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http://www.cirmagazine.com

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




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


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.”


UHD supplementS

pons

ored

by

:

Source: Credit Suisse; Deloitte, IHS

2017 100+2020 200+2025 1,000+

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


UHD supplement

Spo

nsor

ed b

y:

UHD in action in Glasgow as part of BBC’s Future Broadcast System work




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

:

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


http://www.hdwarrior.co.uk/2014/08/01/bbc-rd-at-the-commonwealth-games-2014/

http://www.hdwarrior.co.uk/2014/08/01/bbc-rd-at-the-commonwealth-games-2014/



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

Virtualised processing



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