A new generation of CDN technologies and services is being driven along by the gathering boom in mobile video consumption fuelled by larger smartphones and tablets in particular. This is leading to CDNs designed to meet the specific needs of mobile video services, which include catering for multiple device formats through repackaging and bypassing the limited backhaul infrastructure on many mobile networks by pre-pushing content to edge nodes closer to the users. This in turn is encouraging use of software defined CDNs that can be deployed readily on existing equipment such as routers, caching servers and also the radio towers in mobile cells.
Dedicated hardware servers running fully integrated software have long formed the preferred technical solution for broadcasters’ playout. Easy to install, configure and operate, they continue to be the preferred choice for any new broadcast channel. They are highly compact, easy to maintain and extremely cost-efficient. Additional channels can be added almost overnight.
Broadcasters and content owners tend to look at the world of television and advertising as divided into linear and non-linear. The two models do have much in common; content, monetization, tracking, and invoicing, for example. However, there are clear differences between broadcast and targeted-delivery models; the use of indirect versus qualified and specific viewer data. And, of course the distribution platforms are different.
Today’s European TV landscape is burgeoning, providing a bountiful and vibrant business environment for broadcasters, operators and content owners. Once available, this high quality content is met by a clear willingness from viewers to pay for the privilege of access, further bolstering a TV industry that is valued at upwards of $130 billion annually (iDate).
Broadcasting and telecoms have had a long relationship, one that in recent years has become closer and more symbiotic. But there is one area where the two clash head on: radio spectrum. This is a vital resource for not just television and radio transmission but also the production of entertainment shows and outside broadcasts today, which relies heavily on wireless microphones and cameras, in-ear monitors (IEMs) and mobile communications. Parallel to this is the ever-growing demand from mobile phone companies for frequencies to support video streaming and wireless telephony as well as telephony.
The DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is already plotting its future course as its VidiPath certification programme aimed at guaranteeing device conformance with subscription TV services gets going. A major future focus will be second screens, both for interacting with and controlling primary services, according to DLNA Director Stephen Palm.
Forensic watermarking is the key to combating OTT stream piracy. Anyone who has attended a seminar on video security over the last year cannot fail to have noticed that content redistribution over the Internet is set to overtake traditional control word sharing as the biggest single piracy threat to premium content. This has been borne out by events, with some OTT premium sports services finding that as much as 50% of their “customers” do not have a legitimate subscription. Instead they have either bypassed security controls directly or accessed a pirated stream that they may have paid for, or that may instead carry advertising.
WinMedia, vendor of content management software for broadcasters, and Orange’s media services company Globecast, have agreed to integrate and distribute each other’s technologies. The tools to prepare, plan and playout the content encompassed in WinMedia solutions have been combined with Globecast’s satellite delivery platform. Six leading TV channels in North and West Africa already use this package.
