There are more than 2.7 million adverts for devices that play out illegal streams of live content on e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba according to research by Irdeto. The value of the billions of dollars broadcasters and content owners spend on live sports and entertainment content is undermined by online piracy. Because of this, pay TV services have become more expensive than ever before because they need to compete for viewers and subscribers while spending huge amounts on media rights.
Implementation of software in public clouds might not be as straightforward as it seems. Outdated software licensing models restrict one of the fundamental advantages of cloud systems, that is their ability to grow and shrink as the dynamics of the business demands, sometimes by the hour.
Industry watchers will be analysing the latest product releases at CES to see where consumer technology is heading. For the broadcast sector, UHD and HDR featured heavily amongst the TV-related releases at CES 2017. Still wary after the failure of 3D to take TV viewing by storm, will UHD prove more successful? Early indications are that it will, especially when there are no worries about losing expensive eyewear down the back of the sofa. Through this series I take a look at acquisition through to delivery for UHD content.
Aesthetically pleasing 3D titles and graphics are integral to providing the wow factor that keeps today’s broadcast viewers glued to the screen. These visual elements—including 3D and 2D titles, animated graphics and real-time data-driven overlays—provide the vital contextual information that enables viewers to fully appreciate and understand the events they are watching.
In the last article, we looked at the monitoring packet delay in real-time. In this article, we continue the theme of looking at a network from a broadcast engineers’ point of view so they can better communicate with the IT department, and look at FEC (Forward Error Correction).
It’s hard to comprehend just how much television has changed in the short amount of time it’s been around. Less than ten years ago the only place to watch television was in your living room, and the only programmes to watch were the ones the broadcasters scheduled in. Fast forward to today, and it’s an entirely different world. You can watch TV anywhere with an internet connection via smartphones, tablets and laptops, and there’s an almost infinite amount of choice thanks to online streaming and video-on-demand services.
European cable operators are ending 2016 in good health but reliant on broadband subscribers to maintain modest revenue growth as TV business stagnates or declines. This is a key finding of the 2016 European Broadband Cable Yearbook published by analytics group IHS Markit and Cable Europe, the European cable trade association.
European countries, especially the UK, Ireland and Spain, are leading a global explosion in online sports viewing via mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. This has been confirmed by Australian Telco Telstra’s Q3 2016 Global Video Index based on analysis of online viewing by 220 million people around the world.
