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Transcript of TVBE June 2015 Digital Edition
www.tvbeurope.com
June 2015Business, insight and intelligence for the media and entertainment industry
Exclusive interview: Thomas RiedelThe IOC’s Olympic archive
Communications forum
NAB retrospectiveSatellite | Audio | M&A
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TVBEurope 3June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
I am very fond of executive interviews. I have always
been keen to understand how companies operate,
how strategies are defi ned, how philosophies are
born. Much of that rests with those at the helm of
the boardroom, with responsibility thrust into the
hands of the chief executive. Despite my fondness
for this series of features, it doesn’t go unnoticed that
tête-à-têtes of this manner are often of a familiar
prototype: strategy, growth, trends…you get the
picture. Hardly ever do they naturally trickle over
into what we would deem as ‘real life’, and almost
never do they touch on ‘life’ itself.
That’s why I found my trip to the German
town of Wuppertal to spend time at the Riedel
Communications HQ with its eponymous founder
such a refreshing experience. We discussed
strategy, and growth, and milestones, and all of
the things typical of a discussion with a brand’s
driving force, but the underlying context was
one of perspective, of understanding business’
place in the much grander tapestry of...without
sounding all gushy and arty-farty…life.
It was a human conversation with a human
being, and it was humbling to hear the story of this
company’s foundation and fruition being delivered
in such an emotionally charged, and passionate
fashion. After all, Thomas Riedel is an entertainer at
heart, and the feature interview on page 26 tracks
his journey from magician to entrepreneur. It’s a
great insight into the entrepreneurial mindset.
As I mention in the article,
the blurred lines of work
and life are common to
such creators: those who
give birth to enterprise and
position their livelihoods
around the consequences.
It requires balance and
it requires the bravery to
embrace risk. Riedel’s
position on all of this is well worth reading.
Elsewhere this issue, we continue our MAM
Leaders’ Series coverage with part two of
our write up from March’s roundtable, held in
association with Avid. We also refl ect on NAB
2015, and what there was to learn from the worlds
of satellite, audio for broadcast, and the M&A
landscape. Mergers and acquisitions is also the
subject of Joshua Stinehour’s article in our Opinion
and Analysis section, as he goes into detail on
some of the most recent business transactions.
Finally, we’re gearing up for TVBEurope Strategy
Week, taking place from 29 June to 3 July 2015. We
now have a number of events confi rmed for the
week, and you can fi nd more details on page 25 of
this issue. Be sure to book your tickets for the week’s
centrepiece conference, TVBEurope 2020.
I hope to see you at BAFTA.
James McKeownExecutive Editor
From the pace of Vegas to the peace of Wuppertal
Welcome
The strategic balance of work and life
EDITORIALExecutive Editor - James [email protected] - Melanie [email protected] Staff Writer - Holly [email protected] Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England +44 207 354 6002Contributors - Chris Forrester, David Fox, David Davies, Dick Hobbs, John Ive, George Jarrett, Adrian Pennington, Philip Stevens, Catherine Wright, Ian McMurrayHead of Digital - Tim FrostHuman Resources & Offi ce Manager - Lianne DaveyHead of Design - Jat GarchaEditorial Production Manager - Dawn Boultwood
Senior Production Executive - Alistair TaylorPublisher - Steve [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Sales Manager - Ben [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Account Manager - Richard [email protected]+44 207 354 6000Managing Director - Mark BurtonUS Sales - Michael MitchellBroadcast Media International, PO Box 44, Greenlawn, New York, NY [email protected]+1 (631) 673 0072Japan and Korea Sales - Sho HariharaSales & Project, Yukari Media [email protected]+81 6 4790 2222 Fax: +81 6 4793 0800CirculationNewBay Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, LE16 9EF, UK
Free [email protected] Tel +44 1580 883848
TVBEurope is published 12 times a year by NewBay Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London, N1 8LN, England
NewBay Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association
© NewBay Media 2015. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owners. TVBEurope is mailed to qualifi ed persons residing on the European continent. Subscription is free.
Allow 8 weeks for new subscriptions and change of address delivery. Send subscription inquiries to: Subscription Dept, NewBay Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough LE16 7BR, England. ISSN 1461-4197
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In this issue4 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
James McKeown fl ies out to Wuppertal, Germany for a heart to heart with magician-turned-DJ-turned-entrepreneur Thomas Riedel, the founder and CEO of Riedel Communications
NAB retrospective26 318Opinion and Analysis
23 TVBEverywhere
Adrian Pennington reports on the International Olympic Committee’s digitisation of its vast audio visual archive
16 An Olympic undertaking
Will Big Data save the broadcast industry? Niko Waesche, global lead of the media and entertain-ment industry at Gfk , fi nds out
48 Data Centre
Leaders continue MAM discussion
12Melanie Dayasena-Lowe picks up the discussion in part two of our coverage of the MAM Leaders’ Series roundtable event at The Shard in central London, held in association with Avid
Ian McMurray, David Davies, and Russell Grute report from this year’s NAB Show 2015, exploring the latest from the worlds of satellite, audio for broadcast, and M&A activity
42From beltpacks to digital matrix technology, comms covers a wide range of products and innovations. Philip Stevens moderates this month’s forum with experts from the sector
Communications forum
It’s a kind of magic
Mergers and acquisitions: a sector analysis. Joshua Stinehour, principal analyst at Devoncroft Partners, provides a detailed insight of the industry’s recent business transactions
Holly Ashford reports from April’s TV Connect in London, where the talk centred on the future of hybrid OTT services
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Opinion and Analysis6 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
L TE is becoming a crucial topic for the broadcast
industry as the fight to protect market share
in an increasingly competitive environment
heats up. As a result, the broadcast sector is actively
exploring the possibilities of using LTE services to
deliver new offerings to mobile consumers. Beyond
the mobile play, however, LTE is also introducing new
competitive dynamics for delivering entertainment
services to the home, by adding a new alternative
to cable, fibre, DSL and satellite services.
To be successful in this environment, broadcasters
will have to review the way their current customers
access programming, and make sure that plans
are in place to hold on to a viewership that expects
their content to move seamlessly from at-home flat-
screen TVs to an array of portable devices, as well
as from their home environments to any place they
want – or need – to be.
In short, LTE technology is not just a mobile
entertainment opportunity for broadcasters: it may
play a critical role in serving a core market of
at-home consumers.
Accessing an untapped household market According to analysts at ABI Research, some
1.26 billion households do not have DSL, cable,
or fibre optic broadband. As a result, fixed and
mobile telcos are looking for LTE to close that
broadband access gap. As we closed 2014, the
research firm estimates that 14.5 million residential
and commercial premises used LTE technology as
the primary vehicle for broadband access. By 2019,
that figure could go as high as 123 million.
In addition to the emergence of LTE-to-
the-Home (LTE-TTH), network service providers
(NSPs) are exploring new enhancements to
specifically optimise their wireless infrastructures for
entertainment services. For instance, LTE Broadcast
technology is being honed to distribute content,
such as live events and media, to a wide audience
at home and on the go. These technology and
market developments are increasingly seen by
NSPs – especially pure-play mobile operators – as a
very attractive new market and revenue stream.
For broadcasters, these developments are
disruptive. LTE may represent a threat to existing
business models because consumers will have
new ways to access high-quality content. This
could create headaches for broadcasters that do
not figure out how to feed programming through
new LTE channels.
This explains why a number of forward-
thinking broadcasters were represented at this
year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to
review an early demonstration of LTE Broadcast
technology from Technicolor and Ericsson. While
this particular technology is not yet ready for the
kind of on-demand consumption that consumers
clearly want, it is now evident that the bandwidth
capabilities offered by LTE are evolving rapidly to
support broadcast quality traffic. It therefore offers
great promise to the future for seamless delivery
of entertainment services across the spectrum of
home-based and mobile devices.
Broadcasters who are not already doing so may
want to explore new business relationships with
operators of LTE-TTH infrastructures, and work out
what – if any – technical adjustments (such as
compression to handle next generation content
like UHD, HDR, etc) may need to be made so that
high-quality programming can be delivered via LTE.
From a competitive standpoint, it may well
be that the internet-friendly OTT providers are
better positioned to take advantage of LTE-TTH
than traditional broadcasters. But in classic ‘if
you cannot beat them, join them’ fashion, many
broadcasters are already making major moves
to adopt and add OTT models of operation for
their own purposes. LTE-TTH may just be another
reason to continue, or accelerate, this shift.
LTE accelerates NSPs’ search for content partners For NSPs in general, and pure-play mobile
operators in particular, the adoption of LTE-
TTH strategies may require a fundamental
re-evaluation of the kinds of business and
technology relationships needed to meet the
extremely high expectations of consumers who
demand high-quality entertainment services.
It is not enough to just provide connectivity from
the central office to the home. NSPs will have to
carefully think through the experience consumers
will have to manage inside their homes. Most
consumers will be unable to distinguish problems
originating in the wireless local-area network (LAN)
from those originating in the wireless wide-area
network (WAN). Thus, operators must do what
satellite, cable, DSL and fibre service providers
have done – which is to take responsibility for
offering customer service assistance and technical
support across both environments.
There is a continuum of bandwidth that must
be managed in order to maintain a continuum
of quality as traffic crosses Wi-Fi and LTE networks
at consumers’ homes. Also, within the home,
attention must be paid to antenna design and
management to ensure maximum performance
and service availability. The right equipment
and technical expertise has to be in place and
effectively applied to deliver a consistent and
positive consumer experience.
Conclusion The era of consumer choice over how to access
rich content experiences has never been more
exciting. New developments in LTE technology
are making it possible to deliver a growing
portfolio of entertainment services to devices
across LTE and Wi-Fi environments. Beyond
addressing the unserved broadband access
market, LTE-TTH also raises the prospect of new
alternatives for consumers who may not be
happy with current cable, fibre, DSL or satellite
providers. The specifics of how these new
technological and competitive dynamics play
out remain to be seen. However, it seems clear
that the broadcast community will be well served
to take a comprehensive and integrated look at
the impact LTE will have on their business.
The LTE alternativeLTE technology alters the competitive landscape for delivering broadcast services to consumers, writes Olivier Lafontaine, director of strategy and product management, Technicolor
‘It may well be that the internet-friendly OTT providers are better positioned to take advantage of LTE-TTH than
traditional broadcasters’
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Opinion and Analysis8 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a
popular topic in the media technology
sector. Announced transactions lend
themselves to speculation on the motives of
the buyers and sellers, along with the outcome
of a given combination – and there has been
much to discuss.
Figures from the IABM DC Global Market
Valuation Report1 confirm there were a record
number of transactions in the sector for each
of the successive calendar years 2012, 2013,
and 2014. The heightened levels of activity
reflect practical business realities confronted
by executives in the sector including a limited
market for initial public offerings, mature
growth levels in many market segments, and
the challenge of achieving an appropriate
economic scale of operations. A review
of recent M&A transactions highlights
these topics.
Public to private Occurring within a week of each other during
November 2014, broadcast graphics suppliers
Vizrt and ChyronHego both announced
going-private transactions, where a private
equity sponsor purchased a majority of the
outstanding share equity to remove the
respective companies from the public markets.
Scandinavian private equity firm Nordic Capital
closed its acquisition of Vizrt on 19 March 2015,
and San Francisco-based Vector Capital
closed its acquisition of ChyronHego on 6
March 2015. Part of the stated rationale for
both transactions was an ability to support
future add-on acquisitions. In the case of Vizrt,
CEO Martin Burkhalter told Devoncroft Partners,
“Nordic Capital is very committed to support
our growth strategy going forward.
Being a privately owned company opens up
for accelerated growth opportunities through,
amongst others, future acquisitions that support
our long-term strategy.”
Two observations for each of these
transactions inform an analysis of M&A in
the sector. First, M&A is viewed as necessary
to augment the growth strategies of each
organisation. Second, the management teams
of both ChyronHego and Vizrt believe growth
strategies are preferable to execute as a
private company.
Beginning with the second observation, small
public companies reside in an unenviable
twilight, enduring all the expense and
responsibility of a public market listing, while
enjoying few of the benefits.
Public market investors are interested in large,
cash generating businesses and small companies
with exceptional growth. This is the cold reality.
Great technology, high-profile customers,
best-in-class customer service, and a host of
other beneficial sale points do not factor into
the public market investor decision unless and
until it manifests in sustained cash generation or
exceptional levels of growth.
Vizrt achieved record full year 2014 revenue of
$141.5 million, and ChyronHego was anticipating
reaching a 2014 sales level of $59.0 million, which
would have represented 24 per cent year-over-
year growth.
Even though both vendors are large and
well known in the sector, this level of annual
revenue is small for institutional investors.
Though both companies were generating
strong levels of revenue growth versus market
growth rates, this level of growth was similarly
not compelling for the public markets. In the
spring of 2014, Vizrt traded at EBITDA (Earnings
Before Interest Depreciation and Amortisation)
valuation levels of approximately eight times
(to enterprise value), while at the same time
the broader NASDAQ traded at EBITDA levels of
approximately 15 times.
While not aligned with public market investor
preferences, there is direct alignment with the
investment preferences of private equity firms
such as Nordic Capital, Vector Capital and
many others. These organisations exist – in many
respects – to profit from the market inefficiency
for technology vendors of a given size and
growth profile.
Private equity firms are not providing a public
service; these are savvy commercial entities
seeking investment returns. One recent example
is Telestream’s acquisition by GenStar Capital in
January 2015. Telestream had been owned by
M&A activity A sector review
By Joshua Stinehour, principal analyst at Devoncroft Partners
#justsaying
@wts_broadcast
Our systems team has built over 50 Outside Broadcast vehicles in the last five years.
Opinion and Analysis10 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
private equity firm Thoma Bravo since December
2011. Rumours suggesting an expedited sale
at depressed levels were without substance.
Speaking at a 2015 NAB Show briefing, Telestream
CEO Dan Castle stated in unambiguous terms,
“Thoma Bravo achieved more than the firm’s
investment return goals with Telestream in less
than the firm’s typical holding period.”
Constrained growth Returning to the observation of growth strategies
benefiting from add-on acquisitions, despite every
management team’s best efforts not every vendor
can grow faster than the market. In this way, every
vendor’s growth rates are constrained by the
growth of the underlying market segments. During
the annual IABM breakfast at the recent NAB
Show, IABM CEO Peter White provided excerpts
from the latest IABM DC Global Market Valuation
report on product category growth rates. In
aggregate, product revenue in the sector was
actually slightly negative for the calendar years
2012 through 2014. Management teams desiring
material levels of growth will therefore either need
to take market share from competitors or expand
into higher growth market segments.
Many vendors have successfully leveraged
M&A transactions to accelerate organic initiatives.
Blackmagic Design has completed five acquisitions
to add to its product portfolio. Ross Video has
acquired seven businesses since 2012 to help
enable its 21st, 22nd, and now 23rd consecutive
years of growth. NEP’s worldwide fleet has grown
to over 110 HD outside broadcast units in part from
completing 12 (not a typo) acquisitions since 2012.
Ericsson has used a series of M&A transactions to
create one of the larger businesses in the sector,
with acquisitions ranging from cloud technology
provider Fabrix to large managed services provider
Red Bee Media. The precedent Harris Broadcast
division was the accumulation of more than 40
M&A transactions, and the subsequent Imagine
Communications has augmented its solution
offering with four separate acquisitions over the
past 18 months. Belden built its now largest division
– broadcast – through successive acquisitions of
Telecast, Miranda, and Grass Valley.
Operational scale There are financial merits from M&A activity
beyond supporting growth initiatives. On the
day before the 2015 NAB Show, Avid Technology
announced its planned acquisition of Orad
Technology. A review of the transaction
announcement showcases the tremendous
cost synergies and the related, tangible benefits
achieved from greater operational scale.
On an annual basis, Orad Technology was
spending 34 per cent of its revenue on sales
and marketing expense. Investors would
expect a substantially lower figure for a business
operating at appropriate scale. By contrast,
Avid Technology is spending a figure closer to
25 per cent of revenue on sales and marketing
expense. Avid and Orad attend the same
global trade shows and have overlapping
sales initiatives focused on targeting the same
potential customers. Avid’s management has
communicated a conservative figure of annual
savings of approximately $5 million. Expressed
in terms of the deal valuation, Avid purchased
Orad at an EBITDA valuation of approximately
seven and a half times, but when accounting
for expected cost synergies this figure is more
accurately restated to six times. Eliminating these
overlapping sales and marketing functions is a
proverbial ‘free lunch’.
‘While M&A is not always the most appropriate step for a technology vendor, in the current industry environment there are strong rationales for including M&A
in strategic planning’
Vendors: Sales executives on M&A – the seller’s perspective Source: Devoncroft 2014 Big Broadcast Survey
Cost synergies are especially acute in the media
technology sector given the relative size of the
vendors, global profile of customers, and long sales
cycle associated with large solution purchasers.
A simple but powerful example of the synergies
achieved through M&A was seen on the 2015
NAB show floor. For example, the Grass Valley
(Belden) booth at NAB 2015 was 9,900sqft.
Contrasted against the booth space at the NAB
Show ten years earlier (2005), all the precedent
firms acquired by the now Grass Valley
represented just under 32,000 square footage of
exhibition space. This is a reduction of nearly 75
per cent. This single sales and marketing synergy,
which represents only a small percentage of
total spend by industry vendors at large trade
shows, was on the order of $1 million (based on
the current price per square foot at the NAB
Show). The point is ‘bigger’ works for global sales,
marketing, and support operations.
Motivation Many may find it surprising that the number
one motivation of selling executives is, in fact,
the desire to obtain access to a greater sales
and distribution infrastructure. Devoncroft
Partners’ annual Big Broadcast Survey of the
media technology sector, which includes many
of the readers of TVBEurope, has asked senior
executives at technology vendors about the
rationale behind M&A activity. Responses from
senior executives making the decision to seek a
company sale are depicted in Figure 1.
In both 2013 and 2014, the principal reason
cited for engaging in a company sale initiative
was to obtain access to greater sales, marketing,
and distribution resources. Having developed
and matured technology solutions, it is a natural
evolution for a business to become part of a
large entity to accelerate customer adoption.
Even if you have a demonstrably better
technology solution, this is of no consequence
if a vendor does not possess the sales and
marketing organisation to reach customers, or
the professional service and support organisation
to manage a global footprint of customers. In
the press release announcing the Avid-Orad
transaction, Avi Sharir, CEO and president of
Orad, made this very point: “Avid’s global scale
and distribution network provide significant
opportunities for customer support, growth and
market expansion.”
M&A rationaleWhile M&A is not always the most appropriate
step for a technology vendor, in the current
industry environment there are strong rationales
for including M&A in strategic planning. And in
the aggregate, there is every expectation of
continued heightened activity since primary
catalysts persist including the inability to generate
investment from public equity markets, the need
for vendors to reach more appropriate levels
of scale, and the desire from executives to
accelerate growth strategies.
Ref: DC Global Market Valuation Report1
TVBEurope 11June 2014 www.tvbeurope.com
Opinion and Analysis
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12 TVBEurope
Continuing the discussion on security, Anil
Chaman, manager of technology at
Al Jazeera English Language Channel,
highlighted that assets are the most valuable part
of his business. “That’s what we produce and make
and that’s what costs a lot of money. Security and
trust are key, which is why we’re not into the cloud
and won’t be for the foreseeable future.”
But what about secure services from a
dedicated supplier, asked moderator Jeremy
Bancroft? For instance, he cited trusted suppliers
like Signiant and Aspera, which are used for
transporting content around the world.
TV 2 Denmark’s head of TV projects and
deputy manager Kjeld Skovlund believes it
goes in two directions. “Using cloud services is a
question of functionality and price. I don’t have
an issue with relying on Aspera. Moving into the
cloud, whatever we all do, can be done by one
company in the cloud because that is all they do.
“On the other hand, where I see the role
of my staff in the future is to understand the
business processes within our facility and be able
to refl ect on new wishes and changes in the
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe picks up the discussion in part two of our coverage of the MAM Leaders’ Series roundtable event at The Shard in central London, held in association with Avid. Jeremy Bancroft leads the discussion that includes Anil Chaman, manager of technology at Al Jazeera English Language Channel; Paul Clennell, CTO, dock10; Francesco Donato, VP broadcast operations, Sky Deutschland; Craig Dwyer, senior director, Global Center of Excellence, Avid; Tom Evetts, regional sales director, northern Europe, Avid; Rod Fairweather, senior director of infrastructure and media technology, Viacom; Jouni Frilander, portfolio manager, media systems technology and development at Yle;
Kevin McCue, senior manager of technical operations for Sky Post Production; David Shield, senior vice president, global director of engineering and technology, IMG Sports Media; Kjeld Skovlund, head of TV projects and deputy manager, TV 2 Denmark; Chris Whatmore, MAM product owner and senior business analyst, Sky
in association with
www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
The MAM debate continues
IMG’s David Shield offers his perspective
The London skyline provided a dramatic backdrop to the day’s discussion
“We write our requirements or specifi cations and we have a manufacturer who wants to deliver this project. I want a basic functionality that can grow with me and my company and then have a working
relationship with that manufacturer” Kjeld Skovlund, TV 2 Denmark
organisation and production. That has to change
over a few weeks and we’ve tried a number
of manufacturers who say we can change our
processes in a quick way but usually it takes two
to fi ve months. We need it to take two to fi ve
weeks,” he remarked.
The conversation then moved on to how
the industry looks for the right product and
manufacturer. Bancroft posed the question:
“When we go out and specify what we need,
whether it be MAM or production platforms,
we’re gathering information from our users
and stakeholders and people driving that line
of business. We write a list of requirements and
typically people go out to the market and say ‘we
want you to do this’. Is that the right approach?”
Skovlund believes this is where the industry
needs to change. “We write our requirements
or specifi cations and we have a manufacturer
who wants to deliver this project. I want a basic
functionality that can grow with me and my
company and then have a working relationship
with that manufacturer.”
TVBEurope 13June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
in association with
Sky Deutschland’s Francesco Donato
in association with
Rod Fairweather, senior director of infrastructure
and media technology for Viacom, said: “I’m
looking at MAM as an infrastructure rather than
application and it’s a fundamentally different
way of looking at it.”
With reference to terminology, Avid’s
Craig Dwyer, senior director, Global Center
of Excellence, said: “When you look at MAM
more as a utility or more generic it makes more
sense than when you try to apply it to a specifi c
business or operational use.”
Fairweather added that when basing MAM
on today’s absolute needs, by the time it is
delivered it will be out of date and won’t service
the necessary requirements. “We really need to
look at it as a much more agile platform that
allows us to add or take things away. That’s
the kind of fl exibility we need to be building-in.
We need to understand it from an operational,
engineering and business point of view.”
Sky’s Chris Whatmore, MAM product owner
and senior business analyst, said the model isn’t
too different from the traditional method of
buying a studio from a systems integrator rather
than a manufacturer if you want to do it yourself.
“As this becomes more mature, one would
hope you get better interoperability and
adopt that model again.”
Bancroft returned to the question of how to
specify what is needed. “Should we come up
with a list of huge requirements and expectations
and go to these vendors and say ‘will you build
this for us?’ Is that really the right approach?
Or should we pick something we think has
capabilities and ask what it can do? Do I have
to adapt what I do?”
At Viacom, Fairweather admitted that there
isn’t one application that does everything it
needs. “We have chosen to separate workfl ow
from asset management as much as possible.
We deliver to 100 different platforms. I don’t
want to be tied in to one supplier. You end up
with a multi-layered workfl ow environment. It
gives us the ability to build workfl ows quickly
and still have the granular control to do
what we want.”
“So, does that mean every major media
enterprise needs a signifi cant developer
department to keep itself ticking over?”
asked Bancroft.
Fairweather agreed since Viacom has
a developer pool, which it uses to create
social media interactions on screen such
as Twitter battles on its MTV and Comedy
Central channels. Bancroft asked if it involves
a different level of development compared to
developing infrastructure. Fairweather would
argue that it’s not that far different.
“Our developers don’t necessarily
understand a huge deal about TV but at
the developer level you need to be quite
precise about what you need them to do. Our
developers are less TV specialists; they’re closer
to being proper developers. Our workfl ow
engineers have much more of an idea of how
the whole TV operation works: i.e. where the likes
of compliance and QC sit.”
14 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Sky Post Production’s Kevin McCue enters theanimated debate
Rod Fairweather delivers Viacom’s insight
“I’m looking at MAM as an infrastructure rather than application and it’s a
fundamentally different way of looking at it”
Rod Fairweather, Viacom
TVBEurope 15June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
During the time Chaman was working at Channel
4, the broadcaster developed its own scheduling
system. “It was almost like a proof of concept.
There weren’t manufacturers out there making
automation systems so we decided to do it
ourselves,” he commented.
Although IMG Sports Media doesn’t have a
development team yet, David Shield, senior vice
president, global director of engineering and
technology, said his company is moving in that
direction. “We’ve just made a very bold step of
moving our whole separate broadcast IT team
to co-join them with corporate IT. So far, it’s
working quite nicely.”
Chaman, from Al Jazeera English Language
Channel, agreed: “I think the nature of the
systems means cross-scaling has to happen.”
At Yle, the large IT department was outsourced
a few years back and Bancroft asked if there
were any plans to bring the skill back in-house.
“We are more and more trying to work through
partners. Some are local IT companies and
some are non-vendors. We have very few of our
own developers. We try to concentrate on our
core business. There are some signs that it would
be more meaningful to have some of our own
developers,” explained Jouni Frilander, portfolio
manager, media systems technology and
development at the Finnish broadcaster.
Moving the discussion on, Bancroft opened up
the debate to fi nd out the biggest lessons learnt
from implementing MAM systems.
Sky’s Whatmore pointed out the difference
in opinions between business leaders and users.
He explained that business leaders are often
concerned with fi nancial effi ciency while users
may focus on the functionality required to do the
job they’re doing now. His advice: “Don’t listen
to too many people. Choose carefully who you
listen to for those requirements when building out
your workfl ow, otherwise you won’t get the full
benefi t of what you’re trying to achieve. Adding
too much complexity by trying to provide too
much to too many people at once can add
signifi cant risk to the success of a project.”
Fairweather from Viacom echoed the view of
minimising the number of people you consult.
“We need to pluck important bits of information
from users and work out which bits need to
be discarded because it’s no longer relevant.
We need to have an understanding of what
technology could provide, plus get a mix in the
middle. Getting that right is a challenge.”
Kevin McCue, senior manager of technical
operations for Sky Post Production, highlighted
one of the challenges: “When you’re talking
specifi cally about the enrichment of metadata,
the biggest problem you have is that the
user will take the quickest route to get the job
done. It’s the users we’re relying on to make
this thing work. A lot of the problems we’ve got
from manufacturers is that the UX isn’t thought
about properly. “We’re all trying to achieve more
automation to make everything happen in the
background seamlessly,” he continued. “In Sky
post production, we’re moving rapidly towards
entertainment and to get to this utopia where
we have automated ingest. IT all falls down at
the fi rst step due to the user because the camera
manufacturer has made it too diffi cult for users to
get the metadata off them.”
This in turn raised the question of RFID, GPS
and geo-tagging as possible solutions. It also
highlighted the important issue of training. Bancroft
asked, “Do we have to train people better and
make them understand the bigger picture and
why the camera metadata is important?”
Fairweather agreed that training has become
a major issue. “We all recognise this. In the
industry we used to have cameramen who
spent years training to be a cameraman, but
now the moment you leave college you’re a
cameraman, soundman, producer. Training
people on how to use a tripod, focus, frame,
expose, etc, is hard enough. To then train
people to the next level of data entry is very
diffi cult. We absolutely need to automate
things as much as possible. We know there are
tools that are going to help with that such as
language recognition, speech detection, and
shape recognition. It’s the reason we need
good quality digitisation.”
Skovlund from TV 2 Denmark was also in
agreement on the need for automation. “It’s
important we focus on auto enrichment of the
media. The amount of hours coming into our
systems is exploding and I can’t see any way of
us tying in metadata.”
Both TVBEurope and Avid would like to extend
their sincere thanks to all of the participants at
the MAM Leaders’ Series roundtable event.
Particular thanks go to our moderator Jeremy
Bancroft for expertly supervising and directing
the fl ow of discussion.
The MAM Leaders’ Series is a new thought
leadership initiative between TVBEurope and
Avid that unites authorities from around the
industry to offer insight on some of the key
challenges and areas of opportunity relating
to the management of assets. The latest
MAM Leaders’ Series blog can be found on
the TVBEurope website: http://www.tvbeurope.
com/mam-leaders-series-blog-bartosz-paprocki-
telewizja-polsat-sa/.
in association with
Kjeld Skovlund, TV 2 Denmark
“Don’t listen to too many people. Choose carefully who you listen to for those
requirements when building out your workfl ow, otherwise you won’t get the full
benefi t of what you’re trying to achieve” Chris Whatmore, Sky
The IOC has a proud history of innovations
ranging from the Technicolor film of London
1948, to the first HD test in 1984 in LA and
early video-to-mobile tests from the 2006 Winter
Games in Turin. However, an internal audit in 2006
revealed the alarming extent of the archive’s
deterioration. It found that within a decade,
half of the IOC’s 33,000 hours of video would be
unplayable, 20 per cent of its 400,000 stills would
have faded beyond use and there would no
longer be a player to listen to much of the 8,500
audio recordings.
The collection spans official films, technical
films, behind the scenes footage, unedited
broadcast rushes and newsreel collections.
The IOC has opened a new exhibition at the
Olympic Museum on the banks of Lake Geneva
in Lausanne to highlight the results of an SFR 30
million digitisation and logging effort.
Official film restorationBack in 2006, the 40 official olympic films were
in dire need of restoration with large pieces
missing and uncatalogued.
“I was informed that a century of Olympic
images was in danger of disappearing
irreversibly,” explained IOC president Jacques
Rogge who greenlit the digitisation programme
in 2007. “In the digital age it is vital to have a
digital version of this patrimony especially
if we want to promote the Olympic brand
around the world.” Less a highlights reel and
more an evocation of the spirit of each Games
and an artistic representation of the period,
the official films have attracted A-list directors
including Claude LeLouche, Milos Forman, Arthur
Penn, John Schlesinger and Mia Zetterling. “In
1912 the reels would have been shot, processed,
edited, packaged and sent to play in theatres
within a single day,” explained Adrian Wood,
IOC consultant, acquisition and restoration. The
original 16mm negative reels of the 1912 games
have been scanned to 4K and now provide a
remarkably detailed record.
Leni Riefenstahl’s controversial work Olympia,
documenting the 1936 Berlin Games is among
the restored pieces. “She was deeply unpopular
because she made propaganda for Hitler but
Workflow16 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
An Olympic undertaking: The IOC prepares for the next 100 years
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been pushing the boundaries of TV and media production ever since the Stockholm games in 1912, writes Adrian Pennington, yet no-one in the organisation was prepared for the catastrophic state in which its audio visual archive was found in 2006
Image credit: © 2012 Londres – Comité International Olympique (CIO)
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Workflow
also there was jealousy because her films are
among the most impressive of their type and
being made by a woman made her a tabloid
hate figure,” explained Kevin Brownlow, film
historian, documentary-maker and film editor
who met her in the 1980s to restore the footage.
Producer/director Caroline Rowland had to
fight to document London 2012 with an official
film. “London did not include provision for a film
in its charter,” she explained. “LOCOG weren’t
sure if it was a relevant addition to the legacy
of the Games. Given that there is so much multi-
screen coverage of the Games today that is a
legitimate question to ask.”
The solution that convinced the committee to
fund the project was to track the achievements
of first-time Olympians to chime with 2012’s
theme of inspiring a generation.
Until recently, the IOC has not involved itself
in the production of these films so it had no
ownership over the original elements, much of
which is spread worldwide in private collections.
The entire 1960 official film is still missing.
“We are not like a major studio which has all
negatives in house and can access the vaults,”
said Wood. “A lot of research went into finding
where those original elements might be. Different
cuts have been made for different audiences
which begs the question of what version to
restore when we find the films. And most of the
time we’ve no access to production records
which explains why changes were made, how
many versions and what the post production
methodology was. We are missing all of these
because we are not the producers of the films.”
However, restoration, digitisation and
comprehensive metadata logging of the
archive is now complete. For long-term archive,
the official films are preserved on new 35mm
polyester-based film stock with digital files
backed up to LTO tape. They are versioned in
2K and 4K DCP for theatrical presentation with
HD access copies for broadcast.
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the benchmark
“In the digital age it is vital to have a digital version of this patrimony
especially if we want to promote the Olympic brand around the world”
Jacques Rogge, IOC president
Workflow18 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
“We haven’t faced the 4K TV yet,” explained
Wood. “We’ll leave that problem for the
next generation.”
With the 2020 Games being broadcast in 8K
domestically in Tokyo the organisation is aware
of challenges ahead. “What is certain is that
we need more agility in archiving technology
to cope with the changes in format,” said Blaise
Chardonnens, IOC head of images services.
Olympic coverage challengesAll of this work is important not just as a legacy
but to form the backbone to a new Olympic
channel set to launch worldwide ahead of Rio
2016. It is one of a number of media strategies
the movement is spearheading in order to
reach younger audiences and maintain its
brand awareness in an age of digital distraction
and discovery. Other initiatives include a
new approach to how the IOC presents and
broadcasts the Games. The delivery of more
content to multi-screens has highlighted a
tension between traditional broadcaster-
directed or curated coverage and the
potential, and seemingly pent up demand
“What is certain is that we need more agility in archiving technology to cope with
the changes in format” Blaise Chardonnens,
IOC head of images services
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TVBEurope 19June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
for, individuals to compile and view their own
playlist on-demand of any and all aspects of
Olympic coverage.
“The ideology of all sports broadcasting has
changed from filming from the perspective of a
viewer in the stand to filming from an athlete’s
POV and to be as close as technically possible
to the action,” explained Yiannis Exarchos, CEO,
Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) citing the use
of tracking cameras for 100m or underwater
cams tracking swimmers.
“What has also changed is filming only once
the athletes are in the stadia to filming behind
the scenes of key preparation moments such
as the motivation of coaches, visualisation
in alpine skiing, or the mental and physical
preparation of athletes,” he said.
“There is now pressure to introduce more
wearable cameras into the field of play.
While today’s elite athletes are getting
used to this media jungle, we have to be
sensitive to introducing technology that
doesn’t interfere with the integrity of the
performance. Involvement of media in
sports competition is aggressive. We want to get
cameras closer to the athlete and even on the
athlete, but we have to respect the athlete.”
At Rio 2016, coverage will include wearable
cameras on equipment (track cycles, yachts)
and on referees (e.g. basketball). It is also
looking to use mini-cams on athletes during
training sessions in the run up to the games.
Body-worn health science sensors – such as
heart rate monitors – are also on the radar.
“Fundamentally, what we are doing with
broadcast coverage is storytelling that conforms
to classic Greek drama that has existed for
4,000 years,” said Exarchos, a Greek national.
“You need to define the characters and tell
the story of those characters, bring their story
to a resolution and experience a catharsis of
emotion as a result of that arc. What keeps
me awake at night is how we can integrate a
more democratic storytelling into coverage of a
sport event.” Following the 2014 winter games in
Sochi where more video was watched on digital
platforms that on linear channels for the first
time, the IOC has declared Rio will be the first
real multi-screen games.
“Broadcasters traditionally have been very
keen to control what is being produced and
for people to follow next the story they want to
tell,” explained Exarchos. “Today, everybody is a
storyteller. Everybody has capacity to produce
audio visual content. Integrating these elements
into an overarching narrative is, I believe,
the most important challenge for broadcast
storytelling in years to come.”
‘Following the 2014 winter games in Sochi where more video was watched
on digital platforms that on linear channels for the first time, the IOC has
declared Rio will be the first real multi-screen games’
How can satellite transmission compete
five or ten years down the line with high
bandwidth cable, especially in a country
like France, where politics is a huge part of the
equation? The French government has indeed
launched an ambitious programme aiming to get
all gaul homes connected to what it calls “very
high bandwidth” cable – meaning a connection
of at least 50Mbitps – by 2022, and has agreed
to put a massive wad of cash on the table to
finance the move: €20 billion over a ten-year
stretch, an amount financed by central and local
government, with some private money thrown in
as well. It’s a political decision that could well lead
to an important loss of market share for satellite
operator SES, in one of its major European markets.
At it currently stands, SES’s market share in
France has been steadily growing throughout the
years, no mean feat as more players compete
for a slice of the cake here than in most other
European countries. According to the company’s
yearly satellite monitor, a comprehensive study
of the satellite world market that has been in
commission since 1994, six million gaul homes
watch television thanks to an SES satellite. A
further breakdown of these figures reveals that in
2014, two million of these homes simply bought
a dish and used it to access digital terrestrial TV
programmes on a free basis. The remaining four
million paid for a subscription, either as Canal Plus
subscribers or Orange and SFR hybrid set-top box
owners, which number one million. But compared
with Great Britain and Germany, where SES
boasts 12 million and 18 customers respectively,
in France satellite can only claim a 23 per cent
share of the TV transmission market, as 40 per cent
of French viewers have opted for IPTV through
an ADSL connection.
One of the main drivers of SES’s business in
France has been, as in other European markets
and across the world, the huge increase in HD
viewing over the last five years. According to the
aforementioned monitor, 25 per cent of the 7,500
HD TV channels in the world are accessed by SES
satellites, amounting to 1,885 channels in 2014,
up from 1,202 channels in 2011. In France,
13.8 million homes are equipped to watch HD,
and DTH satellite represents 3.5 million of that total.
The lion’s share of the HD market, unsurprisingly, is
claimed by IPTV (6.3 million homes), but the other
providers have a lesser share than satellite, with HD
terrestrial coming third with 3.1 million homes, and
cable far behind with only 0.9 million.
So far, so good. But the prospect everyone is
getting excited about is Ultra HD. Speaking at a
Paris press fest, designed to drum up enthusiasm for
the new format and give an idea of the potential
it represents for SES business growth, Nick Stubbs,
the company’s vice president for Western Europe
hit the nail on the head: “We are convinced UHD
will drive our business forward in France and in
the world over the next five years, as more and
more TV sets are sold and operators as well as
broadcasters gradually endorse the format.”
The company has conducted a number of
trials with various broadcasters across Europe over
the last couple of years, thereby showing that it is
ready for and can handle UHD transmission now
for live events, with an average 25Mbitps capacity.
To date, Sky Deutschland is the only one to have
made any sort of public announcement about
the trial which involved the live transmission of a
Bundesliga football match in April last year. Little,
if any, information has emerged about the other
ones, which most certainly included Canal Plus in
France. Some press reports have hinted that the
gaul satcaster is preparing to launch 4K channels
towards the end of 2015. Canal Plus does not
confirm the rumours but admits it is testing the
technology: “We are conducting 4K tests on the
whole broadcasting chain with all the French
and European companies involved in that field of
technology,” a spokesperson admits.
Philippe Bailly, the head of NPA, a media and
telecoms consultancy, thinks the timing is ripe
for the format to take off in France, as consumer
demand begins to grow. “The indication we get
is that the French public is ready for UHD. We
interviewed and observed a number of consumers
at retail points across the country and they showed
Workflow20 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
SES makes a play for UHD in France
When will 4K become a market reality in France? For satellite operator SES, timing is crucial as it prepares to compete with very high bandwidth cable in an unequal fight, which on paper at least, seems to favour the latter. Catherine Wright reports
Nick Stubbs, SES Tom Cristophory, SES
TVBEurope 21June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Workflow
a real interest in the format and seem to fully
appreciate its benefits. Unlike what happened with
the introduction of HD, and the confusing signals
sent by the launching of HD-ready sets just before
the arrival of full HD ones, the marketing of UHD is
much better understood by the public.”
And the figures tend to bear him out. According
to estimates provided by consumer research
institute GfK, 800,000 4K TV sets will be sold in France
in 2015 as their price decreases under €1,000. That
is four times the number of 4K sets sold in 2014. Gfk
also indicates that 4K sets already represent 30 per
cent of the sales of 56-inch TV sets sold in France.
One of the most strategically savvy companies in
the gaul market, telco Free, is also hedging its bets
on the imminent take-off of the new format. In its
usual pioneering and flamboyant style, it launched
the first 4K set-top box in the market in February.
On the content side, Netflix, which started up in
France last autumn, has already announced that
it will be producing new gaul series Marseilles in 4K
and that 100 hours of its total 300 will be as well,
thereby putting pressure on other broadcasters to
compete. Even Blu-Ray discs will be available in 4K,
as a new standard has been adopted by the Blu-
Ray disc association in February. The good news for
consumers is that their current Blu-Ray players will
be able to read the new 4K Blu-Ray discs.
And for SES, timing is everything. If 4K becomes
a reality in France sooner rather than later, as
NPA believes, the satellite operator will have a
small window of opportunity to grab market share
before 2022, the target date set by French officials
for the widespread implementation of very high
bandwidth cable. “We are rearing to go. SES is
ready to broadcast 300 to 400 UHD channels from
one single orbital position as from now. We have
the right capacity, the wide coverage ability and
the reliability required for UHD. ADSL does not
have the bandwidth to compete and most digital
terrestrial operators will probably not have sufficient
financial clout to massively broadcast in UHD,” says
Tom Cristophory, the company’s senior manager
for sat/IP networks systems.
And although he does not overtly mention
it, coverage is one of the main competitive
advantages satellite currently has over cable.
According to Nick Stubbs, growth will mainly
come from the hybrid set-top box market
anyway, as viewers opt for the quality of satellite
transmission, but with the advantage of a return
path. “We will never reach the sort of figures we
have in the UK or in Germany, but we will remain
an important player in France,” he concludes.
“SES is ready to broadcast 300 to 400 UHD channels from one single orbital
position as from now. We have the right capacity, the wide coverage ability and the
reliability required for UHD” Tom Cristophory, SES
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“V ideo remains the single most
valuable content to monetise,”
said Sef Tuma, managing
director of Accenture Digital Services, during
a presentation at TV Connect. The broadcast
network today generates almost half a
trillion dollars in revenue, he continued, but
“disruption has already been happening in
the broadcast world.” The migration to digital
caused cracks in the traditional broadcast
business model as audiences fragment and
the share of viewing on flagship channels
decreased. Disruption, stated Tuma, hit the
industry in three waves: the first wave brought
the first generation of OTT players including
Hulu and Netflix, followed by the second
generation like HBO Now and Mediaset’s
Infinity – broadcasters launching their own
standalone services using content to generate
growth. The third generation of OTT includes
Facebook, Google and Samsung: social media
video providing a ‘super platform’ allowing
device manufacturers to go direct to the
consumer. “Disruption is the new norm in the
video industry,” he continued, resulting in “an
evolving ecosystem”.
Hybrid OTT services This evolving ecosystem is not a bad thing for
viewers, allowing them access to a range of
pay-TV and on-demand options, accessing
libraries of content over the internet, either on
the go or through a set-top box or smart TV.
These issues were discussed on day two of TV
Connect, in the Super Panel Session: What is the
future of ‘Hybrid OTT’ services? Moderating the
panel was iTV Doctor Rick Howe and discussing
the evolution and convergence of TV delivery
were Pierre Francois Dubois, SVP, technocentre,
Orange; Richard Halton, CEO, YouView; Jim
Ryan, SVP and chief strategy officer, Liberty
Global; Jaime Miles, group vice president,
Time Warner Cable; and Simon Trudelle, senior
product marketing manager, Nagra.
The discussion opened with participants giving
their definition of ‘Hybrid OTT’: “What consumers
want, when they want it, across all devices”
was the straightforward response from Nagra’s
Trudelle. The company has developed service
management products and solutions to support
customers in the changing digital environment,
supporting services ranging from broadcast TV
and multiple forms of VoD to applications stores
and interactive. “Semantics are important when
talking OTT”, added Time Warner Cable’s Miles.
You used to have to be in the house to access
content: “That’s not OTT” he asserted, but “using
IP as a technology”. The “true definition of OTT”
is “when you want to go truly over the internet”.
Time Warner Cable argues that it leads the pack
when it comes to OTT: the company has made
content available not only on smartphone and
tablet, but has launched apps for Xbox, Samsung
connected TVs, and Roku live streaming.
A “hybrid system” to CEO Halton can be
defined as “trying to blend quality, resilience,
universality of a broadcast network, with
the flexibility [and] personalisation…of an IP
network.” YouView offers digital TV channels as
well as catch-up TV from the past seven days,
with the choice of on-demand and pay-TV
options for those who want them. Users need not
sign up to a monthly subscription, and the service
is available via a YouView box.
More consumer choiceOrange has been active in the hybrid OTT
market for a few years now: “We started with
IPTV in 2002, a long time ago,” said Dubois. “It’s
a very dynamic market, something like 20 million
broadband customers, more than five million
IPTV customers.” In July 2008, the company
launched a hybrid service combining satellite
and broadband delivery, and is now one of
the most successful telco TV services in Europe.
This provides access to broadcast channels via
satellite, and to VoD via the internet. In 2009,
“we invested in content” continued Dubois,
and “built something we can compare to
Netflix”. Orange Cinéma Séries is a series of
movie channels that launched as part of the
company DTH satellite service. Not only did the
company provide an alternative to Netflix, but,
as the movie giant’s popularity with consumers
grew, Orange decided to launch the service
on its own set-top boxes in France. “We have
a different vision of what an OTT service is,”
said Dubois. “As an operator, we provide our
customers with a shop.”
Providing consumers with choice, with a
“shop”, has grown ever more important.
TV Connect returned to London’s ExCeL centre in April for three days of dialogue, debate, and demos. Holly Ashford joined scores of exhibitors and hundreds of attendees discussing the future of connected TV entertainment
Evolution putting content in the ‘shop’ window
24 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
TVBEverywhere
Content creators and studios used to be at
the top of the industry food chain, followed by
networks, distributors, down to consumers, yet
consumers have in recent years jumped to the
top of that chain, determining for themselves
what they want to watch. And, what many
want to watch is Netflix. Last year, Dish Network
became the first pay-TV provider to integrate
Netflix’s offering directly into its set-top box, the
second-generation Hopper DVR. In April this year,
the network also announced it will bring Netflix
to its Joey receivers. Is Times Warner Cable also
looking at bringing in separate distributor content
and making it available to viewers via their
STB? “We’ve always tried to find what content
customers want to be watching and integrating
it. We’re evolving the relationships we have,” is all
Miles would say.
A new kind of video service“We currently have a ‘transitional model’ in the
hybrid OTT industry,” rounded up Howe, “with a
blend of delivery systems.” Where will the business
be in terms of delivering to consumers, in the next
24 months? Some things will remain unchanged,
said Halton. Linear channels account for 80
per cent of TV viewing, he said, “that’s not
going to change much”. The role of YouView,
he continued, is to try and help customers find
content, to gather intelligence and “use that
intelligence to anticipate the needs of a user
who just wants to be entertained”, ensuring “a
great user experience”.
The next 24 months and beyond will see “more
screens”, added Liberty Global’s Ryan. This was a
point discussed by Accenture MD, Tuma,
at TV Connect, who pointed out that
while TV set viewing remained strong for
sport and movies, “overall viewing is rapidly
fragmenting across devices. More people are
going to be consuming more content on
second and third screens.”
Miles continued, foreseeing a “continued
increase in video-over-IP” and, in agreement
with Halton, “sharing of data in ways we’ve
never seen before”, enabling a better customer
experience, changes in advertising models,
and “all kinds of new interaction and social
media embedding”.
These multiple screens mean that
delivering content needn’t mean providing
an STB: portable devices and even apps
within a device can do the same thing,
concluded Tuma. The impact of this industry
disruption has provided opportunities for
operators and next generation ‘broadcasters’
to take advantage by providing a new kind
of video service.
www.asperasoft.commoving the world’s data at maximum speed
“We currently have a ‘transitional model’ in the hybrid OTT industry with a blend of
delivery systems”Rick Howe, Moderator
Preparations are now in full swing ahead
of the first ever TVBEurope Strategy
Week, which takes place from 29 June
to 3 July 2015. The week of events starts with
the centrepiece TVBEurope 2020 conference
at BAFTA in central London, on 30 June, and is
followed by a series of thought leadership events
held in conjunction with dedicated partners.
The one-day conference addresses the
convergence of UHD and IT/IP infrastructures in an
effort to identify the strategic imperatives facing
media entities as they prepare their roadmaps for
the medium to long-term future. The preface to the
day suggests that the transition to IT and IP workflows
and the move to higher UHD resolutions come
at a turning point in the history of television and
media. They represent a revolution arguably even
greater than the transition to colour TV in the ‘60s.
UHD and IT workflows are inextricably linked, each
a driver for the other, transforming the technology
used to produce and distribute content but also
transforming the way in which programming is
delivered to consumers, what they watch, and the
devices they watch video content on.
Conference chairman, John Ive, director of
technology and strategic insight at IABM – strategic
partner of TVBEurope Strategy Week – explained
the concept behind the day’s agenda. “TVBEurope
2020 is taking an exciting new approach this year
and recognising the future of UHD and IT workflows
are inextricably linked,” he said.
“There is no stopping the introduction of new
formats and better quality images but a change
of infrastructure for each new image format
is no longer tenable. To address this we have
assembled some of the most influential industry
experts as speakers and panellists. Bringing these
two aspects together and looking towards 2020
will provide many fascinating insights.”
The confirmed speakers for the conference
include Bevan Gibson, CTO of ITN; Jon Carter,
UK head of business development, connected
home, Deutsche Telekom; Dr Hans Hoffman, EBU;
Phil Tudor, principal technologist, BBC R&D; Rowan
de Pomerai, senior technical manager, Studios,
ITV (on behalf of the DPP); Tim Santhouse, global
head of video products, Reuters; Rod Fairweather,
senior director of infrastructure and media
technology, Viacom; Kris Hardiman, head of
product marketing, Ericsson Broadcast and Media
Services; Simon Gauntlett, CTO, DTG; David Peto,
CEO, Aframe; Thomas Kernan, consultant systems
engineer, Cisco Systems; Alla Salehian, CEO, TIMA;
Niall Duffy, head of IT and workflow solutions, Sony;
David Klafkowski, MD, The Farm; Martyn Whistler,
lead analyst, media and entertainment, Ernst
and Young; Erhan Gurses, EMEA telecom industry
analyst, Bloomberg, and more.
The Strategy Week also includes a breakfast
briefing hosted by media and communications
analyst firm, SNL Kagan, which will explore the
future of the European pay-TV market. The briefing
precedes the 2020 conference at 9.00am on 30
June at BAFTA and is open to all delegates.
Elsewhere during the week will be the IABM
executive industry C-level conference on 1 July,
a webinar on ‘IP: opening up new perspectives
for live broadcast production’ in association
with EVS, and a roundtable event on 2 July at
The Soho Hotel, held in conjunction with
Pebble Beach Systems.
Tickets for the TVBEurope 2020 conference can
be found on www.tvbeurope2020.com.
Momentum builds towards TVBEurope Strategy Week
Webinars, breakfast briefings, roundtables, and the brand new TVBEurope 2020 conference to make up a week of industry insight and analysis
TVBEurope 25June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
TVBEverywhere
“The day I die, I cannot take anything
with me. My last thought would be
that I’ve had a great life.”
The enthusiasm and candour of our roaming
conversation has hardened into something
more primitive, more tangible. Thomas Riedel
is visibly emotional as we pursue an acutely
personal avenue of discussion on his attachment
to his work, his life; indeed, life itself. Here is a
man of real perspective, not the sort that so
often manifests in boardrooms around strategy,
growth, roadmaps, but the sort that is aware of
the true bigger picture.
“I often tell my nephews and nieces that when
they think about people on Earth, probably 99.9
per cent of people don’t have the standard of
living that we have. We’ve had the luck to have
been born where we have, to have enough to
eat, enough to drink, and a place to live. Why
should I complain? I’ve just got to get on with my
job because, largely, life is great.”
A passionate elaboration to a question about
the balance of pleasure versus pain in being the
figurehead of a company that bears his name.
He has more invested in this company than simple
oversight of strategy. “I enjoy it about 80 per cent
of the time,” he estimates. “There’s about 15
per cent that is neutral, and there might be five
per cent where I think about it being too much.
However, if I accumulated all of the moments
where I have thought about not doing this
anymore since we started, it wouldn’t amount to a
single day. It is a privilege to be able to live such a
life, to live your dream.”
The blurred lines of work and life are common
to entrepreneurial folk: those who give birth to
enterprise and position their livelihoods around
the consequences. Thomas’ out of office itinerary
is a familiar story: he’s never truly absent. “I don’t
really separate working time and private time,
this is all ‘life-time’,” he admits. Indeed, if you
stumbled across the headquarters in Wuppertal
out of hours, it wouldn’t be deserted. “I do spend
time in the facility when no one else is here. If you
turned up at the weekend, you could feasibly find
me on a forklift truck moving stuff about.
I think it helps to understand what some people in
the company do.”
For Riedel the man, everything associated
with work and life is about balance: “It gives you
support when making very difficult decisions,”
he explains. “You need to trust that things will
be good, and you need to trust the people you
work with. A positive basic attitude and the right
view on life really helps.”
The facility The balance we have been discussing
permeates through to the design of the working
space here at the Riedel facility, with factory
and desk space mixed together so that all parts
of the company are integrated. “It started as an
issue, but turned into a real opportunity,” he says
of the industrial nature of the set-up.
Feature26 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
It’s a kind of magicRiedel Communications is a brand synonymous with its pioneering work across many verticals: Formula One, the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, and Red Bull Stratos to name but a few. It’s easy to forget amid the high profile the brand enjoys that the name sitting in lights atop the industrial HQ here in Wuppertal, was given to the company by the man sat beneath
it; in an unassuming office decked out in some of the more basic furniture his enterprise has invested in. Thomas Riedel’s story perpetually entertains, to be expected of a magician-turned-DJ-turned-entrepreneur, as I found out in a refreshingly candid and heartfelt conversation. By James McKeown
“At the facility here, which we own, we had a
bottleneck in office space: there were plenty of big
halls from earlier industrial use, but not enough office
space. So, we discussed it with the architect who
had the idea of making a gallery above the shop
floor preparation area to create an office space.”
The mezzanine level is surprisingly calm,
given the proximity to the shop floor and the
associated noise levels. Understandably, it wasn’t
universally accepted, at least initially. “I discussed
it with a few people who were against having
everyone in one big room, ‘the noise will be a
big problem’, they would say. So I accepted
that it was an issue and set about fixing it by
installing noise protection in the ceiling between
the upper and lower floors. It’s still the case that
not everyone is happy with the arrangement,
but the ratio of happy and not is 80:20 whereas
it used to be 20:80.
“We believe in teams working together,”
he continues. “The openness is highlighting our
philosophy, which is very much about good
communications internally, about being
open and having all departments close to
the gear and preparation areas, with staff
moving between the areas. I wouldn’t say it
is perfect, but the reaction of people who visit
is positive, and it is something I would do
again, for sure.”
It certainly does impress. This is no CERN or McLaren
facility, admittedly, but it is an endearing use of
space that holds the company’s entire philosophy
at the core of its design. This visit preceded another
to the Pixar studios in San Francisco, where I was
shown around a modern ‘campus’ that attempts the
same balancing of work and life, and successfully.
Although wildly different in execution, I am struck by
the similarities the two facilities share: their openness
and accommodation of all components of the
company, and the encouragement for divisions
to integrate. “The factory isn’t shut off from the rest
of the company departments, there’s a fusion
between all departments which helps with the
notion that they’re one and the same thing,” Riedel
states. “It also highlights how we think: everyone
TVBEurope 27June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
here is part of the fabric of what we do.”
One statement that strikes a chord is that “you
need room for thinking, just as much as you need
room for building things”, important for a company
of technical means and entrepreneurial spirit. Is
this an unspoken philosophy? “There’s certainly
no manual which preaches our philosophy,” he
explains. “However, we do talk to candidates early
on in the [recruitment] process about our goals
and ambitions, that we don’t want to build me-too
products: we want to change the market, we’re
really passionate about what we do and we
want to be different.
“This is an entrepreneurial company, not one
built with private equity and run by banker-type
people. In my mind, there’s not enough of this in
our industry. I’m not saying the equity route doesn’t
work, but there aren’t enough companies left who
are independent, and I think that’s a shame.”
The reason for this, he explains, is that decisions
about technology that may only pay off in five
years’ time are difficult decisions to make, with
a huge amount of responsibility on the line for
the individuals making them in more corporate
organisations, whose ideal turnaround might only
be two years. “It’s very hard to see any return on
technological decisions in two years; to get the
concepts on the road and fully functioning takes
between three and five years. So there’s
a fundamental difference in how an investor-
backed organisation and an independent
enterprise function.”
Riedel the company started life as a comms
manufacturer in a market already well furnished
with incumbent competition. The philosophy of not
delivering me-too products and services brought
about a study of the market to assess the possibilities.
“We came up with a completely new concept of
decentralised comms,” Riedel recalls. “In the past,
there was one big block matrix in one location: we
saw the future was in networking with a distributed
system, and that’s exactly what we did. This was
back in 2000, which was way ahead of the curve if
you think that networking is a hot topic today.”
Early yearsThe company’s genesis is an unlikely, but
suitably engaging tale. “I started the company
in February 1987, but I only left school in 1989, so
there’s a bit of an overlap in the early days.
It wasn’t a clear decision for life, it was more
‘let’s start this now and see how things work out’.
I never had a big masterplan.”
Riedel was ten years old when he developed an
interest in business…show business, that is. “This came
through my interest in magic. It was a hobby of mine
to perform as a magician on stage in kindergartens
or in the church, and by the age of 14, I became
interested in the technology behind the stage.
I was always more active outside of the classroom
than inside of it, and I’d always be the one handling
the technology of theatre productions in school.
“During the summer, I’d spend much of it at a
sea stage on Lake Constance, which was only
five minutes from my mother’s house in Austria, just
helping out where I could, and this is where my love
for the industry really started.” By the age of 16, he
was organising parties, taking care of the sound and
lighting systems. His increasing stewardship of these
events was the real reason he started the company.
“In Germany, if you file a company, you can buy
the equipment at the dealer price rather than the
end user price, so I literally started the company to
get the equipment at a cheaper price. So you can
see the lack of a masterplan.”
Thomas bought his first radios in 1990 for an
event for which he was stage builder, performer,
and car park attendant. It was for the latter role he
would need the radios to direct the flow of traffic
to the right parking spaces. This was his entrée to
the world of communications, following which he
would drop the lighting, sound and magic from his
repertoire (although he has been known to rekindle
his act for the Riedel employees).
“This was in the early 1990s, and it was at this
time when private TV stations in Europe started up.
RTL, which I think is now the biggest TV station in
Europe, called and asked me about radios but also
whether they could be connected to their talkback
or intercom system. So I had to learn how to find
a solution, and built a product called RiFace,” the
name of which, he says, is an unspectacular mixture
between Riedel and interface.
Winning formula RiFace sold well in Germany and Austria, with the
interface-to-comms system giving the company
a foot in that particular door. “I then started
developing a small intercom system with a couple
of friends which was almost ready by the end of
1993. It was then I got a call from the organising
committee of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.
They hadn’t thought about communications, and
they came to me pretty late in the day. Although it
wasn’t an easy job, I said yes, which might be seen
as quite typical of me: I’m not afraid of taking risks.
We supplied a comms system and a radio system for
the opening and closing ceremonies.”
Riedel was able to use his association with
Lillehammer to good effect in marketing terms,
but as he admits, a significant stroke of luck was to
take his company onto the next step. It involved an
interview with a local radio station about Riedel’s
involvement at the Winter Games. “At the very same
time, someone happened to pass Wuppertal on
the autobahn and heard the interview on the radio.
He happened to be involved in Formula One, and
he’s probably responsible for us being in motorsports.
It was a slow start in Formula One, and it took me
about ten years to be accepted in this circus.”
The current state of Hall J at Wuppertal HQ is
proof that this acceptance has now become
almost total. Literally tripping over crates of
headsets belonging to the likes of Ferrari,
Mercedes, and the FIA itself, I’m shown around
a factory floor more reminiscent of a motorsport
garage than a communications depot. There are
Formula One cars on display, past and present,
and sat in a Riedel motorhome enjoying the calm
of the off-season, Riedel’s place in the sport’s
tapestry is abundantly clear.
Having followed the sport with a keen eye for
some time, I am more than aware that Riedel
and Formula One go hand in hand, but as the
company’s leader earlier suggested, visiting the
premises opens one’s eyes to the scope and scale
www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Feature28 TVBEurope
The mezzanine was designed to integrate factory and office departments
Pict
ure c
redi
t: Kr
istin
a M
alis
“This is an entrepreneurial company. In my mind, there aren’t enough
companies left who are independent, and I think that’s a shame”
Thomas Riedel
TVBEurope 29June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
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of the wider operations. More recently, flying out
to join Riedel at the Barcelona Grand Prix at the
Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya provided more
evidence of this, with the company providing the
comms for all of the teams on the grid, plus the
FIA, its medical team, and so on. In fact, it’s
hard to walk the paddock and pit lane and not
pass something or someone associated with
Thomas’ company.
It is emblematic of the progress Riedel has
made since its inception, and Riedel himself is
conscious of the luck has befallen his progress
thus far; the timing of the company’s activities in
communications systems coming in parallel with
the broadcast industry ramping up, and with the
entertainment industry becoming an industry. “It’s
not something that could be repeated,” he recalls.
“It was a question of timing: it wasn’t because of a
smart concept, but because the stars were in line.”
Pride and perspectiveDespite this, there is abundant pride exuding
from every recollection of every milestone: setting
the company up to be financially independent;
buying the facility in Wuppertal; getting the first
big contracts – Olympics, Formula One, ORF; the
acquisition of Mediornet. “Even looking back to
three years ago, I couldn’t have imagined the
progress we’ve made in that time,” he says.
“However, nothing has changed, really. I still
do what I love, and my risk is very limited:
I started from zero, so the lowest I could fall
is back to that place.”
The lack of a grand masterplan has not stunted
the growth of the company as of yet, and his pride
in his successes extends to the manner in which
they have been realised. That he considers meeting
and convincing the right people to come on board
among his greatest successes possibly tells you
everything about Riedel: man and brand. It explains
the family atmosphere here in Wuppertal, the sense
that people are well looked after, and are buying
into the ethos of the company; winning together,
losing together.
2014 was a profitable year for the company,
but the year before was more challenging. The
company clearly prides itself on its agility in coping
with the undulations of the fractious business
landscape, and Thomas is philosophical about
meeting success and frustration with a level
head. “You have to experience some dark
moments to appreciate the sunshine,” he states.
“You never learn when you do things successfully,
you only learn when you fail. Since we need to
learn a lot for the things we need to do in the
future, we need to fail in certain ways to give us
that experience. Yes, it’s painful, but it’s necessary in
order to move on.”
It may sound a risky philosophy: one thast is only
beneficial if you ably apply what you learn from
failure to sufficiently correct it. But this is a personal
and distinctly human philosophy brought to bear
in the professional domain, and that is refreshing
in an environment that can so often suffer from
corporate sterility.
There is an overarching picture bigger than
any boardroom strategy can prepare for, and
understanding this balance is what sets Thomas
Riedel and his operations in good stead for the
future. It may not be the kind of magic Thomas
was once known to showcase, but it is an
inspiring formula.
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What do LG, Netfl ix, Panasonic, Samsung,
Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney
Studios have in common? The answer,
of course, is that they are among the founding
members of the UHD Alliance announced at CES
earlier this year, and providing further evidence that
the move towards higher defi nition broadcasting is
accelerating. Unsurprisingly, that was refl ected by
the satellite industry at this year’s NAB.
The show saw Intelsat introduce IntelsatOne
Prism, which the company describes as a new
next generation, IP content distribution managed
service. Intelsat took the opportunity to stage a true
4K UHDTV live transmission using HEVC compression
along with an HD Content Distribution Network
(CDN) contribution feed from a production truck
over satellite with end-to-end video transmissions
managed by the IntelsatOne Prism hub located at
the company’s Atlanta teleport.
“The demonstration highlighted the
advancements in HEVC compression technology,”
said Peter Ostapiuk, head of media services at
Intelsat, “as well as how IntelsatOne Prism’s fully
automated, converged IP-based platform allows
media customers to conduct multiple content
transmissions via one platform, enabling effi cient,
high quality, multiscreen content delivery.”
The OTT societyOstapiuk noted that media companies are facing
pressure to quickly upgrade their networks to
meet the demands of a TV Everywhere and an
increasingly over-the-top (OTT) society. IntelsatOne
Prism is, he says, designed to addresses the
challenges of the converging broadband and
media landscape by enabling media customers
to seamlessly implement digital media networking
using legacy assets, improve bandwidth
management with minimal investment, and simplify
overall content delivery and operational networks.
Intelsat recently chose ETL to upgrade its
teleport facilities with ETL’s new Enigma matrices.
“That allows Intelsat’s operations personnel
to monitor multiple projects with complete
confi dence,” according to Susan Saadat,
vice president of ETL’s North American sales
and operations. “There are a number of high
throughput satellites that either have launched,
or are being launched in 2016, and we’re working
closely with those operators in building out their
teleports and ground terminals.”
On show on the ETL stand was the company’s
new StingRay RF over fi bre range, which Saadat
believes offers a unique, compact design for high
isolation applications, and new Dextra L-band
splitters and combiners, as well as its Alto series
of line amplifi ers. Also capturing visitors’ attention
was ETL’s high density 128x128 L-band Vulcan
matrix, which is said to be capable of distributing
high volumes of L-band signals in broadcast and
government applications.
TVBEurope 31June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature: NAB Retrospective
Delivering the future, today‘Recent forecasts suggest there will be over 1,000 channels broadcasting to over 500
million Ultra HD screens by 2025’
There is a case to be made that, increasingly, the success of the broadcast industry rests on satellite companies. Ian McMurray opens our NAB retrospective by fi nding out what these entities were doing at this year’s show to ensure that success
Intelsat introduced IntelsatOne Prism, which the company describes as a next generation, IP content distribution managed service
As well as being chosen by Intelsat, ETL has also
recently secured orders from DirecTV for its Alto
amplifiers to strengthen and improve signal quality.
“That’s testament to the adaptability of this
technology for years to come,” continued
Saadat. “Our Alto range of amplifiers is available in
redundant configurations, recognising the need for
systems to provide redundancy for ultra-resilience.”
1,000 channels, 500 million screensAlso focusing on the impact of higher definition
broadcasting was Eutelsat, with the company’s
director of innovation, Antonio Arcidianco,
pointing out that recent forecasts suggest there
will be over 1,000 channels broadcasting to over
500 million Ultra HD screens by 2025.
“We’ve taken a strong stance on Ultra HD,
starting with broadcasting the first 4K content
in Europe two years ago and working since
then with the entire broadcasting chain to
get all the pieces lined up in the right order,”
said Arcidianco. “We have both
bandwidth and reach today and have
made investments in future satellites optimised
for broadcasting commercial Ultra HD as soon
as our clients are ready.”
Eutelsat believes that the other key trend in
broadcasting is interactivity.
“We’re looking to provide broadcasters and
platforms with the ability to manage the
customer return path by satellite, thereby
giving them full control over their network,”
continued Arcidianco. “Our approach to this
is through the smartLNB, a low-cost modem
that bundles satellite reception of TV channels
with a narrowband satellite return link for short
transmissions of IP packets. It opens the door for
broadcasters to grow towards an interactive
and individualised set of services beyond TV,
managed through a network they control.”
At NAB, Eutelsat teamed with Prodea and its
ROSE platform to demonstrate a broad range
of services: including IoT services such as home
monitoring, security, control, access, energy
management, eHealth and wellness, eLearning,
and eGovernment services.
High efficiencyHigher definition broadcasting relies, of course,
on highly efficient video compression and
bandwidth usage – and the latter was front and
centre for Newtec at NAB, on whose booth the
newly announced MCX7000 had its first public
showing. It is described as a dense DVB-S2X multi-
carrier satellite gateway demodulator that brings
multiple benefits, including increased bandwidth
efficiency of up to 51 per cent for distribution
to towers and head-ends, reducing OPEX and
CAPEX in various ways.
“The MCX7000 represents another milestone in
the extension of our modem capabilities beyond
single carrier support,” noted Hans Massart,
market director, broadcast at Newtec, “and is
ideal for broadcasters looking to future-proof
their operations.”
Also receiving its official launch at NAB was
the Equalink 3, a new linear and non-linear pre-
distortion technology designed to compensate
for the effects of distortions caused by the
satellite’s filters and amplifiers.
“Live satellite tests have proven Equalink 3’s
ability to increase link margin, which can be
used to improve coverage and availability or to
increase the symbol rate,” said Massart. “That
enables up to 15 per cent more TV channels to
be inserted in a DTH carrier.”
Focusing on video compression was Vislink,
which showcased, among other products, the
UltraCoder – a 19” x 1RU half rack width unit said to
be capable of encoding four full 1080p60 HD or SD
video signals using H.265 (HEVC) compression, or
one 4Kp60 video, within the same unit.
Interest in H.265“We saw a great deal of interest in Vislink’s
implementation of H.265 video encoding,” said
Ashley Dove, the company’s VP of solutions, “and
visitors to the booth were able to see how Vislink’s
approach could help them use significantly less
bandwidth over satellite. Our demonstrations
showed how required bandwidth could be more
than halved compared to video signals currently
using H.264. Also, high quality 4K contribution video
signals can be transmitted over existing satellite
transponder allocations using the same bandwidth
that’s used for HD video encoded with H.264.”
According to Dove, H.265 high compression
technology will be implemented into Vislink’s
Feature: NAB Retrospective32 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Antonio Arcidiacono, Eutelsat
Hans Massart, Newtec John Bozza, SIS Live Susan Sadaat, ETL
Peter Ostapiuk, Intelsatz Ashley Dove, Vislink Eddie Ferraro, Globecast
TVBEurope 33June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature: NAB Retrospective
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current range of sub 23kg MSAT ultra-lightweight
integrated SNG terminals, enabling multiple HD
(or even 4K transmissions) from the field using the
rapidly deployed MSAT terminal. It will also be
implemented into the multi-use NewStream Van
Transmitter, making it possible to transmit video via
long range COFDM microwave (ENG), satellite
(SNG) and bonded Cellular (CNG) as well.
Another company operating in the SNG
space is SIS LIVE, which was at NAB to promote
the ManPakT range of VSAT terminals. The
ManPakT, which is based on the ManPak60
portable VSAT terminal – also on show in Las
Vegas – is described as a compact, integrated
tripod-based system. It was showcased as a
prototype for the first time at NAB 2014 and, says
the company’s commercial director, John Bozza,
received significant interest. At the show this
year, the 0.6m and 1.0m reflector-sized antennas
were being displayed. The 1.0m version is Ka-Sat
NewsSpotter and Hylas approved.
The ManPakT is also available with a range
of optional extras including integrated COFDM
receiver for mobile camera connectivity,
a Wi-Fi router enabling a secure satellite
internet network, and integrated housing and
connections for high grade encryption devices.
“SIS LIVE’s ManPakT range leads the way in the
next generation of VSAT terminals,” claimed Bozza.
“It is a compact and lightweight system which is
IATA compliant and can be easily packed into
one robust case. The completely waterproof and
rugged design allows for operation in even the
most challenging of conditions.” SIS LIVE was also
showing off its uPod 1.2m drive fly system.
Change in the airAs always, change was in the air in Las Vegas;
especially as the satellite industry gears itself
up to a new world of higher definition
broadcast and interactivity.
Those, however, were far from the only
changes, reflected, for example, in the launch
by Globecast of its Los Angeles Media Center
in Culver City, which already includes BBC
Worldwide as a customer.
“We’re seeing tremendous interest in our media
management and playout solutions,” explained
Eddie Ferraro, Globecast’s managing director in
the US. “What we are experiencing is a growing
demand for bundled services, with distribution
included as part of the package. This is where our
recent reorganisation – to take advantage of our
global reach, combined with new infrastructure
to power our media management business – is
really coming into its own.”
“The new Los Angeles Media Center offers
broadcasters and content providers a
converged workflow to prepare, deliver and
playout content to any kind of distribution
platform,” he goes on. “The new Media Center
complements established Globecast facilities
in London, Singapore, and Paris, enabling
Globecast to offer a truly global one-stop-shop
for media management, playout, satellite and
OTT distribution.”
Globecast’s announcement was in many ways
typical: once again, NAB saw the satellite industry
gearing itself up to support its customers, and
whatever the future might bring.
SIS LIVE was at NAB to promote the ManPakT range of VSAT terminals
‘Once again, NAB saw the satellite industry gearing itself up to support its customers,
and whatever the future might bring’
The standard of debate around the
transition from point-to-point connectivity
to audio-over-IP (AIoP) in broadcast has
been what one would most politely describe
as ‘variable’. But no one could deny that it has
certainly been abundant – and continued to be
so at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas.
In truth, we do now finally seem to be
moving away from the ‘protocol wars’ towards
a more balanced and practical debate
about implementation of IP networks. The
arrival of the AES67 standard – which enables
interoperability of existing Layer 3-based
networking technologies – looks set to be
a crucial enabler in this regard, and
unsurprisingly there were several related
announcements during NAB.
In line with its confirmation last year that it
would deliver compatibility with AES67, Dante
media networking technology creator Audinate
announced support for the standard via the
release of the Dante Brooklyn II firmware update.
The addition of AES67, explained Audinate,
will allow baseline connectivity between the
growing ecosystem of Dante-enabled devices
and networked devices from other vendors who
support AES67 bridging.
“The adoption of AES67 supports our
vision to make Dante the most complete
audio networking solution, and will help
facilitate the industry’s evolution from
analogue to audio-over-IP,” said Aidan
Williams, CTO, Audinate.
Meanwhile, ALC NetworX – developer
of another AES67-compatible technology,
Ravenna – held a series of presentations on
the implementation of AES67 in ‘real world
applications’ and new product developments.
With the recent formation of the Media
Networking Alliance to actively promote AES67
adoption, the momentum behind the standard is
obvious – and should ultimately push forward the
overall adoption of IP-based workflows.
Immersion battle heats upSuch is the fevered debate around AoIP, it would
have been easy to overlook some of the other
underlying trends going into this year’s NAB. But
show visitors would not have failed to notice the
glut of developments around immersive audio as
vendors and broadcasters work to deliver a sonic
experience befitting the emerging 4K/UHD and
(God help us) 8K TV formats.
Perhaps most prominently, Fraunhofer IIS,
Qualcomm Technologies and Technicolor
jointly undertook demonstrations at NAB of
the new MPEG-H audio standard. Designed to
offer broadcasters a cost-effective means of
improving the sound quality of their offerings
beyond 5.1 surround, MPEG-H Audio also
delivers a host of interactive and immersive
features across the full range of modern
viewing devices from high-end home theatres
to tablets, smartphones, and sound bars. At
NAB, the MPEG-H-based system on display, with
a monitoring unit from Jünger Audio, offered
features including the ability to select different
audio presentations – for example, ‘home team’
or ‘away team’ commentary for a sports event –
or volume control over specific audio elements in
a programme such as dialogue or sound effects.
Another firm perennially at the cutting edge,
Fairlight, demonstrated its latest progress in this
area. Designed to allow content creators to
deliver 3D immersive sound, the 3DAW (3D Audio
Workstation) enables users to work in formats
such as Auro-3D, Dolby Atmos and DTS MDA
without the need to replace existing 2D tools
and workflows.
Avid, too, underlined the extent to which an
increasing number of TV shows and movies are
being mixed in surround by introducing the Pro
Tools | S6 Master Joystick Module. An option
for both M10- and M40-based S6 systems, the
Master Joystick Module incorporates dual non-
motorised, touch-sensitive joysticks for surround
sound mixing with Pro Tools | S6, as well as a 3.2-
inch TFT display to depict current pan
and joystick locations.
Whilst nothing remotely approaching a
consensus exists about the best means of
delivering more all-encompassing broadcast
audio to the home – or even what the viewer
should actually be getting out of it experientially
– the innovations on display at NAB suggest that
sound won’t be trailing too far behind picture as
the new high resolution formats gain traction.
Quiet is the new loud(ness)If such top line themes can be persuasive,
some issues reflected at NAB were more
evergreen in nature. Take loudness, for example,
which continues to preoccupy many broadcast
sound engineers despite the advent of the
reforming EBU Loudness Recommendation,
R128. Accordingly, at NAB there were plenty of
new developments aimed at making loudness
metering and correction as painless as possible.
NUGEN Audio, for example, released
Loudness Toolkit 2, the latest generation of
its suite of loudness metering and correct
tools. Consisting of the VisLM-H 2 Loudness
Meter, LM-Correct 2 Quick-Fix Tool and ISL 2
True-Peak Limiter, Loudness Toolkit 2 is geared
towards the requirements of NLE and DAW
users. Elsewhere on the show floor, TSL Products
introduced Phinix, billed as a complete suite
of desktop and enterprise tools to address
many file-based audio requirements, among
Feature: NAB Retrospective34 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Gently ushering in a new era for broadcast audio?
As well as the expected rush of developments related to audio-over-IP, the NAB Show 2015 heralded some exciting innovations in immersive audio and loudness correction. David Davies wonders whether, all things considered, we are witnessing the dawn of a discreet but distinct new era for broadcast sound
them loudness measurement and correction,
and Dolby E encoding and decoding. More
general workflow optimisation was on the
mind of several other leading vendors at NAB.
Harman’s Studer, for example, exhibited its
Vista X and Vista V digital consoles, whose
Infinity Core CPU-based processors are
designed to provide high numbers of DSP
channels for large-scale, high-resolution audio
processing and mixing. Also on a console
‘tip’, Lawo unveiled a high-density version of
its popular mc²56 audio mixing console. In a
move destined to endear it to compactness-
seeking OB vans and studios, the mc²56XT
offers the possibility of doubling the fader
count on the same footprint. Miniaturisation of
console design has, of course, been an abiding
theme of broadcast audio R&D for a good
half-a-decade now.
With IP-based production and immersive audio
crossing over from concept to reality for many
broadcasters, it is clear that more exciting times
are now firmly within reach. The innovations
on the visual side might attract a greater
percentage of industry headlines, but NAB 2015
did nothing to dispel the impression that we
are entering a discreet but distinct new era
for broadcast audio.
TVBEurope 35June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature: NAB Retrospective
‘Whilst nothing remotely approaching a consensus exists about the best means of delivering more all-encompassing broadcast audio to the home, the innovations on display at NAB suggest that sound won’t be trailing too far behind picture as the new
high-resolution formats gain traction’
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In my first 20 years in the industry, I believed
that plus or minus a bit of smoke and
mirrors, smart broadcast and media
customers could successfully evaluate the
leading innovators to make well informed
buying decisions. Sellers sold and buyers bought.
Wouldn’t it be great if it were as simple as that?
But there are others amongst us. Investors.
Whilst it’s customers’ investment in vendors’
technology and services that pays for the whole
show, the whole industry in fact, they are not
always only dealing with the vendors. Many
developers and manufactures rely on suitable
external investment to get their businesses to the
next level. ‘Suitable’ for whom?
Appropriate investment is more important than
ever to support the simultaneously converging
and diverging media technology industry. As
UHD promises to explode our eyeballs and
‘TV Everywhere’ is getting closer to finding the
advertising-everywhere money, never have so
many business models been so disrupted. Investors,
advisors, financiers, private equity and venture
capitalists are new spirits amongst us at NAB,
haunting the show floor searching for opportunity.
Our media-meshed industry is now running
fast with many overlapping cycles in play.
Technology innovation in, say, managed services
and SaaS at one end, versus the unprecedented
changes in audience behaviour at the other,
requires huge investment to innovate and deliver.
Investors are searching for something to give a
financial return that suits their current appetite for risk
and reward. Many developers and manufactures
come to NAB actively seeking backing, too: new
funding to get their idea off the ground or to boost
their next phase of innovation or expansion. For
vendors who have gained recent new financing,
the challenge is to swing into action and get their
latest value proposition front and centre.
For many vendors, it’s now a two-way shop
window at NAB: selling their latest solutions to
prospective customers whist also promoting
their company’s innovation and potential value
to the investment community. It’s a very tricky
balancing act for vendors.
Who’s zooming who? Which of the recent mergers or acquisitions
actually create and deliver a better value
proposition for paying customers? Does a boost
in vendor investment, a merger or a change of
owner actually benefit them?
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity
continued apace after last year’s upturn; a
valuable chance to pause and review the
impact of last year’s activities, too. The IABM cites
annual market size for the media technology
industry at about US$40 billion for the sectors that
it addresses. The huge overlap with the IT industry
and new cloud services makes that number
potentially much larger. Gartner recently cited
25 per cent growth in “the emerging and
disruptive software defined video” sector at
US$10 billion by 2018. It’s interesting when you
look beyond the numbers.
Some highlights: last year we saw M&A action
from Belden (Grass Valley), Dalet (Amberfin) and
Vislink (Pebble Beach Systems). Later on in the
year, Ericsson completed its acquisition of Red
Bee Media and Nordic Capital AS announced
its intention to acquire trendsetters Vizrt, which
completed recently.
Serial acquirer, Oracle, made one of its most
media-centric purchases to date when it
bought highly respected archive innovator
Front Porch Digital. Many customers saw this
being as much about high quality people.
We’ll look at that aspect next month in part two
of this feature: Peoplesoft.
Vitec Videocom, one of the industry’s most
active acquirers, recently bought Paralinx for
its real-time wireless monitoring and in October
last year, completed its purchase of Autocue.
CEO Matt Danilowicz got my attention with this
statement: “M&A is easy. Integrating companies,
that’s really hard. The reason that Vitec is still one
of the most profitable companies on the show
floor is also because we’re also one of the least
well known. They know our brands, they know
the businesses that we bought, but they don’t
really see us – and that’s very intentional.” The
group versus micro brand and segment reach
is one of the biggest challenges in successful
M&A; everyone has an opinion and the
perceived connections between brands are
often highly intangible.
Highly respected live graphics specialist
ChyronHego was finally taken private in a
merger: I think. No space for the details here but,
if you really want to study the real challenges
of governance, communications and value
engineering in precision M&A, it’s well worth
reading up on ChyronHego.
Less interestingly so far, Avid acquired Orad
for an all share deal worth about $60 million, on
a turnover of about $40 million. A low valuation
perhaps, given Orad’s cash position and its
Ghosts in the machineMergers and acquisitions at NAB Show 2015, by Russell Grute, director at Broadcast Innovation
Feature: NAB Retrospective36 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
‘The group versus micro brand and segment reach is one of the biggest challenges in
successful M&A; everyone has an opinion and the perceived connections between brands
are often highly intangible’
highly competitive yet under appreciated
technologies and products. Orad itself had
previously acquired UK MAM specialists IBIS.
Come on Avid.
Leadership and perception (and soft rock defined video) For Imagine Communications, NAB 2015 was the
moment. The big push. And the company was
everywhere, even on the NAB App home
screen. Imagine’s campaign over the last two
years since acquisition by The Gores Group
illustrates two key dynamics in M&A: leadership
and perception.
Anyone invited to The Joint at The Hard
Rock Hotel to see Imagine Live featuring soft
rockers Foreigner, couldn’t fail to be impressed
by chief executive Charlie Vogt’s on-stage
converged confidence, or by Imagine CTO
Steve Reynolds’ 30-minute verbal tour de force.
Leading the 1,700 strong crowd with Imagine’s
version of the industry future, with some
repetition (Cloud, IP, SDN, etc) but certainly
no hesitation or deviation.
This was real marketing folks: ‘make the
market’ or ‘serve the market’ is what the books
say. Imagine Communications with Gores
backing is attempting both. Ambitious. Either
way, the perception of value is crucial, both
to paying customers now and to secure future
investment. It’s also what astute investors think
very carefully about. Successfully matching
a company’s transformation with the global
media-meshed industry is as difficult as it has
ever been. Investors’ typical three-year outlook
can be painfully short. Consumer and mobile
technology ‘hype-cycles’ are going faster whilst
perhaps typical media industry buying and
budgeting periods remain slower.
Lining up Vince Roberts from
Disney/ABC Television to confirm its vision
and close proceedings was, almost,
“unprecedented” as they like to say all
too often in the US. He neatly gave us
Disney’s/ABC Television’s strategic line:
“By leveraging evolving IP and Cloud
technologies we are able to move beyond
what’s currently possible with traditional
proprietary ‘Big Iron’ broadcast infrastructures.”
TVBEurope 37June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature: NAB Retropsective
One which might indeed help drive the industry.
As Foreigner took the stage to croon, “Feels like
the first time…” a sharp-witted CTO remarked
to me, “…trouble is, I remember the last time.”
Genuine frustration born of previous broken
promises no doubt but that seemed possibly too
simplistic. Broadcast and media technology is
now a mature industry. Many established global
brands do have a challenging legacy. Belden
with Miranda then Grass Valley is going
through a similar journey (Don’t stop believin’?
Plenty more soft rock defined anthems where
that came from).
Quantel and Snell just got married, also with
new leadership as Lloyds Capital appointed Tim
Thorsteinson as CEO. Quantel and Snell’s vision
is for an open and less proprietary approach
to IP within the broadcast facility. Thorsteinson
elucidated further for Quantel as “…one of the
larger independent businesses in our industry,
with world class products and a rich history of
innovation. I want to build on that tradition to
create an organisation 100 per cent focused
on helping our customers prosper in the media
technology world.”
The dynamics of leadership and perception
were illustrated again, with the departure in
October of EVS CTO Joop Jansen, which left
many customers puzzled. EVS has one of the
strongest value propositions in the industry and is
highly professional. Another indicator of a mature
industry searching for growth.
Streaming and distribution: walk this way…Imagine also made two notable acquisitions
over the last 12 months. File-meisters Digital
Rapids last NAB yielded its Zenium software-
defined workflow management proposition. RGB
Networks, acquired in January, adds Dynamic
Ad Insertion (DAI), Just-in-Time Packaging and
Cloud DVR technologies. These highlight three
game changing areas to rewire the revenue
from advertising and subscribers.
Cloud DVR technologies will be key in the
next cycle. The line between TV and mobile
services is blurring, and in many cases that blur
is ‘the cloud’. Just after IBC last year, Ericsson
announced its planned $95 million acquisition of
Fabrix Systems, another innovator in cloud-based
platforms for delivering DVR and VoD services.
This acquisition is intended to help service
providers deliver what Ericsson calls TV Anywhere:
viewing on multiple devices with high-quality
and relevant content for each viewer. Cable
operators and telcos gaining dramatic growth in
video streaming need to reach consumers and
revenue cost effectively on multiple screens.
Ericsson, along with many others, is now
laser focused on the importance of the game
changing opportunities in distribution technology,
ABR and IP – going beyond the linear playlist
– and the pivotal role of telcos and mobile
operators in supplying future growth in media
consumption and crucially, of course, advertising
revenue. Listening to this year’s customer-side
reaction at NAB, Broadcast Innovation thinks
that telcos, their systems integrators and service
providers, will be the dominant customers for the
media technologies on offer at NAB very soon.
Not broadcasters. Both will have to find a way
to work closely but telcos, and mobile operators
too, will thrive.
Patience and perspective: don’t fear the reaperThe financial spirits amongst us at NAB, haunting
the floor searching for opportunity, add a
complex dimension for customers trying to select
crucial new technologies that will help their own
broadcast and media businesses innovate to
survive and grow. For some, it gives reassurance
and stability; for others, the clarity and focus of
their favourite vendor is often lost.
Increased perspective and patience are
required at times by customers trying to evaluate
the benefit for them in a merger or acquisition.
New leadership can sometimes unintentionally
polarise the perception of both customers and
also the inherited staff too. People are much
harder to evaluate than technology and
market segments. More on this next month
when we’ll look at other important factors in
M&A cited by customers as vital for success:
people and partnerships.
Feature: NAB Retrospective38 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
www.ibc.org
RAI AmsterdamConference 10-14 September : Exhibition 11-15 September
BBC Studios and Post Production’s (S&PP)
Studio D at Elstree was home to the
broadcaster’s General Election coverage,
and saw more than 24 hours of live programming
immediately following the close of polls on 7 May.
The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented
reality (AR) technology has become
commonplace for such broadcasts where
analysis of the results is presented in the most
compelling – even dramatic – way possible.
Central to that technology for the election
programme was the service provided by Vizrt.
“It’s the sheer scale of the programme that
makes this project such an absorbing and
interesting challenge.” That’s how Russell Leak,
project manager at Vizrt, who oversaw the
graphics workfl ow for the broadcast, summed up
his company’s contribution with the task.
“The size and intricacy of the task meant that
we had to utilise more than 20 graphics engines
to provide the capacity needed. That complexity
also meant that we arrived in the studio in mid-April
to start all the preparation work. It was necessary
for us to integrate those engines with the BBC S&PP
systems and ensure all the video outputs were fi ne.”
Leak also points out that there were many
cameras that needed to be calibrated and
checked in a short space of time. All of this pre-
production work had to be completed before
the end of April when designers arrived to start
pushing graphics through the systems.
Building on experienceLeak was able to draw upon around ten years’
knowledge of election programming in preparation
for the mammoth overnight transmission. “The most
recent were the local elections and the Scottish
referendum that took place last year and both of
those provided us with some useful background
knowledge for the General Election.”
Leak says that active preparation for the
programme started soon after the beginning
of 2015. “We had a series of meetings with the
BBC about what they wanted to deliver in terms
of the programme and what they wanted to
achieve in terms of graphics.”
Based on the experience of the Scottish vote, the
BBC wanted to introduce an increased amount
of depth tracking on the cameras that showed
presenter Jeremy Vine analysing results and
making predictions. The technology enabled
Vine to move realistically around a green screen
environment and become immersed in the regularly
updated graphics. The tracking system allows these
movements to happen accurately and without
affecting the position of the virtual graphics.
That part of the programme originated in a
separate studio with its own gallery to enable
complicated moves to be rehearsed without
interfering with the main output. Those analysis
segments also involve the results and statistical
Feature40 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
The reality of election graphicsFollowing his feature on the UK election in last month’s issue, Philip Stevens fi nds out more about the use of AR and VR for the programme
A panoramic view of the election studio, including the green screen area used by Jeremy Vine for VR sections of the programme
“The size and intricacy of the task meant that we had to utilise more than 20
graphics engines to provide the capacity needed. That complexity also meant that
we arrived in the studio in mid-April to start all the preparation work”
Russell Leak, Vizrt
TVBEurope 41June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Feature
graphics that come from automation and data
integration provided by Idonix. Similarly in AR,
Idonix was used for displaying social media
messages on screens in the studio.
Keeping track of the cameras“We take the tracking information that comes from
the Mo-Sys Engineering system called StarTracker
and SpaceTracker into the Viz Engine render engine.
These systems use reflective ‘stars’ on the ceiling
of the studio to accurately locate the camera
positions. As the camera is moved, there is a depth
perception to the viewer at home. When the director
switched cameras, the Viz Engine maintains the
correct perspective view. A GPI trigger box sends
a command from the vision mixer to the Viz Engine
via Viz Virtual Studio. That was done to great effect
in Scotland, and we learned valuable lessons about
how it should be set up. But it is now even more subtle
and was used on the General Election programme.”
Leak adds that what was important for this
broadcast was the requirement to be able to track
the whole studio. “This was a huge studio space
and the BBC wanted to use both VR and AR. The
cameras that were being used for augmented
reality were sometimes swung around and would
be required for a virtual reality set-up. As a result, two
of the cameras – the Steadicam and the encoder-
based Moviebird crane – were capable of using
both technologies.”
In effect, this means that the output from these
two cameras had to be fed into two different
render engines. Overall, the multi-camera set-up
comprised seven virtual reality-capable and five
augmented reality-capable cameras.
Green issues“There are lots of interesting scenarios for the AR
camera. For instance, because green is being keyed,
it is obviously important that nothing of the colour
appears on the set. But what happens if the director
required that camera to be turned to another set
that perhaps has some green somewhere in it?
That’s when you have to utilise another graphics
engine that runs a hold-out matte that makes sure
that nothing is keyed if a guest comes into the studio
wearing a green jumper or is sporting a party rosette
or an election logo containing that colour. Even the
reflection on the floor of such items would cause
a problem, so we have to make certain that is not
keyed, as well. It is a delicate balance to getting the
AR and VR set up together.”
Although set up for different purposes, both
rendering engines are identical and have the
same latest version of NVIDIA Quadro M6000 and
both run in a Matrox card for a video output.
“On every election there is always the challenge
of getting the graphics cards to work in real time,”
reports Leak. “Like any computer system, if you start
to go over real time you begin to see problems.
We had worked very closely with the BBC to
optimise the performance and the Vizrt UK team
had the capabilities to handle these huge and
complex projects. And we certainly pushed
those graphics cards to their limit because of the
demands that were placed upon them.”
Leak states that all the AR and VR elements
worked well on the night and everyone involved
with the production was well pleased with the
outcome. “A great many graphics were prepared
to meet a variety of scenarios, many of which were
based on pre-poll predictions. We rehearsed the
graphics based on what the opinion polls were
saying, but in the end those often proved incorrect
so the graphics were not used. No matter how
much planning you do, there is never enough.
Although you come to the show with as many
plans as you think you need, there are always
unexpected events that occur, but we were
prepared for everything.”
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A crane was fitted with a Mo-Sys Engineering tracking system to enable it be used for AR and VR production
42 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Forum
Brico: The entire industry and also RTS is in a
changeover phase – moving from either analogue
or digital to IP-based technology. In this process,
audio specialists have to work and cooperate
with IT specialists to get systems specifi ed, installed,
confi gured and working. This requires not only a
change in mindset, but also in workfl ow. What
in the past was achieved using wires or audio
routers now happens on the network. Additionally,
different IP formats and standards may present
themselves as a challenge in the future due
to interoperability and compatibility between
different systems and standards.
Browne: I would say audio and control
interoperability when using IP audio standards.
Connections need to be independent so that
local components can be reconfi gured without
taking down all cross-connected systems or
taking many minutes to rediscover each other
and reconnect.
de Bruyn: Connectivity with as many as
possible other systems and protocols. AES67
certainly helps achieving that.
Johnston: The most immediate challenge
is adapting to the rapid adoption of IP in all
aspects of the production process. This brings
opportunities and challenges. For example,
AVB was trumpeted as the next standard 12
to 18 months ago. Today, AES67 seems to be
the emerging standard. Keeping pace with
technology trends as well as continuing to add
functionality is always an on-going challenge.
Malleck: For us the challenge of 2015 is fi nding
the balance between satisfying the growing IP
solution demand and the necessity of providing
simple out-of-the-box solutions. The IT industry
moulded the perception of easily deployable
Talking of commsFrom beltpacks to digital matrix technology, comms covers a wide range of products and innovations. Philip Stevens moderates this month’s forum with experts from the sector
Communication technology may not have the same glamour appeal as cameras, slow motion systems, or massive audio mixing desks, but it is nonetheless vital to the production industry. So, what are the challenges, what role does VoIP play today, and what should we expect for the future?
To communicate these and other issues we have (in alphabetical order) Manuel Brico, marketing manager EMEA, intercom and aviation, RTS Intercoms; Simon Browne, director of product management, Clear-Com; Eric de Bruyn, CEO, ASL Intercom; Ewan Johnston, sales and marketing director, Trilogy; Jürgen Malleck, international sales, Delec; and Ramon Pankert, product manager at Riedel.
What are the main challenges facing comms providers in 2015?
Manuel Brico, RTS Intercoms
TVBEurope 43June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Forum
TCP/IP and VoIP solutions. But the truth is users
are left alone with bringing these solutions to life.
We think that 2015 will focus more than ever on
integrated systems rather than shifting boxes.
Pankert: There are two main challenges. First
is networking – how do you transport over a
digital network protocol? As an industry, we are
still in the process of building up our knowhow
when it comes to IT technology, but it will be
the future. Meanwhile, there are still many
decisions pending and so we include in our
products all the important protocols that we
see coming along. Secondly, the total cost of
ownership is getting more and more important.
It is not only CAPEX, but especially OPEX. We
build our products so we can highlight the OPEX
advantages for our users.
Browne: There is a place for pure intercom
without connections to other audio and control
sub-systems, but it is limited in most working
scenarios. You often need connections to audio
consoles and routers if only for IFB or announcer
systems. These connections are also needed
within the cloud. If this isn’t possible, and APIs
may not exist for the third-party devices, then the
cloud intercom may be limited.
de Bruyn: So far, we have not had the wish
from our customer to go through the cloud with
their intercom system. However, it might be an
issue for the future.
Johnston: While we can deliver on that
capability today, there are still latency issues to
be addressed and any increased latency by
going via a cloud service makes such systems
unacceptable to many customers.
Malleck: Yes and no. We still see great interest
in cloud solutions, as this was the term of late
2014. However, translating cloud features into
the intercom language is more about providing
distributed resources – available everywhere
and anytime – than pure internet-based services.
The reliability and downwards-compatibility of
conventional intercom systems and the fl exibility,
scalability and cost-effi ciency of transnational
cloud-based communication services like
Intracom’s virtual intercom VCOM.
Brico: RTS’ VoIP solution is called RVON, which
stands for RTS Voice Over Network. RTS has built
up and maintained a large RVON install base
over the last ten years. This is, therefore, nothing
new for us. Additionally, we now also provide a
high quality audio with full bandwidth and ultra
low latency solution called Omneo. This is based
on Audinate’s Dante and offers as standard
keypanel connection for our customers. Also,
IP four-wire exchange with other devices is
becoming standard and more common.
Browne: Absolutely, yes. The concerns over
latency for cueing the remote, although justifi ed,
are diminishing for the simple reason that the
convenience of providing comms and data in
the same low cost pipe is more appealing. Clear-
Com has a Partyline over IP product, LQ-2W2,
that provides for this operation with both audio
and call signalling over WAN networks.
de Bruyn: There is an increasing demand for
AoIP (audio-over-IP), not so much VoIP.
Johnston: Absolutely. The twin prongs of
improved quality of the more modern VoIP
codecs, together with the increased fl exibility
VoIP provides are making this an increasingly
common communications standard in remote
production systems.
Malleck: We’ve noticed a strong move away
from analogue telephone hybrids and expensive
audio codec trunks, to more affordable VoIP
solutions as networks become faster, and reliable
connections are available around the globe.
We make sure our customers grow with the
possibilities VoIP solutions offer, meaning we will
be giving them more than just the VoIP interface,
we provide them with a set of tools to choose
from when they are in production and are under
pressure to establish connectivity. Relating to this,
2015 will be especially interesting for Delec.
Pankert: Short answer: yes. The need for
remote production is growing a great deal. And
there is a link to the OPEX we mentioned earlier.
People don’t want to travel around the world
to make productions, so we see great potential
for remote operations – so we anticipate the
potential for our VoIP products. We don’t just
need LAN solutions, we need integrated LAN
and WAN solutions. That’s why we sold the WAN
concept last year and we have virtual solutions
all over our portfolio.
Brico: The integration into overall umbrella control
systems such as VSM from LSB, KSC from BFE and
Celebrum from Axon is happening everywhere.
So, comms will increasingly be part of automated
set-up change via a control system.
Browne: The intercom system has always had
to connect with other elements such as the studio
desk and audio router for IFBs or line monitoring, or
Simon Browne, Clear-Com
Eric de Bruyn, ASL Intercom
“The most immediate challenge is adapting to the rapid adoption of IP in all
aspects of the production process” Ewan Johnston, Trilogy
In the forum last year, opinions were divided about ‘comms
in the cloud’. Is that technology being more accepted today?
Has the use of VoIP increased as a means of communicating
between studios and OBs?
Are we seeing greater integration between comms
systems and other elements in a studio distribution network?
44 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
through the master control to outside lines and to
camera and wireless systems. With the development
of higher audio quality in today’s digital systems
– like Clear-Com’s Eclipse-HX – we are seeing
intelligent links over MADI, integration with fi bre-
based audio and video distribution with ProGrid,
and AoIP connectivity to remote links over LQ.
de Bruyn: Even though we still believe in
having a separate network for your intercom
(to be able to communicate should the general
distribution network fail), more and more
integration is happening.
Johnston: The answer to this is both yes
and no. There is a defi nite move away from
purchasing proprietary systems from a single
vendor that locks customers into that solution
for their comms and some other aspects of the
studio network. However, as happened in the IT
world, there is an increasing drive towards making
systems interoperable by using standards-based
approaches. The move to IP means more and
more systems are sharing the same IP infrastructure,
so interoperability and compatibility are key to any
successful implementation.
Malleck: Comms systems have always
been tightly integrated with other broadcast
components. Right now, we see a convergence
for interfacing standards. Recently launched AoIP
connection standards – for example, Dante and
AES67 – are bound to simplify connectivity amongst
the elements, but they only transport audio.
IP-based control protocols like OCA (Open
Control Architecture) or EmBER are not industry
standard yet, so the way we exchange
information is actually not much different from
15 years ago. We are certain that the demand
to improve interoperability – even between
competing products – will eventually become
a real requirement. The IT industry is teaching us
this. Together with its parent Stagetec – one of
the founding members of OCA – Delec sits at
the source of this development. The concept of
OCA has been introduced as X210 to the Audio
Engineering Society and Delec’s R&D is ready to go
as soon as this becomes an approved standard.
Pankert: Absolutely. One example is the AVB
concept. This whole network approach is brilliant,
but there are probably still some components
missing. But we can have intercom on an AVB
network with a mixing console, a monitoring system
on AVB – you just connect the devices together to
the cloud – and everything is auto-detected and
working. This is a huge advantage of interoperability
integration. Then look at our new Smartpanel. It’s a
total approach and we are operating in a similar
way to the iPhone. You buy the platform and
purchase the software applications as you need
them. We have different editions of apps – just buy a
simple one and pay for your needs. But in the future,
the whole concept brings us up to a level where our
platform will be able to do many other things – not
just intercom. So, our approach is to sell a powerful
smart platform onto which you can install comms
apps. Then you have an intercom panel at an
attractive cost. But on top, you have a concept
advantage of other applications.
Brico: Yes, the CTV’s new OB11. It ranks among
the largest OB trucks ever built. With 880 ports,
its ADAM matrix allows for the creation of a very
large communication matrix. The matrix can be
connected to all audio transmission formats –
including analogue, voice-over-IP and the
media networking architecture Omneo.
Rounding off the intercom system is a total
of 32 keypanels from RTS.
Do you have a very brief case study that illustrates an innovative use of comms?
“Comms systems have always been tightly integrated with other broadcast
components. Right now, we see a convergence for interfacing standards”
Jürgen Malleck, Delec
Ewan Johnston, Trilogy
Jürgen Malleck, Delec
Forum
CTV’s new OB11 ranks among the largest OB trucks ever built
Browne: Through Clear-Com’s
distributor, Audiopole, and the installer,
Astrium, the Eclipse HX matrix system
and V-Series control panels were
used during the world-renowned
13-day fast-paced motor vehicle
event that is known to fans simply
as The Dakar. This event attracted
more than fi ve hundred competitors
travelling up to 900km a day through
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Unique
operational challenges arise from the
sheer scale of the event, teamed with
the dangerous and noisy aspects of
the sport. It is therefore essential that
the comms are reliable, clear and
fl exible. As part of a recent update,
all standard IP-connected V-Series
operator panels perform both as fully
functional intercom user panels and
as multi-channel audio gateways
with no requirement for additional
hardware or software licences – thus
meeting the fl exibility requirements
that are necessary for a successful
rally. This added feature extended a
V-Series panel at a specifi c remote
location to utilise the auxiliary channels
to provide a local intercom, audio
system, or radio system with matrix
communication down the same pipe.
Johnston: We have recently
deployed systems for customers who
have elected to use a standard
enterprise wireless solution for
camera, lighting, sound, and fl oor
managers. They are using ruggedised
mobile handsets rather than
proprietary beltpack solutions. Initially,
this is wireless, but will likely expand to
a 4G offering in future use cases.
Malleck: We introduced the
Oratis compact series at IBC 2013. It
provides up to 24 analogue 4wires, up
to 16 dual channel AES/EBU ports – for
panels and 4wires, and a redundant
64-channel Dante interface – also for
subscribers and 4wires. Dependent
on a customer’s technology level,
he is able to interface with legacy
components as well as conveniently
connect a subscriber through his
IP infrastructure using Delec Dante
panels. For us, innovative intercom
systems are hybrids. Multi-interface
nodes bring everything together with
maximum cost effi ciency.
Pankert: We were one of the
players who inspired ESPN to go
down the AVB path when it came
to building a new studio complex.
As a result, Riedel delivered a
complete intercom system based
on AVB network technology.
Brico: We have just made a big
innovative step by introducing
Omneo-based intercom keypanel
and systems. Two years ago, RTS
launched the fi rst Omneo-based
products: the OMI (Omneo matrix
interface card) and the OKI
(Omneo Keypanel Interface cards
for legacy RTS panels). We have
now extended this portfolio with a
new keypanel series with Omneo
on board: the KP-series. With the
complete new KP family, all RTS
keypanels will feature two or more
channel Dante-based Omneo
matrix connections as standard.
For the future, we already have
several ideas for other products
and customer requirements that
could be realised using Omneo
technology.
Browne: Yes, always. There
are new technologies that allow
greater reach and fl exibility that
can be tied in clever ways to
traditional intercom.
de Bruyn: Flexibility of the
intercom system is still a very
important issue. In Frankfurt, we
showcased a new digital system
that will give you the greatest
fl exibility to date.
Johnston: Yes, but they are
roadmap items that we are not
prepared to launch just yet. Make
sure you visit Trilogy at IBC this year,
where innovation and security will
be high on our agenda.
Malleck: In a nutshell: increasing
interoperability and decreasing
complexity. Simplifi cation is the
real future innovation of our times.
Delec focuses on making it easier
to use our systems, without any
reduction in functionality.
Pankert: For me, the biggest
major innovation is the Smartpanel.
As I mentioned earlier, this is
a new approach to doing
communication. At NAB, we
introduced the apps that turn the
Smartpanel into an innovative
and customisable intercom panel
for professionals. In the same way
that smartphones have surpassed
traditional mobile phones in
enriching user experience, the
Smartpanel brings workfl ows to a
whole new level. And we have
a small intercom platform called
Tango. This is our fi rst fully networked
platform based on the AES67
and AVB standards. With its own
dedicated intercom application,
it can be turned into a cutting-
edge and fl exible solution for
a variety of communications
scenarios. In short, Tango is the
fl exible future-proof platform for
the broadcast environment.
TVBEurope 45June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Forum
Are there any major innovations in the pipeline as far as comms are concerned?
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The Global Broadcast, AV and Pro Audio Resource Library
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TVBEurope 47June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Data Centre
The new research, ‘Mobile & Online TV &
Video: OTT, IPTV & Connected Markets
2015-2019’, observed that OTT services
are seeing a rapid uptake by consumers who
want to view content, when and where it
suits them. The report argued that traditional
broadcasters are facing increased competition
as more services go over-the-top of pay-TV
incumbents, allowing distributors such as
Sling TV to provide customers with a cheaper,
tailored alternative to cable TV, driving the
trend for ‘cord-cutting’.
Continued growth in the established markets
of Western Europe and North America, along
with the emergence of key OTT players in the
Far East and Asia Pacific, will bring a surge in
the uptake of OTT subscriptions over the next
four years. In the US, OTT is a service which
has done considerably well over the past few
years, with Netflix registering 37.7 million paid US
subscribers. This looks set to continue, particularly
with the launch of services such as HBO Go
where content will be available direct from the
production company, on-demand and for a fee,
rather than customers requiring a more costly
cable or satellite subscription package.
Whilst key players such as Netflix and YouTube
have launched 4K services, the adoption of 4K
content has been slow. Juniper is predicting
this will change over the next two years. Netflix
added its 4K offering to its highest priced
subscription package last year, showing belief
that consumers are willing to pay for higher
quality content, while OTT providers are gaining
recognition as being the first to supply viewers
with content in this new format.
Meanwhile, 4K TVs will continue to become more
affordable, accelerating hardware take-up.
Over 84 per cent of OTT subscriptions will be
made via connected TVs by 2019. IPTV revenues
are set to more than double between 2014 and
2019, rewarding network operators’ investment in
triple and quad-play services.
One of the biggest threats to the traditional
TV industry, Juniper asserts, is consumers
cancelling their satellite or cable TV services
in favour of cheaper deals from OTT streaming
companies such as Netflix and Hulu. This trend
has been dubbed ‘cord-cutting’ and has
become a way for consumers to save
money as they assess whether they need to
subscribe to hundreds of channels, especially
as they move to watch TV on mobile and
connected devices.
In an attempt to combat the growing trend
for cord-cutting amongst consumers, numerous
network operators have ‘bundled’ their services
over the past few years.
OTT TV subscriptions to reach $31.6 billion by 2019
New data from Juniper Research has shown that subscriptions from OTT TV providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime will generate $31.6 billion by
2019, up from just under $8 billion in 2014. By Holly Ashford
Total Subscription OTT revenues 2019: $31.6 billion
Sour
ce: J
unip
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Today’s broadcasters and content owners are offering more subscription-based and registration-based services, collecting mountains of data about their users and audiences. But most of this potential is going unused, even though it has the power
to dramatically reshape the broadcast industry. In its latest paper, ‘Big Questions, Big Answers: Will harnessing smart data for audience analytics save the broadcast industry?’, GfK explores the benefits of Big Data for broadcast. Niko Waesche, global lead of the media and entertainment industry at GfK, outlines what a Big Data future looks like
At a time of intense competition, Big Data
is increasingly being embraced as a
strategic and operational business tool.
But the type of data that is being collected and
analysed is changing. In the past few years, the
industry has been focused on the basics; such
as subscribers, the number of pieces of content
or the number of plays. Now, the industry is
moving away from asset-based data towards
‘behavioural’ data, using real-time individual
information on a much greater scale.
Viacom International Media Networks’ (VIMN)
senior vice president Philip O’Ferral says, “Six
months ago, we were doing the basics. TV
ratings, website numbers and top-line social
media numbers. Now we have a business
intelligence team and the guy who runs it has
a PhD in maths. What we are using is a blend of
raw data from the mobile web and app usage
in particular, who’s watching what, for how long
and for what time. Then we add third-party
feeds to help shape what we do with it, including
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and some set-top
box data. But we also use traditional data like
panels and groups.”
Yet it is clear that there is still some way to go.
Rohana Rozhan, CEO of Astro, states, “I would
love to say we are very good with data but the
reality is we are not yet, and we are working hard
to change that. We are evolving and learning.
The reality today is that it is no longer about
households, it’s about personalised data across
individual devices.”
Adding value to advertisingMany commercial broadcasters are using Big
Data to enhance their advertising sales, because
“in developed markets, advertising is a known
metric,” says Tom Weiss, CEO of Genius Digital.
In the UK, Channel 4 is pioneering the use of
Big Data to drive advertising revenues. Big Data-
enhanced VoD ad sales currently account for
15 per cent of Channel 4’s total VoD advertising
inventory, traded based on demographically
targeted information. And in two years, Channel
4 predicts that as much as 50 per cent of its total
VoD inventory will be traded this way.
Sanjeevan Bala, head of data planning and
analytics at Channel 4, says that these changes
have resulted in “incremental revenue of
between 30 per cent to 55 per cent depending
on the ad product, compared to current VoD
prices. These new products will be more
effective and efficient for brands and advertisers
that are looking to take advantage of
more targeting on VoD.”
Getting personal with the viewerThe changing business model in broadcast is
also impacting how Big Data is being used and
with more direct communication happening
between the broadcaster and the audience, Big
Data is becoming business-critical.
Sky IQ collects customer behavioural data
across all the Sky platforms, including online,
and tracks profiles and interactions. It also
integrates this data with outside data, including
publicly available statistics, demographics and
retail data and partnerships. Tony Mooney,
managing director of Sky IQ, thinks that
companies need the basic demographics,
including household composition, affluence
of the house, affordability, transactions,
and interactions. “But what you really need
after that is frequency and ‘recency’; or
how often and how soon. Until we started
doing the viewing piece, we didn’t have a
complete picture of consumer behaviour
and consumption, so adding that has been
extremely powerful.”
ProSiebenSat.1 made Big Data a company-
wide initiative in 2014, moving it beyond the
maxdome catch-up TV business to gather
data from all the different parts of the business
in compliance with the legislation on data
protection. ProSiebenSat.1’s maxdome service
has already seen 40 per cent growth in its
customer usage since its re-launched brand
and content offer in 2014.
48 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
Will Big Data save the broadcast industry?
Data Centre
Dr Niko Waesche
‘Big Data-enhanced VoD ad sales currently account for 15 per cent of Channel 4’s total VoD advertising inventory, traded based on demographically targeted information.
In two years, Channel 4 predicts that as much as 50 per cent of its total VoD inventory will be traded this way’
TVBEurope 49June 2015 www.tvbeurope.com
Data Centre
OSN, the leading pay-TV operator across the
Middle East, has quadrupled its spend on
research and data capture analysis in the last
four years. “We spend multiple millions every
year on data. The justification for increased
amounts of money is to enhance the value
proposition and increase the growth of our
subscription base,” says CEO Dave Butorac.
For content production companies, the allure
of Big Data is about the ability to create new
business models. Ernst Feiler, head of technology
at UFA serial drama in Germany, says contact
with the audience is really new for broadcasters,
but it’s a key element to the future health of
the television production business and TV as a
whole. “We have no experience with (data)
and we have to learn. The broadcasters do deal
with data, but only after we deliver them our
production. This is not an intelligent way forward.”
The Big Data futureThe power of Big Data is immense and it’s clear
that broadcasters and platform operators are
only beginning to scratch the surface of what
is possible. Understanding how best to use Big
Data is also at a fairly early stage and there are
still questions about who should be doing the
analysis and how that research is disseminated
throughout the organisation.
But for the future of broadcast, the industry
needs to think about the data ecosystem. All
the business models around data are still in the
stage of thinking about ‘our’ data rather than
the ecosystem of data. In the end, the
different data sources will have to come
together to be truly effective.
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‘All the business models around data are still in the stage of thinking about
‘our’ data rather than the ecosystem of data. In the end, the different data sources will have to come together to
be truly effective’
50 TVBEurope www.tvbeurope.com June 2015
In its third annual Viewer Experience Report,
Conviva suggests that as audiences swell
and potential subscription revenue increases,
there are mounting challenges in building
sustainable OTT services.
Consumers no longer simply expect a service
to work, they demand that it provide a high-end
experience. Delivering a quality experience to
each and every viewer has never been more
complex nor more fundamental to acquiring and
retaining an audience.
“Viewers used to be content with an OTT
service if the video began playing at all - this
is no longer the case,” explains Hui Zhang,
Conviva’s CEO. “Consumers now demand a
multi-dimensional experience that provides
superior picture fi delity, zero resolution volatility,
and TV-like viewing quality, and will abandon the
streams that do not deliver. OTT providers need
to utilise an iterative publishing process to ensure
the optimised experience consumers demand.”
The report states that video start failures have
decreased by almost half to an all-time low of
2.6 per cent while buffering and low resolution
experiences remained relatively unchanged from
2013. Worldwide picture fi delity grew 30 per cent
in 2014, and the report concluded that as picture
fi delity increases, so does time spent consuming
content. Playback interruptions were highlighted
as a point of concern, as 14 minutes of viewer
engagement is lost on average for each one per
cent of interruptions experienced.
“In the end, it is the combination of high picture
fi delity and low interruption rates tuned to the
platform, device and network in use by the viewer
that determines engagement,” the report states.
Despite these issues, multiscreen viewing is at
an all-time high. While average household size
has been shrinking, the number of devices in use
within each household has risen, with the average
household of three people using two devices
simultaneously during primetime. “TV is becoming
a more individual, rather than community,
experience,” the report summarised. It concludes by
warning that although this is an exciting prospect, it
also brings signifi cant risk to OTT providers: as viewers
compare and contrast one another’s services,
identify the best available, and move to whichever
best meets their needs.
The OTT viewer experienceData Centre
“Quality of experience impacts the profi tability of every digital media business and every single viewer,” says new report published by Conviva
Engagement reduction (in minutes) with 1% increase of buffering
39.3%2012
% of views that experience buffering
BUFFERING
RESOLUTION
START FAILURE
% of views impacted by low resolution
% of views impacted by full start failure
26.9%2013
28.8%2014
63%2012
56.7%2013
58.4%2014
4%2012
4.8%2013
2.6%2014
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
201320122011 2014
+1% INTERRUPTIONS
3 MINS
8 MINS
11 MINS
14 MINS