As 5G mobile networks become more ubiquitous, the Broadcast and OTT industries are looking to leverage the technology’s speed and low-latency advantages for the management and distribution of live content. Tech companies too are now leveraging cloud-based, edge computing services like AWS Wavelength and Google Compute Engine on the AT&T and Verizon 5G network edge to power their own software platforms and help content providers deliver live streamed sports and entertainment events.
During the DTV transition, we chief engineers in the Kansas City market joked about broadcasting the most popular cable channels on our new ATSC 1.0 digital subchannels and running the local MVPDs out of business. Station owners weren’t interested because ATSC 1.0 had no provisions for subscriber broadcasting. ATSC 3.0 does.
In a time of social distancing, video professionals have turned to technology that allows them to work remotely yet collaboratively over a secure Internet connection. This remote production strategy has helped production and postproduction companies as well as video streaming, enabling service providers to set up and automatically distribute files to their desired destinations.
German pay TV operator Sky Deutschland has combined with Spanish telco Telefonica for 5G Broadcast of a live sports event from camera to client, claiming this to be a first for Europe.
TV audience measurement has been moving steadily from households to individuals in line with the decline in family viewing around the big screen and rise in OTT consumption on connected devices.
As the number of channels for OTT delivery continues to grow, monitoring these channels in a highly automated way has become paramount to ensuring a good Quality of Experience for the viewer. To deliver QoE that’s as good as linear TV broadcasts, the entire system—from ingest to multi-bitrate encoding to delivery to CDN—must be monitored continuously.
The complexity of modern OTT and VOD distribution has increased massively in recent years. The adoption of internet streaming gives viewers unparalleled freedom to consume their favorite live and pre-recorded media when they want, where they want, and how they want. But these opportunities have also presented content owners with unfortunate challenges, typically piracy and overcoming illegal content copying.
With the proliferation of Ethernet networks and computers in the video world, many media companies are replacing traditional dedicated video links like satellite and microwave with Ethernet-based infrastructures. This is being done for internal contribution applications as well as for delivering content directly to the consumer.
