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september/october 2012
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ww
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march/april 2014
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cover.indd 2 05/03/2014 17:20:05
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cover.indd 1 23/04/2014 18:05:31
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march/april 2013
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cover.indd 3 04/03/2013 11:18:52
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may/june 2013
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cover.indd 1 14/05/2013 10:29:15
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jan/feb 2013
Comcast RDK: Cable goes open source
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thecover.indd 2 15/02/2013 15:32:02
ww
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september/october 2012
At tipping point: Are CDNs the future
of broadcast?
Inte
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Rou
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: Soc
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and
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cover.indd 1 17/08/2012 16:10:14
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ww
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Inte
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: Soc
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and
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acc
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HD
TV
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
2nd
scre
en
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
2nd
scre
en
sync
hron
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ion
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
sync
hron
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CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
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CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
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CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
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CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices
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Ultr
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digitalEdition.indd 1 27/08/2014 10:39:09
www.csimagazine.com September-October 2014 03
To paraphrase an American journalist
in the early part of the 19th century: I
have seen the future and it is ultra HD.
My first experience with UHD was
seeing a 100-inch plus 4k TV showing
a sports stadium at IBC several years
ago and the memory of the crispness
and clarity of detail has stuck since. And this was ‘just’ a 4k
screen, not incorporating any of the requirements that are
now in the works for ‘full-fat’ UHD as we call it in this
report (as opposed to the slim line pixels-only approach).
The perceived wisdom now is that UHD is more than
about pixels. Factors that need to be taken into account
include dynamic range, colour requirements, bit depth of
the video, higher frame rates and so on. For this reason,
standards are a critical part to get right, especially as the
migration to UHD literally involves every part of the chain,
from acquisition all the way through to end-devices and the
user experience.
“For Ultra-HD we’re working towards a new standard
that emphasises ‘better pixels’, not just ‘more pixels’, making
the next big leap in screen quality into a revolution, not just
a resolution,” says the DTG, the UK TV industry body,
which is working with the DVB, EBU, FAME and other
bodies in an attempt to harmonise fundamental standards.
At a press event earlier this year, DTG’s CEO Richard
Lindsay-Davies wisely spoke of the need to tread carefully.
“We’re trying to take an enthusiastic but measured approach
to UHD to try and get it right. It is happening faster than
people thought it would. It’s real and much more tangible,
but there is a chance that if we create a mediocre consumer
experience that it won’t take off. We have to get it right
which is why we’re taking care over it,” he said.
For its part, the DVB introduced its UHDTV Phase 1
specification, which covers a resolution four times that of
1080p HDTV, but acknowledged that Phase 2 will take into
account higher frames rates, an issue highlighted on page 9.
Ultra HD: it’s in the mix
The most commonly associated part of the UHD equation –
high resolution – is only one part of the mix. As Cisco VP
& CTO Nick Thexton points out elsewhere in these pages,
4k is just a moniker, one that is also acting as a driver for
new display technologies. For example, LG is confident that
by 2017 it will have developed a UHD flexible and
transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches.
Indeed, according to analyst Colin Dixon, there are three
reasons to buy a UHD TV, and none have anything to do
with resolution. They are high dynamic range, which
improves colours; HEVC compression, which will open
UHD to the broadband masses; and high frame rate, with
60fps or higher reducing blurriness and improving picture
quality on screens of any size.
Crucially, because UHD doesn’t require a change in
viewing habits, like wearing glasses, it should succeed in
penetrating the market to a far greater extent than 3D ever
did. And there are some early movers on the content side,
with the likes of YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon already
making 4k announcements, albeit involving remastering
and/or upscaling. This is because 4k cameras are bulky and
expensive and the whole content creation and production
paradigm is yet to be agreed upon.
It is also worth keeping in mind that content owners I
speak to always have the same answer when it comes to 4k/
UHD; something along the lines of “We’re all for it as long
as it allows us to tell a story better.” As always, while the
technology is a key enabler, the human element should not
be forgotten and these companies will need to be persuaded
of the benefits on offer.
So while there is much enthusiasm that the transition to
UHD will be the most exciting development to happen to
the industry over the next ten or so years, it is also worth
remembering that the vast majority of channels are still
broadcast in SD (see chart on page 4).
And many questions remain to be answered. What
exactly should ‘full-fat’ ultra HD comprise of technically?
Given the huge investments needed on the production side,
how do UHD ROI economics stack up? What should
broadcasters do with the extra bit rates - should they
increase the number of frames per second, or increase the
number of pixels? To what extent will UHD migration
mirror that of HD? Does it spell the end of interlaced? Can
viewers really appreciate the difference in screen sizes below
55 inches and to what extent does this limit the value of
UHD and therefore the addressable market for 4k?
With that in mind, every report should provide insight
and information, stimulate ideas, and provoke debate. We
hope this one manages to do that and help the reader gain a
greater understanding of the UHD landscape.
editor’s introduction
4k resolution is only the consumer-friendly early moniker for the
wider UHD puzzle
Goran Nastic CSI editor
UHD supplementS
pons
ored
by
:
‘Full fat’ ultra HD
While the CE
industry
pushes 4k
screens onto
the shelf, a
technical
debate rages
about how to realise the full parameter set of
UHDTV. Even the EBU released a policy statement
that suggests the present UHD spec isn’t a big
enough step forward. If it’s richer rather than
simply more pixels, this inextricably links the
technical to the commercial debate about what
makes UHD compelling to the consumer, but
either way sooner or later everything reverts back
to compression and bandwidth.
It’s accepted that screen sizes of at least
55-inches are needed before the benefits of UHD
can be seen seated within a standard living room
but, as with HD, consumers are also likely to go
against the grain and purchase UHD sets below
that range.
What is important is that CE manufacturers
have pinpointed UHD as a way to increase
margins and rejuvenate sluggish HD sales driving
UHD to market as a defacto standard defined by
resolution alone.
Undercutting from Chinese manufacturers in
particular is forcing major brands to reduce price.
Where LG’s cheapest 55-inch is nearly $5,000,
China’s TCL has a 50-inch model on release for
$999 and there’s a 39-inch version from fellow
Chinese firm Seiki in the US market for $499.
They may lack the functionality of higher-end
models but it’s likely that the majority of TV’s
retailed within five years will be UHD-ready.
Digitimes Research suggests that over a quarter
of all models shipped by 2017 will be UHD, with
more than 90% of LCD TVs in the 55-inch
segment capable of delivering the format. It also
reckons 4k TV sales will have racked up 68.2
million units globally by then. That’s better than
most analysts expected, given the low awareness
of 4k by the general public.
Filling the content gap and the oTT
advantage
However, in order to develop UHD as a
commercial model a number of developments are
needed and content is a clear pre-requisite. TV
vendors have addressed this by investing in
uprezzing/upscaling functionality with a degree of
success. According to Cisco CTO Dr Ken Morse,
advances in silicon geometries have resulted in
“very capable upscaling solutions” that will enable
HD content to be up sampled to UHD. “The
consumer will perceive a real difference and value-
add,” he says. “Much like watching a DVD on a
PS3 outputting 1080p when they were first
introduced.”
Outside of Japan (where the state-backed
NexTV-F began the world’s first regular 4k TV
pilot service in June through SKY Perfect JSAT),
broadcasters have limited
themselves to trials, and no
terrestrial broadcaster has any
short term plans to air UHD.
Instead broadcasters have
ceded early mover advantage to
OTT providers. The flexibility of
the IT environment has allowed
companies like Netflix, Amazon
and YouTube to distribute 4k
content over the internet where
in-home bandwidth of 25Mbps is
sufficient. Netflix is streaming House of Cards
and other 4k programming around this bitrate.
But, says Ali Zarkesh, business development
director, Vislink, the competitive advantage of
OTT providers will be relatively short lived. “It
will only last until broadcasters have the necessary
compression techniques to deliver real-time
material to the home in higher quality than a
relatively limited broadband connection.”
That said, it will be the payTV segment rather
than DTT broadcasters that make initial moves
into UHD. “The industry is still working towards
small improvements in HD video quality, such as
shifting from interlaced to progressive standards
and increasing frame rates,” says Zarkesh.
“Significant changes will only arrive once
broadcasters have the technology to compress
increasingly large video streams to meet the
restrictive spectrum allocations they are currently
facing.”
John Ive, director of business development &
technology, IABM, believes the OTT advantage is
a matter of years, not months. “In the past, Sky
was the first to launch HD and 3D and have
typically been seen as the innovator, however with
4k this has moved to Netflix,” he says. “The use
of the internet for content distribution has been
given increased credibility. Conventional
broadcasts are not going away any time soon but
we are starting to see how the internet could take
its place alongside cable, satellite, and terrestrial –
the big three has now become the big four.”
Compression games
The common way of dealing with restricted
spectrum availability is to introduce image
compression, and HEVC is the go-to standard
for this.
UHD is being driven to market with multiple moving parts from production to delivery to presentation. How do operators keep track and avoid the slim-line pixels-only route? Adrian Pennington gives an overview of where the standards and overall ecosystem are at present
04 September-October 2014 www.csimagazine.com
UHD supplement
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
Global DTH Channel Breakdown, 2013
3D Channels0.04% UltraHD Channels
0%
SD Channels72%
HD Channels28%
Source: NSR Research
www.csimagazine.com September-October 2014 05
Elemental Technologies is among those to have
had its HEVC encoders tested in live 4k
workflows over the past year. Not surprisingly,
many of these tests have been for live sports
events, such as the world’s first football match
broadcast live over satellite in UHD at 50 frames
per second encoded in HEVC for Sky
Deutschland, a live 4k satellite transmission for
Russian pay TV operator NTV-PLUS and its
coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the 2014
Winter Olympics, and, in collaboration with
Broadcom and Globosat, delivery of World Cup
matches in UHD throughout South America.
“From a video processing perspective, live 4k is
way more challenging to support end-to-end than
VoD,” says Keith Wymbs, chief marketing officer,
Elemental. “With VoD, you can always resend a
packet or wait until conversion happens. With
live, there is absolutely no room for error.”
These and other live events over the past
several months have given Elemental a wealth of
4k HEVC processing experience and a clear sense
of what’s vital to successful live UHD commercial
service launches. Wymbs lists these as
interoperability, redundancy and testing, and
practice.
“Assuring end-to-end video processing
interoperability is key to success in live
production,” he elaborates. “Plan well ahead for
testing as many of the components and workflows
are new, including those for cameras and set-top
boxes. For the World Cup, Elemental encoders
were configured in a redundant manner and
tested extensively. Flexibility is also key. Before
any type of commercial deployment these type of
tests are important so that all the stakeholders
can say they have demoed it and see
that it does work.”
Away from Elemental, the EBU
selected Ateme’s Kyrion coders to
deliver the 4k feeds to its members
from the FIFA World Cup. Envivio
helped TDF and TNT achieve a
notable first from the Roland Garros
French Open tennis tournament in
May, by delivering a live 4k 50p feed
in HEVC over a DTT network using
DVB-T2.
A month earlier, a group of
partners demonstrated end-to-end
video transmission over satellite
using the DVB-S2X format, newly released in
February. The transmission carried a 100Mbps
UHD signal (4:2:2, 10-bit, 60p) over a 36MHz
Intelsat transponder from BT Tower, encoded
using Ericsson AVP 2000s in MPEG-4 AVC with
modulation by Newtec.
“Satellite transmission has always been the
preferred technology facilitating the adoption of
new video standards,” remarks Steven Soenens,
VP product management at Newtec. “Typical
contribution and distribution networks will
benefit from a 10% to 20% efficiency increase
using DVB-S2X. I’m delighted to see the new
standard already in action on our products and on
a live satellite network.”
“Although we are moving towards delivery over
IP, satellite still has its place,” argues Doron
Revivi, COO, SatLink Communications. “It is
certainly the best delivery solution if you want to
reach mass markets and the fact is that in many
areas we lack the internet infrastructure to
successfully deliver high quality content.” As if to
prove Doron’s point, Akamai released data this
summer showing just how little of it is ready for
4k (see box out on page 7).
This is why satellite operators feel good about
the rollout of UHD channels and Eutelsat reckons
that with HEVC and the evolution of DVB-S2, the
company believes it will be able to transmit
around five UHD
4k channels at 50 or 60 frames per second in a
36 MHz transponder.
High frame rates
The pillars of premium programming are sports
and movies and while drama can be taken care of
using 24/25p, sports aired at that frame rate
suffer from motion blur and judder – attributes
likely to be exacerbated on giant-sized screens.
In most parts of the world, particularly the UK,
sport is broadcast in HD at full resolution using
interlace video which creates a pseudo 50 frames
per second. The interlace structure stems from
the invention of television back in the days of
tube TVs, but now TV displays are inherently
progressive. The move to UHD is being viewed as
an opportunity to leave interlace behind.
“Everything that is being done in UHD is
progressive, so tricks like pseudo 50 fields per
second are no longer valid,” claims IABM’s Ive.
“Therefore, for sports and live programming we
need a true 50 frames per second or more at a
UHD resolution. Each time we double the frame
rate in an uncompressed world we obviously
double the data. The industry is already struggling
with 12G so the thought of going even higher is
rather daunting, despite the improvement in
picture quality. This might lead us to a mezzanine
compression to give us data rates that are more
manageable in a video infrastructure.”
The better pixels conundrum
In addition to higher frame rates, there are other
elements being discussed to enhance picture
quality. High dynamic range is one, alongside
increased colour gamut, which allows a wider
range of colours to be reproduced. Proponents of
these changes make a very compelling case that
their introduction can represent a bigger
improvement in quality than higher resolution.
The marketing of smartphone cameras, tablet
memory and digital compact cameras has given
UHD supplementS
pons
ored
by
:
Sep
t 2
013
Oct
20
13
Nov
20
13
Dec
20
13
Jan
20
14
Feb
20
14
Mar
20
14
Apr
il 2
014
May
20
14
UHD TV Percentage Share of Total LCD TV Market(Share Based on Shipments)
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
“In the past, Sky was the first to launch HD and 3D and has typically been seen as the innovator, however with 4k this has moved to Netflix.”
Source: IHS Technology
the consumer an appreciation that higher
numbers are logically ‘better’ (2MB/2K; 8MB/8K
and so on). Sony understood this early on by
sticking its guns and insisting on referring to
UHD as 4k.
Other enhancements, like HDR, are more
difficult to promote. In addition, CE vendors
want to get products out immediately to refresh
sales, so it’s likely that full fat UHD will see
fragmented release.
Since no mainstream broadcaster has (so far)
declared any extensive plans to broadcast in
UHD, Ive advises that they hold off until some of
these new standards are in place.
“Higher frame rates will generate more data
and increase capacity requirements at a time
when spectrum availability is a growing concern,
so broadcasters need to fine tune compression
techniques before these upgrades can become a
reality,” adds Zarkesh.
“The spectrum allocation for Freeview, for
example, is already completely oversubscribed and
broadcast spectrum is increasingly being
auctioned off. If spectrum continues to be
squeezed, the future of 4k might ultimately sit
with cable and satellite delivery only. At present,
it is unlikely that 4k will be transmitted live by IP
or Freeview because broadcasters will struggle
with distribution due to the lack of available
capacity. However, as compression techniques
improve and new standards take effect, this will
likely change.”
The 4k live production challenge
Aside from delivery, the infrastructure in the
production environment doesn’t exist to be able
produce 4k programming round the clock to
make it commercially viable.
“Although early trials of UHD have involved
using multiple cables this is untenable for
mainstream use,” says Ive. “It is too complex for
real world situations, which is why a simpler,
single cable solution has to be found.”
With no purpose-built live 4k cameras UHD
live tests to date have adopted around using a
quad 3G-SDI connection. This has a number of
inherent problems such as the difficulty in
keeping signals in sync with each other and the
sheer number and weight of cables. The number
of connection points is multiplied, increasing the
points of possible failure.
In high availability applications such as live
sport any outage is serious. From production
switcher, to router or server the use of quad
3G-SDI quarters the density of the products
installed. Outside of one-off events, a 20 camera
UHD outside broadcast would be extremely tricky
given the volume and cost of equipment involved.
“When it comes to the higher bandwidth
associated with UHD there is a big question
mark over whether or not the copper cable
lengths will be satisfactory for infrastructure
type operations,” says Ive. “As an alternative, the
use of fibre is being explored but it remains to be
seen how successful fibre will be as a replacement
for cable.”
Another option is a more network based
approach. 10Gb and 40Gb networks are available
and even faster ones are being progressed.
“Clearly, if we go down this route it means a
much more radical change in infrastructure and
design, so this is an option for the longer term,”
says Ive. “We need an infrastructure that is more
format agnostic, to cope with both current and
future formats. In the meantime a derivative of
SDI seems to be the only viable solution.”
The challenges surrounding moving non-
compressed UHD around have reopened the
discussions around having a mezzanine
compression level. This would involve very light
compression of the video to give a useful
reduction in data rate, perhaps reducing it to HD
levels but sufficiently light so it doesn’t impair the
picture quality unduly and can still be used in
both production and post.
Approaches under consideration include AVC
and JPEG2000. Sony is promoting its own
compression scheme which it says it will open up
to the industry.
The user experience
Assuming 55-inches as the baseline for UHD TV,
operators will have to put considerable thought
into how to present the experience in the home.
The larger screen finally affords the opportunities
in creative presentation, such as the use of
mosaics for sports content or more interactive
services, for example, the Formula 1 experience
with multi-car viewing, in-car viewing, additional
statistics, at the same time as the overall user
interface needs careful consideration.
“At higher screen sizes even the regular
UHD broadcast can become very immersive
taking on an almost 3D experience,” says
Cisco’s Morse. “The other element it delivers
on is the increased colour gamut giving a
greater ‘realism’ to displayed content which will
also drive the immersive nature of this content.”
Outside of the immediate programme/VoD
content there may be an opportunity for pay
TV providers to use the larger screen real-estate
06 September-October 2014 www.csimagazine.com
UHD supplement
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
to integrate smart home services, as Cisco
has already showed with its Snowflake user
interface (UI).
“There are very meaningful services and
enhanced user experiences that are feasible with
the additional real estate offered by UHD,” agrees
Morse. “As consumers become more comfortable,
and in many cases demanding, of a more
connected life these services will be integrated
into the UX not only on UHD but across all
consumer-relevant devices.”
Amid all the opportunities afforded by larger
screens with increased pixel densities, the killer
large screen application is still television. “We
should not lose sight of delivering the best
television viewing experience that uses the
available display capabilities,” says Morse.
“We need to ensure that television can always
be centre stage while augmenting it with
additional capabilities,” adds Cisco’s Morse.
“Operators should leverage additional input/
control devices rather than overloading the
primary viewing screen with complex navigation
schemes. We have demonstrated with Fresco that
there are a whole range of things you could put
up on the main screen but the navigation
mechanism has got
to be simple to control for the consumer.”
Since we can use other screen devices to
navigate and select content, and we can swipe and
cast content there is a rethink underway,
according to Charles Cheevers, CTO CPE
Solutions, Arris. “Its primary goal is to achieve
the fastest and simplest way possible for the user
to view the content that entertains them. This
function of simplicity against a matrix of device
and infinite supply of content and sources is
the key.”
Large screen TVs only adds to the diversity of
displays that must be supported by service
providers. The existing base and diversity of
mobile devices, tablets, PCs, smart TVs, and
STBs requires a new approach to the development
and delivery of the UX/UI.
“The rise (and in some cases dependency)
on two-way systems has enabled the logic and
layout of UI to be more virtualised and reducing
the complexity of supporting device-specific
embedded code,” says Morse. “This gives not
only increased service velocity through the
use of cloud for new features but enables the
business model of supporting a diversity of
endpoint devices.”
The good news is that UHD is merely a
new codec carried within the existing delivery
frameworks, ie MPEG Transport and/or ABR.
This makes it somewhat transparent from a
processing, storage and delivery perspective
for in-home DVR and cloud-based delivery.
Naturally the end-point devices need to be
UHD-capable devices.
Cheevers reminds us most UHD home
hardware does support UHD graphics
performance, so to create a true UHD UX
experience one will need graphics rendered at
full UHD 4kp60. “This will come with new silicon
and in particular could be provided by adding a
STB to purchased 4k screen TVs,” he says. “With
additional pixel, colour and other elements of
the image to get to p60 frames the UX graphics
need to be revised to be at true rather than
upscaled levels.
“Is this worth it against a 1080p UX using
standard UX paradigms?” asks Cheevers. “Maybe
not, but as graphic designers get more creative
with the creation of beautiful UXs, the difference
may be worth having.”
With its prototype Fresco interface, also known
as the Future of Video, which combines multiple
LED-tiles to create one display on a wall, Cisco is
asking us to expand our view of what television is
and to think outside the traditional television box.
Fresco proposes a future where content is
displayed across multiple screens – or multiple
types of content displayed on the same screen –
with resolutions, aspect ratios and presentation
styles entirely determined on-the-fly by the viewer
(see next page for more).
“We all take it for granted that we can resize
and manipulate content effortlessly on a computer
desktop,” notes Cisco’s new initiatives director
Simon Parnall. “The same should hold true for
TV viewing.”
www.csimagazine.com September-October 2014 07
UHD supplementS
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Ultra HD channel growth
Is your network 4k-ready?
The growth of video traffic on the internet is
well documented, turning it into a true
competitor/alternative to more traditional
means of TV distribution, writes Goran Nastic.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking
Index, IP video traffic accounted for 66% of
traffic in 2013, and with further explosive
growth on the horizon, how much of this will
be in 4k/ultra HD and will the networks be
able to cope?
Akamai’s figures compiled this summer
estimate that purely in networking terms only
11% of broadband homes around the world
are ready for 4k video (and it’s worth stressing
that this is only one out of ten homes that
currently have a broadband connection).
Unsurprisingly, Asia-Pacific leads the way,
with South Korea deemed to be far more
prepared for the rollout of UHD than the rest.
Based on the speed of broadband
connections, South Korea has 60% of
households that are 4k-ready, followed by
Japan with 32% and Hong Kong with 26%.
Only 17% of US homes have the kind of
sustained broadband speeds needed to
support 4k adaptive bitrate streaming of UHD
video content, the same as the UK.
Within Europe, the top three countries -
Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden -
had more than 20% of their connections at
speeds over 15 Mbps in Q1 2014.
Switzerland’s 23% 4k-readiness rate was the
highest level seen in a European country,
while Czech Republic had the lowest at 17%.
According to Akamai, 15 Mbps is thought
to be the minimum speed needed to deliver 4k
images properly (Netflix is currently
delivering 4k over the top at around 25Mbps).
Breaking out of the frame
The Glasgow 2014
Commonwealth Games were
the first to be shown in ultra
HD, where BBC Research
and Development gave viewers
a glimpse of what sports
content looks like in four
times as much detail as normal HD.
The production was shown live to UHD TVs in
the Glasgow Science Centre, part of BBC R&D’s
experiments to gain a better understanding of
UHD technology and at the same time explore
the future of television. For the BBC, this was as
much a major end-to-end IP production exercise
as a user experience (UX) study and Cisco had a
role to play in both cases.
UHD arguably lends itself better to the in-home
UX better than 3D ever did. Trade show demos
focusing on the UX side beyond just 4k resolution
are at this stage few and far between, however,
and Cisco is doing its best to capitalise early on.
The Future of Video (also known as Project
Fresco) demo that the company undertook with
the BBC for the Games was a visionary type of
presentation showing the possibilities of the UX
for live sports events in the future home.
“One of the dimensions that affects viewing is
how our screens are likely to blend better with the
Environment, and the way in which you interact
with the screen will change depending on what
content you’re watching,” says Simon Parnall,
distinguished engineer and director at Cisco’s
service provider video group.
“Why is it that all our TV pictures are the
same size? It’s because TV has been dominated
by the concept of the frame and frame size
dictates everything. We wanted to break out of the
frame, to literally blend in with the background,”
continues Parnall.
The idea is to have frameless pictures in
any size, scaling and matching what Cisco
calls the “immersion level” of the content,
using developments of today’s OLED display
technology.
At the heart of the Future of Video concept is
a key piece of technology called the layout engine
which assigns where the various elements go,
their size, the way they move and respond to
dynamic data and so on. This engine runs in the
device but Cisco anticipates eventually moving
that software to the cloud, which will then assign
tasks to a browser in the home. Virtualising as
much of the process as possible and taking the
intelligence upstream has the aim of making the
display side as cheap as possible.
The concept is also informing Cisco around
other aspects like cloud-rendered
UIs. So while the company is
using it as a stage to show new
ideas, a number of them are now
flowing back into its product
roadmaps. “It’s not just a TV
experience, it’s a multimedia
experience,” adds Parnall. As an
example, he said stats could be
positioned on another part of the
wall as opposed to on a
companion device. “If the future
is simply just watching on more
small devices then where is the
role for the genuinely immersive
experience where we are
overwhelmed by pictures?”
According to Parnall, BBC asked Cisco to
demonstrate its Future of Video solution as a
proof of concept alongside the Commonwealth
Games ultra-HD trials to incorporate the latest
HEVC and 4kp50 technologies. “That’s been a
real challenge for us to adapt the demo to the very
latest standards,” he admits.
The BBC shot certain elements from the
opening ceremony in UHD as well as sports like
gymnastics from the Hydra stadium, where the
broadcaster used four 4k cameras. It is becoming
apparent that 4k brings with it new production
issues, both technical (for example, there is no
Serial Digital Interface (SDI) for 4k although the
SMPTE is working on it) and in terms of general
content acquisition (luckily for older athletes the
BBC preferred wider angles to close ups).
The BBC is among a number of broadcasters
globally trying to figure out how 4k/UHD affects
this dynamic. “The number of camera positions
The BBC’s work with Cisco on ultra-HD during the recent Commonwealth Games were part of the broadcaster’s wider trials taking in the industry’s transformative shift towards IP and IT, as well as the next-gen user experience. Goran Nastic reports
08 September-October 2014 www.csimagazine.com
UHD supplement
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
UHD in action in Glasgow as part of BBC’s Future Broadcast System work
www.csimagazine.com September-October 2014 09
might need to be different, as the whole language
of content creation has a relationship to the
resolution of the TV system. Part of the process
for the creatives is to explore what it is to create
content that has a wider angle of view, as much as
it is for us to see whether that is something we
can express to the consumer,” says Parnall.
pioneering work, but no Ip big bang
One of the main drivers for BBC R&D was to
demonstrate 4k production over an IP network
infrastructure. Albeit a closed trial, the BBC
claims that the Commonwealth Games UHD
broadcast was also the first major live event to be
produced and distributed entirely over IP
networks, which the broadcaster used to test the
end-to-end IP workflow.
The footage was captured at 4k resolution, sent
over an IP network into an IP-enabled production
studio from which it was then sent to end-devices
capable of receiving the video.
(One such feed went to a Fresco suite in
Cisco’s buildings in Bedfont Lake, which could
also receive the encrypted DTT transmissions that
the BBC pushed with Arqiva via DVB-T2 encoded
in HEVC at around 30Mbps. One day IP will be
used for over-the-air transmissions too — but not
yet. As Cisco VP CTO Nick Thexton put it:
“Transport streams: they are very stubborn little
things! They won’t go away in a hurry.”)
Acting as a BBC partner, Cisco installed a
large IP network in Glasgow handling
contribution and distribution. Both parties saw it
as an acid test of being able to carry large
volumes of video data through an IP
infrastructure. The whole network ran from
Glasgow down to London via Salford.
In general, the broadcast world has been slower
to adopt IT infrastructure, where many companies
still cling onto specialist broadcast systems, but
this is slowly changing and it is widely expected
that the move to ultra HD will accelerate the
transition towards a more IT-based future, which
promises greater cost efficiencies, more flexibility
and a quicker way of introducing new workflows.
As Mark Errington, CEO at playout vendor
Oasys, writes elsewhere in CSI, “The change from
HD to 4k is going to have an effect on the
infrastructure of the broadcast industry the likes
of which we’ve never seen before. This change is
more significant than the shift from SD to HD.”
The trick is working out a migration roadmap
for the entire chain from ingest to content
publishing. “We know where we are and where to
go but the challenge now is to migrate over to
end-to-end IP production, where to start and
where to finish,” notes Thorsteinn Olafsson, who
works for Cisco’s core networking equipment
business. “We have different maturity level across
the links in that chain when it comes to migrating
to IP and exactly when the big broadcasters shut
the door to SDI/SDH technology is very difficult
to tell at this stage,” he admits, but thinks that the
end of the decade might be a good benchmark.
“There won’t be a big bang but the course has
definitely been set,” argues Olafsson.
“The BBC are demonstrating that it is possible
to run high quality broadcast video over IP. This
is really pioneering stuff, you won’t find Netflix
doing that,” adds Parnall.
The bandwidth requirements for 4k and above
are phenomenal, he points out: “A raw feed from
a 4k camera requires 12Gbps for which you need
a 40G interface to run uncompressed content. If
you can imagine scaling that up to multiple
cameras in a studio you need quite a significant
underpinning network infrastructure that can
cope with that amount of traffic, and bandwidth
requirements will only go up as the technology
evolves,” says Parnall.
Despite the onset of virtualisation and HEVC
compression techniques (see page 10), 4k still
provides a stress factor on the decoders too and
some useful lessons were learned on how that
optimisation is handled during the
Commonwealth Games tests.
For more images and a video on BBC R&D’s
work at and around the Games, go to
www.hdwarrior.co.uk/2014/08/01/bbc-rd-at-the-
commonwealth-games-2014/
UHD supplementS
pons
ored
by
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The end of interlaced?
The move to higher resolutions is being
viewed as a good opportunity to leave
interlace behind, and brings in important
discussions around frame rates.
The BBC has been working with other
broadcasters inside the EBU looking at
appropriate frame rates, and used higher
frame rates in Glasgow to demonstrate its
effects for sports content.
“When we talk about higher resolution we
need to mention not just spatial but
temporal,” Cisco’s Parnall points out. “One of
the fascinating questions is if you had extra
bit rates, what would you spend it on, more
spatial or more temporal resolution? In other
words, would you increase the number of
pixels in a line or the number of frames per
second? People are asking which is more
important.
“Increasing the frame rate really can make
you feel as though you are there in a different
way, adding to the perception of clarity that
comes from increased spatial resolution.
“It’s also not true to say that if you double
the frame rate you double the bit rate, so the
penalty in doubling the frame rate is actually
quite small and yet the benefit is enormous,”
argues Parnall
Cisco’s Future of Video presentation of the Games at its offices in Bedfont Lake
10 September-October 2014 www.csimagazine.com
UHD supplement
Spo
nsor
ed b
y:
Goran Nastic: What’s
the most interesting
trend you are seeing
with HEVC
compression?
Nick Thexton: The
push to better HEVC
encoding would have in
the past involved and
invoked a lot of
discussion around
ASIC developments
and the best ASICs to use. Our whole pitch now
is towards virtualised encoding platforms, which
use V2P (Cisco’s Virtualised Video Platform).
The V2P allows us to pull in generic computing
resources, whether they are on-premises or cloud
based, to assist in any encode process, whether
live or offline for transcode reasons. Cisco’s
positioning will be very much around the fact that
we’re not building huge dependencies on
embedded hardware any more. Everything will go
virtualised when we launch our product range
around 4kp60.
We have it already in tests with some key
broadcasters at the moment who are trialling
it in their living rooms, using their beauty
contest material, their very best content with
the latest panels. We are very confident that
we stack up well and we’ll be talking more
about that at IBC. We have a very active
programme of work which will take us all the
way to IBC encoding demonstrations.
Does HEVC then go hand in hand with
virtualisation?
So the shift is not just towards bigger, better
quality, but it’s also to do with the economics of
encoding and the ability to utilise virtual encoding
as well. All our competitors are faced with the
same transition and what’s really good for us is
the fact we have amazing resources in virtualised
processing using cloud based infrastructure and
also our OpenStack work, our work on UCS
platforms and storage. It plays very much directly
into an IT company’s hands. We have teams based
in Atlanta and Vancouver that have worked on
improved HEVC encoding algorithms, initially
primarily in Atlanta but now extended to our
Canadian engineering team, which for HEVC is
mostly in Vancouver.
As a result of that in the past when it came to
HD Cisco was perhaps a big less well prepared in
beauty contest that emerged in terms of the
rankings at the time around 2005/06. It was not
regarded as the finest hour. So I think when we
came to 4k, we made sure it wouldn’t happen
again with UHD so we are now back up and
winning most of the deals going on in Europe at
the moment. We have been very successful in the
last few months in terms of the move to HEVC
and 4k on top of that.
So will most of the differentiation with HEVC
come on the software side?
It’s a slight change in dependency on hardware.
You still need it, it’s not like it has disappeared
from the equation, but it’s just packaged in a
different format and accessed in a very different
way. So rather than having a stand-alone unit that
is very isolated and disconnected, if you’re
utilising some computational power in that
appliance it won’t be lost in the pool of resources
but rather used for the overall cloud assistance.
So we have a mixed environment and that also
allows you an upgrade path to things like UHD.
This time last year I was driving the HEVC
topic very hard on both 4k and our move to
MPEG-DASH (for OTT/streaming), which is
equally as important. I said these are two things
Cisco absolutely has to excel in and invest hard
because they are critical to a broadcaster and
content provider’s view of open standards. All
credit to our engineering teams for moving rapidly
with some great innovation. We are very
confident about out picture quality tests.
How much more improvement in terms of
efficiency and algorithms can we expect
given the complexity of HEVC?
Because it’s moving to a virtualised environment,
you will see improvements a lot more rapidly and
incrementally, tied to improvements in generic
CPU power and micro-server architectures. Most
scaled apps are going multi-core and most generic
computing platforms, whether mobile or big
enterprise servers, are going multi-core with
multiple blades. Inside each of those devices there
is a concept of a micro server, building out the
ability to do parallel processing on a massive
capability. Those platforms are starting to come
into the production process for our generic IT
infrastructure and therefore if we tap into that
with HEVC what you get is a massive boost in
processing capability, so video processing is going
to go through a big leap in terms of capability I
believe. We will be able to do in the not-to-distant
future things we could only have dreamed of two
or three years ago because of this. The benefit of
those was always known in offline encoding and
now you will see that for live as well.
So how low will you be able to go bandwidth
wise to push ‘good’ 4k content?
A single answer on bit-rate is very hard to pin
down, because it will also be heavily dependent
on the capacity of the distribution channel,
whether the stream is live, or encoded off-line,
and the type of content. Also, avoid calculations
which simply count increased numbers of pixels
or frame rates in the source content.
In a 6-8MHz RF channel it is most likely that
two UHD services could be delivered well using
real-time encoding. This means that the upper
limit using HEVC will be about 18-20 Mbps per
service. However, it is possible to go much lower
than that - even as low as 10 Mbps with
acceptable results. If the encoding infrastructure
is virtualised, optimisations around the HEVC
toolbox will only accelerate.
Q&AC
isco
’s n
ick
Th
exto
n
Goran Nastic spoke with Nick Thexton, VP & CTO of service provider video software solutions at Cisco, finding him in a bullish mood around the HEVC beauty contests taking place
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