content distribution feature
It’s increasingly important that content owners and network operators can ensure the flawless delivery of high quality content to TVs and other video devices. In this article, rather than look at one way in which this has become easier, Janne T. Morstøl, chief operating officer at T-VIPS, will take a top-level view of how the move to IP has made possible important new techniques in intelligent switching, remultiplexing, monitoring and video compression that have all combined to make content delivery so much more efficient and easy to manage.
New techniques for reliable content delivery
Networks’ VP of engineering, said: “Initial calculations told us that moving to IP would provide long term operational cost savings of nearly 70% on our bandwidth connections between the three New York regional sites.”
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Even though the bandwidth advantages of moving to IP are so great, many are now finding that it’s the changes in workflows enabled by IP that produce the greatest benefits. Almost all of the solutions that we now design utilise two-way IP communications for control and management. The combination of the move to digital and the two-way nature of IP networks have made it possible to hardwire intelligence into the video network. At T-VIPS we have already made the first steps, with solutions such as our seamless redundancy switching, which is already deployed at major operators. Looking at just one area, outside broadcast, IP connectivity comes at a much lower cost than previous satellite or video telco networks. IP also means that the video can be distributed over generic Ethernet networks, rather than the whole
veryone in the broadcast industry is aware of the bandwidth cost-advantages of IP. For instance, Jim Occhiuto, Showtime
distribution network being video or broadcast-centric. This saves cost and also means that it’s easier to contribute content from wherever it is being generated, particularly for news footage or for sports and events at smaller venues that may not have dedicated links already installed. The initial criticism of IP in broadcast was that it was designed for data traffic and not for applications demanding very high quality, such as live HD video. However, these questions have been resolved in the contribution and distribution domains, through engineering the networks to fulfil the quality of service requirements for live video and also deploying techniques such as advanced FEC (forward error correction) and VPLS/MPLS (virtual private LAN service/multi-protocol label switching).
High quality video in a multi-device scenario
20 years ago, the life of a broadcaster was easy. He had to deliver SD TV to TV sets. Today broadcasters are faced with the challenge of delivering their content to a vast portfolio of devices ranging from large, high definition TV sets and SD TV sets to PC, mobile phones and tablets and, irrespective of viewing device, the customer always wants a good quality viewing
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It’s becoming increasingly clear that content distribution
networks need to cater for more than just broadcasting content to the TV. As operators need to reach multiple device types as well as merging broadcast services with broadband content
distribution, the flexibility of IP contribution networks will become even more important, with intelligent edge- devices becoming a necessity as complexity increases.
experience. In order to meet the quality requirements demanded by consumers, the broadcaster has to deliver a product compatible with the highest video quality device, the large TV set in the living room. This means that the broadcaster has to design at least the first part of his content delivery network, the contribution network, to handle high video quality. Today, we are seeing a clear trend that broadcasters are designing their contribution infrastructures to support 10bit and 1080p even though most of their current contribution is still HD at 1080i or 720p or even SD. The adaptation required for different viewing devices will happen in the studio, allowing the quality and
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