter-

inch BVU) and also one of the first to dispense

completely with script and prompter typists in the

newsroom in favour of the very first generation

BASYS Newsroom Computer System. “For reasons

I still cannot explain, in addition to being news

editor and head of forward planning, I became

the in-house newsroom system super-user, and

was largely responsible for figuring out how to do

three hours of live television starting at six in the

morning every day on a system which nobody

knew how to use, and which had no how-to

manual. Fun!”

For a time, TV-am was one of the four or five

newsrooms worldwide using a newsroom system,

“of which by far the largest was CNN,” he states.

“Another was the Channel 4 newsroom at ITN;

and when the BASYS company went to the wall,

ITN stepped in and bought it, largely to protect its

own investment in the product. I was then invited

to lunch at ITN and offered the job of European

operations manager with the aim of trying to

persuade other broadcasters to invest. This

was in 1985.”

So began the first of many evangelism roles

Scott would take up in the industry. “At the time,

no one in Europe had heard about what we

now know as NRCS, or even about PCs, which

didn’t really exist in those days anyway. I started

travelling the continent with about a quarter

of a ton of rather unwieldy demo equipment,

trying to persuade a generation of journalists

that learning how to type and then using an

unwieldy green screen terminal would make

their lives a lot easier.”

Amongst all the other firsts, the system

Scott was selling was one of the very earliest

commercially available UNIX-based systems.

“Perhaps one of my most far-reaching career

achievements was to go to Helsinki with my

demo kit, to show it to YLE and MTV, whose

editor-in-chief, Jan Torvalds, asked if I minded

if his teenaged son came to have a look at

the demo. This was, of course, the young Linus

Torvalds, so I suppose you can call me the

Godfather of LINUX!”

Over the next few years, the customer base

increased from a handful to over a hundred,

and included the BBC, NBC, ARD, NOS, NRK, SVT,

and many more. In addition to travelling around

Europe, Scott toured the national broadcasters

in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and

South Africa. All of this, he states, was a major

reason why BASYS was awarded the Queen’s

Award for Export Achievement in 1989.

The next phase came when ITN got into a

financial crisis when the cost of building Gray’s

Inn Road formed “a perfect storm with the cost

of covering the first Gulf War,” he explains. “They

decided to sell BASYS. The buyer was DEC, the

Digital Equipment Corporation, who having seen

us as a means of entry into the broadcast sector,

then realised they hadn’t the faintest idea how

to achieve it. The rumour went round that they

were planning to close us down altogether.

“Having already encountered Avid Technology

at various trade shows, I started a rear-guard

action along with some Avid colleagues to

persuade Avid’s board and shareholders that

they should buy BASYS from DEC. With less than a

week to go before our planned closure, Avid and

DEC both agreed, and the deal was done for an

extraordinarily modest sum of money (none of

which came to me, alas).”

At the time, Scott explains, Avid was almost

entirely a post production-oriented company,

“with practically no exposure in the broadcast

industry. We soon changed that, and my

second major evangelism role was to persuade

newsrooms and news organisations to embrace

non-linear editing and playout, which soon came

to include the first working video server.”

The onset of non-linear video editing and

playout brought with it a new generation of

issues that the industry had yet to locate on its

radar. “A small group of us at Avid began to think


GREAT SCOTTCelebrating a lifetime of achievement

The second annual TVBAwards saw another much loved industry figure inducted into TVBEurope’s lifetime achievement hall of fame. This year, the spotlight shone brightly on the career of Adrian Scott, the hugely admired and widely respected industry veteran, who played no small part in opening the eyes of the broadcasting world to newsroom systems, and non-linear editing. Scott discussed his professional life with James McKeown

about these [issues], and I ended up drafting

our thoughts into a paper for internal discussion.

This ended up being the basis for a successful

Avid US patent application describing a ‘Digital

Multimedia Editing and Data Management

System’ which allowed users to create,

browse, and catalogue multimedia assets.

This was awarded in 1998, and was, I’m almost

certain, one of the first mentions of the words

‘digital’, ‘assets’ and ‘management’ in the

same sentence.”

Scott departed Avid in 2002 to start his own

one-man consultancy business, Bakewell House,

which he runs to this day. Two other roles of

prominence that add some sizeable context to

Scott’s legacy were those with IBC’s conference

committee, and the Global Society for Asset

Management (G-SAM). Indeed, following his

exit from Avid, Scott’s influence in the industry

began to flower. “I had represented Avid on

both the IABM management committee and

the IBC exhibitors committee, and I continued

in those roles but also started to sit on IBC’s

conference committee and to take on a business

development role with the IABM.”

This latter role included helping to move the IABM

towards appointing a full-time CEO, a job for

which Scott was shortlisted “but lost out (quite

rightly) to the wonderful Roger Crumpton.”

For almost ten years, Scott produced and chaired

conference sessions at IBC, and was responsible

for establishing, producing, and chairing the early

years of the IABM Annual Conference. “Both of

these conferences were among the first to start

seriously discussing such topics as how industry

manufacturers can best survive

the downturn; the skills shortage, especially

of trained engineers; standards-driven systems

integration; multiscreen/360° delivery; and

(inevitably) the importance of metadata and

media asset management.”

It was in connection with the latter that, in

the mid-noughties, Scott became a founder

and European Chair of G-SAM. “The society

was conceived by a small group of us as a

discussion forum and fledgling trade association

within which all sides of the industry, standards

bodies, broadcasters, and manufacturers,

could exchange views and experiences in aid

of developing common ideas and particularly

standards applying to MAM and DAM.”

In 2009, Scott suffered a serious stroke,

“which has left me with some lingering mobility

issues. Thankfully, I have no mental or cognitive

problems, and can still think and talk (to the

great regret of those of my friends who think I talk

too much).” He claims to be “idly considering”

retirement, having reached the milestone age

famously committed to folklore by The Beatles on

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However,

his work is not done yet.

Technologist, journalist, evangelist: however

Adrian Scott’s legacy is defined, he will always

be considered a giant of the industry, and most

importantly to his colleagues, peers, and friends,

one of its truest gentlemen.


Feature

‘Technologist, journalist, evangelist: however Adrian Scott’s legacy is defined, he

will always be considered a giant of the industry’

Following the Women in

Broadcast Roundtable

hosted by TVBEurope in May,

the discussion continued

last month with the Women in

Television – Onscreen, Off Screen

and Leadership conference at

The Royal Society of Chemistry in

Burlington House. The roundtable

in May examined the current

landscape for women in the

industry, and the opportunities

for better representation across

the board. Taking a look at how

the discussion has developed six

months on, the Women in Television

conference aimed to highlight the

challenges facing women across

various disciplines of today’s

media and entertainment industry,

and how the industry as a whole

can work towards resolving the

gender imbalance.

Adding personal insight from her

experience as a female working in

parliament and in the media, Oona

King, the Baroness King of Bow and

diversity executive at Channel 4

chaired the discussion that included

the panel sessions ‘Talent and

ensuring diversity of representation’,

‘Women in leadership and

management’, ‘International

perspective’ and ‘Women off-

screen, behind the camera and

calling the shots’.

With the BBC’s decision to

make the inclusion of mandatory

female guests in panel shows, a

main theme of the opening panel,

‘Talent and ensuring diversity of

representation’, highlighted the

difficulties of quotas and whether

they work as a positive step for

women in the media industry.

Claire Dresser, chief administrator

at BBC television, Minnie Crowe,

COO of TriForce Creative Network,

and Jean Rogers, equity councillor

and member of Equity Women’s

Committee began the discussion

by asking what steps can be taken

to ensure the diversity of women

on screen. Six years on from the

victory of Miriam O’Reilly against

the BBC for age discrimination,

have lessons been learned and

actions taken to ensure diversity

of women across the industry?

Speaking of TriForce Creative

Network, a company that aims to

identify issues in the entertainment

industry regarding diversity, access

and ‘knowing the right people’,

Crowe kicked off the discussion

by stating that she believes the

industry is not deliberately sexist,


Women in Television On-screen, off-screen and leadership

By Jessica Hawkes, account manager, Bubble and Squeak

The panel at the Women in Television conference at Burlington House

TVBEurope 35

Feature

but that women are just not noticed

if they’re not present. However,

highlighting that diversity quotas

can be divisive, Crowe believes

tackling the issue should focus on

‘inclusivity not exclusivity’ as these

quotas can start to set up minorities

against each other. “Quotas are

a good start, but they are not the

answer.” Crowe stated that positive

discrimination should not be the

only reason women succeed, rather

it should be through merit alone.

Despite this, Norway’s gender quota

was considered, whereby it is the

law since 2008 that all company

corporate board memberships

require a minimum 40 per cent

female membership. Noting that

‘portrayal is power’, Jean Rogers

argued that these forms of diversity

measures can play a vital part in

the positive exposure women need.

Rogers claimed that it’s difficult to

break through to being judged on

merit if never given the opportunity,

and the positive discrimination

allows a level of exposure for women

to be noticed and appreciated.

Focusing on the heart of the issue,

Rogers continued that images of

women in the media are directly

correlative with the glass ceiling for

female industry success, pointing

to young presenters seen as ‘eye

candy’ as they’re paired almost

invariably with older men on screen.

In fact, 80 per cent of newsreaders

over 50 are male. Underlining the

vital role that men have to play in

positive exposure, Rogers claimed

that “seeing is believing and women

need to be seen”.

Talking on how to overcome

the gender imbalance alongside

introduction of quotas, Claire

Dresser was keen to highlight the

positives of how far the industry has

come, utilising examples of support

provided from the BBC. Within the

organisation, 48.8 per cent of staff

employed are women and a third

of these are senior management.

Additionally, 164 women from BBC

have received training through the

Experts Women Programme. Despite

this, she called out for continued

support for the issues women

face, suggesting part-time during

parenting and job shares.

This discussion led well into

the following panel, ‘Women in

leadership and management’ that

looked, amongst other discussion,

at whether the unsociable hours

required within the industry mean

that women have to make a

decision between motherhood

and a career. How can the industry

increase female representation at

the upper levels of management

and how can they avoid tokenism

and discrimination? The panel

featured Heather Jones, senior vice

president, content and creative

at A+E Networks, Emma Tennant,

controller at UKTV, Kate Kinninmont,

chief executive of Women in Film

and TV and Jane Roscoe, the

director of the London Film School.

Heather Jones heavily supported

career and motherhood, claiming

she owes much of her own success

to being a mother. “I am living

proof you can be a successful

woman and a mother.” The

dynamics of motherhood contribute

additional skills vital to leadership

and management positions, noted

Jones, listing prioritisation, confidence

and self-esteem.

“We need to promote an

environment where women can

take themselves seriously as leaders,”

said Jane Roscoe, furthering Jones’

idea that a great deal of the gender

imbalance lies in a lack confidence.

“We need to encourage women to

imagine themselves in leadership to

create a psychological shift”.

The full version of this report can be

found on the TVBEurope website.

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“Quotas are a good start, but they are not the answer” Minnie Crowe, TriForce Creative Network

Encoding solutions abound.

And with the diversity of

delivery mechanisms open

to broadcasters, the demands are

becoming greater. So what are the

issues facing makers of transcoding

systems? We asked a number of

players to provide their views on

various aspects of the transcoding

business.

Those offering thoughts

are (in alphabetical order)

Thomas Burnichon, file ingest

and transcoding product

marketing manager at ATEME;

Matthieu Fasani, a product

manager for Dalet Brio and Dalet

AmberFin; John Nemeth, VP

sales, EMEA, Elemental; Marc

Risby, director of technology at

Boxer Systems; Mark Senecal,

manager, product management,

compression products, Imagine

Communications; Steve

Sklepowich, VP marketing, Vantrix;

and Paul Turner, Telestream’s VP,

enterprise product management.

The challenges facing today’s makers of transcoding equipment and services“Being a broadcast executive

of a certain vintage, I can think

back fondly on past times when

tape format choices were

simple, although we might not

have realised it – composite or

component analogue and Digital

Betacam as a high-end option,”

reflects Paul Turner, Telestream’s

vice president, enterprise product

management. “Today, the

format landscape has changed

drastically and is characterised by

a dynamism that is increasing

month on month. Our customers

are faced with myriad different

formats: 4K/UHD/J2k/X-AVC/AVC-

ultra/HDR are all options that need

to be covered.”

Turner says that as a transcoding

system vendor, the company

needs to make commercial

decisions. Which formats have

‘legs’ and which represent a

bad investment decision for both

parties. “Take 3D, for example, at

Telestream, we’re mighty relieved

that we didn’t bet the mortgage

on that one.”

The days of simple transcoding

are gone. It’s not just a question

of transcoding files, but also how

the process dovetails within a

production workflow. Intelligent

workflow management is a key

issue for any transcoding platform

since it is here that significant

savings in time, manpower and

cost are made.

He continues, “The platform

must add value over and above

the simple file conversion model:

metadata management, workflow

management, graphics overlay,

audio channel mapping are all

important pieces of the puzzle.

In developing our Vantage

media processing platform,

these considerations are equally

important to the variety and

CodewordsPhilip Stevens moderates this month’s forum, dealing with the increasingly innovative world of transcoding


Forum


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efficiency of file transcoding

functionality. Capabilities such as

caption/subtitle insertion, loudness

correction, QC integration, reverse

telecine, de-interlacing and frame

rate conversion are features that

customers need and expect within

their transcoding system.”

Turner goes on, “Also, we need

to make sure that our transcoding

platform is available anytime,

anywhere: an intuitive platform

that is on-premise and in the cloud.

Vantage Cloud Subscriptions is a

service that provides a broad

range of enterprise-class

transcoding and file-based

workflow automation for Amazon

Web Services (AWS), available

through the AWS Marketplace. It is

a natural extension of on-premise

Vantage transcoding and

provides discretionary capacity

for managing demand peaks,

prototyping new concepts,

and deploying cloud-based

media services.”

The impact of ‘the cloud’ on transcoding practicesWith nearly infinite combinations

of consumer preferences, devices,

formats and protocols and a

flurry of new OTT and live-to-linear

VoD services, operators require

limitless flexibility and scalability

to keep pace. And, increasingly,

enterprises are turning to software-

defined video (SDV) solutions where

hardware-based approaches

cannot keep pace.

“SDV platforms, such as those

offered by Elemental, enable

video providers enormous

flexibility and scalability, as well

as capabilities critical to new

revenue-generating services,” states

John Nemeth, VP sales, EMEA, for

Elemental.

“Chief among these is the ability

to deploy software across an

optimal combination of dedicated

and virtualised resources in both

private and public datacentres.

So, where should transcoding be

located, on-premise, the cloud or as

a hybrid approach?

Nemeth answers, “Each operator

situation is different. Low-volume

broadcast companies may

want to move all transcoding

functionality to the cloud so

they can scale resources up and

down as requirements fluctuate.

For companies that consistently

process vast amounts of video,

the economics of a cloud-only

solution are still challenging. For

those companies, a hybrid workflow

makes the most economic sense.”

A hybrid workflow is achieved by

maintaining just enough on-premise

infrastructure to fulfill day-to-day

requirements, while leveraging

cloud services for the elasticity

to handle variable demand. This

ground-to-cloud approach has

the potential to save organisations

significant capital expenditures

by instantly scaling up video

processing capacity to

accommodate high-traffic

events, and scaling back down

again as throughput wanes.

Having the flexibility to leverage

both on-premise and cloud

systems allows companies to

economically balance video

processing resources.

“The ability of Elemental Cloud to

seamlessly support hybrid ground-

to-cloud video processing and

both live and VoD workflows is vital.

In addition to lowering barriers to

entry and reducing up-front capital

investments, with the Elemental

Cloud Platform as a Service - PaaS,

broadcasters can ebb and flow

their video processing.”

As one of the leading integrated

consumer media groups in

Malaysia and Southeast Asia, Astro

focuses on providing a variety of

pay-TV, radio and digital media

content. Astro, with a customer

base of 4.2 million, offers more

than 180 broadcast TV channels,

including 48 HD channels, delivered

via direct-to-home satellite TV, IPTV

and OTT platforms.

“In 2012, the company

introduced its OTT service, Astro on

the Go, which currently provides

VoD content and live linear

programming,” says Nemeth. “In

an effort to continuously expand

its service to include relevant and

popular content, Astro partnered

with Elemental to build a reliable

workflow for multiscreen services.”

“In order to keep up with industry

trends and consumer demands,

without depleting funds, Astro

decided to take a software-

based approach and incorporate

the cloud into its video delivery

workflow. The Astro on the Go

workflow now consists of more than

6,000 hours of VoD content and

34 live linear channels. Elemental

Cloud securely manages Astro’s

high-volume video content with

scale and elasticity, allowing

customers to watch both live and

VoD content instantly.”

How just-in-time transcoding can reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)According to a report from Frost

and Sullivan, operators should

build live-to-VoD media processing

capabilities at the network edge

to cope with the explosive growth

in time-shifted and place-shifted

consumption of live, linear content.

“To date, the most popular

approach for multiscreen content

transcoding has been just-in-time-

packaging (JITP), driven by relatively

low-cost storage, manageable

content volumes, and expensive

live transcoders,” states Steve

Sklepowich, VP marketing, Vantrix.

“However, soaring content volumes

and growing profile complexities

on the one hand and increasing

transcoder densities and falling

transcoding costs on the other, are

shifting economics in favour of just-

in-time-transcoding (JITT).”

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“To support the growing assortment of protocols, formats and resolutions, media companies must make frequent upgrades to

transcoding equipment” Mark Senecal, Imagine Communications

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JITT is actually ‘JITT-P’, where

packaging immediately follows

transcoding. This is particularly true

of network DVR deployments where

operators are required to maintain

one copy of recorded content

per user. The report ‘The business

case for shifting live-to-VoD video

transcoding to the edge with just

in time transcoding’, details the

CAPEX and OPEX economics of JITT,

as compared to JITP, deployment.

Financial models show that when

considering a steady audience

with consistent consumption of

time-shifted linear content, the five-

year total cost of ownership of JITP

infrastructure is nearly twice that of

JITT. That’s because the CAPEX for

JITT transcoders and the reduced

storage that they enable is 30 per

cent lower than JITP. Similarly, the

models estimate a 40 per cent

annual OPEX savings because

volume consumption in this use

is predictable, and therefore

capacity can be planned to

optimise utilisation.

Sklepowich continues, “In the

report, analysts point to the Vantrix

Media Platform (VMP) as an

example of an ultra high-density

transcoder enabling JITT scenarios

for operators. VMP is a software-

defined solution that enables

providers to cost-effectively deliver

high quality, multiscreen video. VMP

can be deployed on ultra high-

density turnkey video processing

appliances, or on standard servers

in private or public Cloud scenarios.

Operators are able to combine

efficient IP conversion, ultra high-

density transcoding, adaptive

bitrate packaging, encryption and

streaming into a modular, virtualised

solution. The result is a highly flexible

and cost-efficient way to give

consumers high quality video today

with a future-proof feature set.”

Sklepowich believes that up to 80

per cent cost reduction per stream

can be achieved by deploying

Vantrix Video Processing modules

on industry leading 4.3U, 2U and 1U

appliances. These turnkey solutions

also reduce footprint by 95 per cent,

resulting in dramatic CAPEX and

OPEX savings.

“Frost and Sullivan found that

when the cost of a JITT transcoder

is weighed against the OPEX

savings generated over a five-year

period, the return on investment is

over 200 per cent. Another way of

interpreting these findings is that for

the same investment levels,

JITT allows operators to build

significantly higher capacity and

deliver much better quality of

experience to subscribers.”

The impact of the increased use of second screensThe continued shift of video

consumption patterns toward

devices other than the television

is having a profound impact

on transcoding equipment.

Compression equipment in a

multichannel workflow must take

on new levels of adaptability and

flexibility for media companies

to keep pace with a rapidly

evolving industry.

“The days of ‘one format’ and

‘one codec’ per transcoder are

long gone,” explains Mark Senecal,

manager, product management,

compression products, Imagine

Communications. “That formula no

longer supports a business model

that requires media companies

to distribute content to a growing

diversity of devices, nearly all

requiring unique resolution,

packaging, and compression.”


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“My first message is that ‘transcoding’ is no longer just ‘transcoding’. What we are now talking about is a suite of tools

and integrations that are at the very core of everything we do in the file-based world.”

Marc Risby, Boxer Systems

From left to right: John Nemeth, Elemental, Marc Risby, Boxer Systems, Mark Senecal, Imagine Communications and Steve Sklepowich, Vantrix

Instrumental to the evolution of

transcoding equipment is the

gradual abstraction of transcoding

functionality from purpose-built

hardware. The ability to perform

complex computational tasks on

commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)

equipment means that users are

now able to scale and diversify

transcoding capabilities simply by

adding new servers.

Senecal continues, “To support

the growing assortment of

protocols, formats and resolutions,

media companies must make

frequent upgrades to transcoding

equipment. In an environment

where functionality is dependent on

specialised hardware, companies

need to replace existing plant

with each upgrade: a costly and

inefficient process. Software-

based compression approaches

enable new formats and support

additional devices to be added

often through simple additions. A

software-based approach delivers

levels of agility and productivity

that empower companies

to explore new monetisation

opportunities while improving the

efficiencies of operations.”

Even with all of the key

advantages of a software

environment, the transition will not

happen overnight. Any shift from

hardware-based to software-based

encoding will depend upon a

number of factors, including costs,

existing infrastructure, distribution

requirements and technical factors,

such as video quality and latency.

“The logical next step,”

says Senecal, “in the software

transformation is moving

functionality into a virtualised

environment, whether that’s a

private datacentre or a public

cloud service. This approach

changes the entire economic

model. Investment in physical plant

is diverted to operational expenses,

providing even greater levels of

flexibility and resource elasticity. This

allows the scaling of resources – up

or down – on-the-fly, creating a

perfect balance between resource

demand and resource utilisation.”

He explains that transcoding on-the-

fly, or just-in-time, especially when

paired with just-in-time packaging

(JiTP) capabilities, enables content

owners and aggregators to

reduce storage requirements by

several magnitudes. “The ability to

transcode a programme for any

bitrate or to package it for any

device, including the application

of encryption, at the time of the

subscriber’s request, frees service

providers from storing multiple

versions of each piece of content.

Single copy, or mezzanine file,

storage models potentially reduced

datacentre resource requirements

by as much as 80 per cent, in

comparison to solutions lacking just-

in-time capabilities.”

One step closer to the real thingRedefining the television experience

goes beyond increasing the

amount of pixels to reach a higher

spatial resolution. It also involves

extending the dynamic range

between brightest whites and

darkest blacks, preserving more

colours intact, and increasing the

frame rate to improve movements.

“Real life luminance level can

be significantly higher or lower than

those that TVs can reproduce,”

states Thomas Burnichon, file ingest

and transcoding product marketing

manager, ATEME. “High Dynamic

Range (HDR) consists of extending

fidelity in both directions. Modern

TVs can also display more colours

than included in the traditional

BT.709 colour space – hence the

definition of BT.2020 including more

of the visible colours.”

Perceived brightness depends

on the image luminance measured

in candela per square metres,

colloquially known as ‘nit’. In

theatres, since the surrounding light

level is very low, a maximum of 48

nits can be sufficient. For television,

though, 100 nits is the target; and

recent receivers exceed this to

reach 300 to 400 nits. New HDR

TVs can go even higher, typically

above 1000 nits – and can hence

accommodate input formats

graded for a maximum luminance

well above 100 nits.

By defining typical Standard

Dynamic Range (SDR) as a

luminance range from 0.1 to 100

nits, and HDR as 0.01 to 1000 nits, the

contrast is increased by a factor of

100. “The broadcast chain is getting

ready for this change, which implies

modification in the way content is

shot and graded, and ATEME can

help deliver such content to the end

users,” says Burnichon.

He adds that specific care is

required for proper HDR and WCG

(Wide Colour Gamut) grading

for TV. With given source material

characteristics and target display

capabilities, it’s up to the colourist to

adjust how much he wants to use of

the new colours and contrast levels to

which he now has access.

Technically, the delivery

transcoding is usually done in HEVC

Main 10, and specific HDR signalling

is used. Instead of the traditional

gamma, luminance levels are

sampled according to the human

eye average luminance sensitivity:

much more precisely on low

luminance levels than on high ones,

such as with the PQ (Perceptual

Quantiser) curve, defined in ST 2084.

Ten-bits sampling is also required,

using 9 bits to go up to 100 nits and

the tenth bit to reach 10,000 nits.

Third-party proprietary metadata

can be added to improve HDR and/

or guide tone mapping from HDR

to SDR or inverse tone mapping

from SDR to HDR – but this requires a

compatible decoder.

“Our Titan video transcoder

manages a wide range of HDR

workflows, from various sources to all

kinds of target devices. It handles the

various HDR EOTF (Electro-Optical

Transfer Function), maintains high

bitdepths, performs required colour

conversion steps, manages metadata

and can be easily controlled.”

He concludes, “HDR content

poses new encoding challenges

and our R&D continues to develop

specific ways to handle them.”

How the nature of transcoding has changed in the past 15 yearsIn 2000, when Boxer Systems

started selling transcoding with

Telestream’s FlipFactory, the

broadcast world was a totally

different place from what we see

today. “Broadcast servers had only

baseband I/O, video on the web

was in its infancy and certainly not

a revenue earning activity and a

‘cloud’ was something that spoiled

picnics,” states Marc Risby, director

of technology at Boxer Systems.

“But, at this time, Telestream saw

where things were heading and

the future was file. After successfully

helping to change how media

was delivered with their ClipMail

product, Telestream moved focus to

making transcoding an enterprise,

server based, activity that could

be automated and designed for

volume and FlipFactory was born.”

So, asks Risby, what is transcoding

now? “We are now at the stage

that transcoding moves from being

viewed as an individual component,

for final output or ingest perhaps,

to being a more general, core

infrastructure product. Transcoding

– and its related functions – have

effectively replaced elements such

as the video router, video and audio

glue and standards convertors.”

He believes that if you broaden

this view to include some of the

elements that fit into the transcoding

ecosystem, such as subtitle insertion,

‘The days of simple transcoding are gone. It’s not just a question of transcoding files, but also how the process dovetails within a

production workflow’


ForumForum

graphics tools and auto QC, that

list grows. Furthermore when some

of the automated, variable driven

editing functions are added, the

true scale of where ‘transcoding’ fits

becomes apparent.

He continues, “My first message

is that ‘transcoding’ is no longer

just ‘transcoding’. What we are

now talking about is a suite of tools

and integrations that are at the

very core of everything we do in

the file-based world. An additional

upshot of this is that some systems

have embraced enterprise IT

methodologies for resilience,

monitoring and security to ensure

consistent delivery and uptime.

Allowing access to third party

systems ensures interoperability

with control layers and

complimentary systems.”

“Next, our larger customers report

that the biggest change they see

regarding transcoding in their

environments can be simplified to

one word - volume. For example,

ITV recently announced their

platform has processed 25,000

programmes and there are users

who process several thousand short

form clips a day.”

Primarily, this is due to the pace

at which services and platforms

are being added. The proliferation

of devices is huge and the move

from low-res early mobile content

to multiple renditions of HD has

continued to push Moore’s-Law

constrained processors. “CPU limits

have caused manufacturers to

look at the benefits of optimising

processing in a bid to ride the

development curve of this

related technology. Although

not immediately applicable to

every codec, some tremendous

performance gains have been

made in h.264 encoding and

processes that include image

scaling. Moving forward indicators

are that customers will transition

some services from h.264 to HEVC,

not just to make 4K delivery cost

effective, but also to bring down

current HD bit rates to lower

distribution costs.

Finally, the cloud is here or at

least coming. In many customer

engagements we are looking at the

relative costs of on-premise or in the

Cloud and the game is changing

quickly. We’ve been talking about

Cloud for a while, but in real terms

it’s early days, but we’re definitely

seeing viable solutions.”

The next innovation in transcoding“As English is not my mother-tongue,

before answering ‘what is the next

innovation in transcoding’, I referred

to a dictionary and the definition

of the keyword: ‘innovation’,”

explains Matthieu Fasani, a product

manager for Dalet Brio and Dalet

AmberFin. “I was actually presented

with two uses: ‘origination: the

act or process of inventing or

introducing something new’; and

‘new idea or method: a new way

of doing something’. This second

definition is probably a good place

to start, having just released and

demonstrated the latest Dalet

AmberFin, version 11, at IBC.”

Available with version 11 is the

combination of the robust, high

quality AmberFin transcode engine

and the advanced Workflow

Engine. This greatly improves the

orchestration of media workflows by

leveraging a highly intuitive Business

Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

2.0-compliant workflow designer.

Users can quickly and easily create

complex workflow chains with little

or no prior experience.

Deployed workflows can be

monitored at any level of detail with

graphical and textual reporting.

Fasani continues, “By turning

to BPMN 2.0, which is a widely

understood IT standard, we can

bring a multitude of benefits to

media processes, making them

more understandable, shareable,

future-proof and deployable. In

the same way as this innovation

has been led by the ‘generic’ IT

standards, the next few years will

see similarly led development.”

The largely XML-based IMF

(Interoperable Master Format)

standard promises to revolutionise

the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of transcode

and media-processing workflows.

IMF provides the specification

to separate content into various

ingredients or components

(namely, MXF media files), a

number of ‘recipes’ (Composition

Play Lists), and a selection of

instructions (Output Programme

Lists: OPLs) appropriate for

each audience. By authoring

the recipes and instructions in

widely understood XML, users can

concentrate on the process of

monetising media, rather than

the complexities of media formats

and processing.

The inclusion of the instructions

(OPLs) in the source package

also fundamentally changes the

nature of a transcode operation.

However, with ‘smart’ media

packages that know what they

need to be, there will also be a

need for ‘smart’ transcoders.

He concludes, “Looking just

a little further, it is inevitable

that advancements in

virtualisation and cloud

technology will go beyond the

infrastructure-led influence that

it has had on media workflows to

date, and start to re-imagine the

way we approach the business

of media production.”


ForumForum

From left to right: Paul Turner, Telestream, Thomas Burnichon, ATEME


VODStreamline your

from content acquisition over

scheduling to publishing and

package your content using

miniplaylists or render channels.

www.mediagenix.tv


Apps delivering streaming to mobile

devices are experiencing tremendous

growth, and the reasons behind this

growth are country-specific, driven by different

content preferences and the structure of the

traditional TV industry in each market. App

Annie’s latest report, Mobile Video Streaming

Takes off Globally, focuses on the US, UK and

China, looking at the trends shaping the growth

in streaming video apps.

In the US, the revenue from the top ten

streaming apps more than tripled during the

12-month period ending 31 July 2015, the report

states, with the majority of growth driven by

HBO Now and Hulu. Strong uptake of iPhone 6 in

China may have been one factor, according to

App Annie, driving the revenue growth of the top

ten video streaming apps on iOS in the country.

In the UK revenue remained relatively flat, which

the company believes to be largely due to the

fact that free-to-air networks remain popular.

China’s top ten video streaming apps for iOS

saw downloads increase 1.6 times year on year,

whilst downloads in the UK and US remained

relatively flat. The top ten video streaming

apps in each country lean towards different

content types. In the UK, the revenue share of

video streaming apps focused on TV/movies

is significantly lower that in the US, as similar

content is available on free public networks. In

China, the dominant share of video streaming

apps which provide multiple types on content

is an outcome, App Annie believes, of limited

government intervention as compared to

regulations faced by the traditional TV industry

in the country. The US has the most diverse

set of top video streaming apps whereas in

the UK, traditional broadcasters dominate,

claiming eight of the top ten spots. YouTube

ranked number one in both the UK and US for

downloads. In the UK, sports apps accounted

for seven of the top ten; the majority of sporting

events are only available on pay TV channels

in the UK, driving viewers to streaming options,

the report states.

There is a huge amount of diversity across

countries among the apps that rank in the

top ten by monthly active users (MAU), and

YouTube and Netflix are the only ones to appear

to appear in the top ten for multiple countries.

The top ten by MAU tend to be TV/movies and

sports in the US, and are most balanced in the

UK. Similar to its download and revenue rankings,

China’s most-used apps lean heavily towards

those that deliver multiple types of content.

The lines that differentiate content providers

will continue to blur as they evolve in order to

maximise share of viewing time, App Annie’s

report concludes. Aggregators such as Netflix

and Amazon, for example, have started creating

original content. China may see even more

growth ahead if Alibaba’s subscription video

streaming service Tmall Box Office (TBO) is

rolled out to mobile.

Finally, the report predicts eSports to be a

major growth driver; YouTube and Twitch were

the fastest growing apps in the US, which bodes

well for the recent launch of YouTube Gaming.

Mobile video streaming takes off

Data Centre

This issue, we take a look at the latest intelligence from mobile analytics firm App Annie that covers global trends in video streaming apps

‘The US has the most diverse set of top video streaming apps whereas in the

UK, traditional broadcasters dominate, claiming eight of the top ten spots’

China* United Services United Kingdom *China data only includes iOS App Store

Top ten video streaming apps by countrydownloads, iOS App Store and Google Play* combined

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100

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12 months ended July 31, 2014 12 months ended July 31, 2015

Top ten video streaming apps by countryrevenue, iOS App Store and Google Play* combined

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1000

750

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250

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12 months ended July 31, 2014 12 months ended July 31, 2015

3.2x

9.6x

1.0x

tvbe november 2015

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