OTT services are at the front line of competition for both traditional broadcasters or video service providers and emerging players, all seeking to exploit changing consumer viewing habits driven in turn by improving quality on connected devices.
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While viewers shift their focus from traditional linear TV broadcast to online viewing, the OTT space is growing rapidly. The Accenture report “The Future of Broadcasting V” claims that “TV viewing on traditional platforms is declining at an accelerated pace,” while OTT and IPTV viewing is on the rise. An ABI Research report published in January predicted that live-linear OTT services alone would grow to about $7 billion in global revenue by 2021, up from about $1 billion in 2016.
Since the start of the millennium, TV and video services have changed enormously. Along with the changes to the content itself, the infrastructure used to create, process and deliver that content has also changed. However, the rate of transformation is about to increase significantly, with radical changes to multiple facets happening concurrently. The first digital TV services were Standard Definition (SD) and encoded as MPEG-2. Since then, there has been a major shift towards HD, mostly in MPEG-4 AVC and now the early stages of Ultra-High Definition (UHD) using the latest compression standard: High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). Already some SD services are starting to be discontinued and, where SD is still needed, down-conversion from HD is becoming the norm. As each major technology shift is expensive – in terms of content creation, production and consumer devices – it therefore makes sense to have steps where there is a meaningful value resulting from a combination of changes that can occur together.
The UEFA claims that its European Under-21 Championship Final held in Krakow, Poland, was the first in the world to deliver uncompressed ultra HD remote signals over a long distance at low latency. Snell Advanced Media (SAM) delivered a complete Proof of Concept (POC) IP-based remote production system, working together with system’s integrator Gearhouse Broadcast. Live UHD signals from five Sony HDC 4300 4K/HD cameras at the stadium were sent via a specially installed and commissioned pair of fully redundant 100GB Ethernet links.
Is the TV industry due for the next big thing?
The new SOMAP (Satellite Operator’s Minimum Antenna Performance) specification is now close to gaining widespread acceptance by the global satellite industry following its endorsement by the Space Data Association (SDA).
Competition in pay TV will drive rapid growth in the video analytics market to reach $3.7 billion by 2022, more than double the $1.8 billion of 2017.
