Revenues of broadcast (linear) encoders are expected to decline by 21% in the distribution market and by 10% in the contribution market over the next 5 years, a new report from Futuresource Consulting has found.
OTT services are taking off with increased rates of growth driven by more content, more devices, more subscribers and more advertisers. In the last 12 months alone, OTT has grown to $9-12 billion in global revenues, with $1.9 billion of those revenues coming from emerging markets, according to a report from PWC. Viewers are slowly but steadily cutting the cord on traditional cable services in favor of broadband connections and OTT services, driving a new living room plus mobile experience.
Sharing of passwords to services like Netflix and HBO Go among friends and family is costing the OTT video industry $500 million a year in the US alone, according to a report by Parks Associates. The report emphasizes that both content redistribution and credential sharing are growing as fast as the OTT video industry as a whole and will need a variety of measures to keep theft under control.
Contribution networks traditionally involved either leased or occasional use dedicated video circuits. The issue with both is the inherent expense, as the video circuit could only be used by a broadcast production, so for most of the time the investment was lying idle.
A seismic shift in the media-consumption landscape means that a growing number of viewers will be looking to enjoy the 2016 Olympics on a variety of devices, in multiple resolutions and all in real time.
Under a FCC experimental broadcast license, Tribune Broadcasting’s WJW-TV is providing a DTV transmitter, tower and 6-MHz channel for ATSC 3.0-related field testing in Cleveland. Field tests of key elements of ATSC 3.0 have been underway since mid-May by a collaboration of LG Electronics, Zenith R&D Lab and GatesAir.
Broadcasters used to predominantly deliver SD and HD linear content. Today, consumer expectations for high-quality video on every screen, including on-demand, have propelled the industry toward adopting a more flexible and efficient approach to video production and distribution.
IP video over Wi-Fi provided a solid new signal transport solution at a fraction of most wireless link costs. Wi-Fi was easy. The challenge was finding available devices to convert camera HDMI into IP for Wi-Fi transport, and decoders to convert IP back to HDMI for the production switcher.