May2012 www.tvbeurope.com


“We see about 20 timesmore average revenue from a TV user than a PC user”— Josep Mitjà, Wuaki.tv


Jai Maroo: “As a delivery mechanism, the Cloud is great”


TVBEurope 39 Broadcasting in the Cloud


versus encrypting and storing it, so if there are four or five different DRMs, rather than having to store 120 or 130 [copies], you might just have 25 or 30,” said Morse. To virtualise these services it uses Cisco’s Unified Compute and Storage platform, which is how it gains scalability, so that as the load increases it can add channels and transcode capability. “We can engineer it for the worst case situation, but can do it at a fraction of the cost because we have the virtualisation capability and CDN,” he said.


Going to market Today, there are lots of contenders to own the OTT market, whether consumer electronics manufacturers, content owners or service providers, and which wins will differ from country to country, said Maroo. “It will depend on who can grab the consumer’s attention.” “There will be lots of different successful models, but service providers are the best placed, as they have billing relationships with customers,” added Sheppard. But many service providers have yet to decide whether to be dumb pipes or experienced providers, so there are still lots of opportunities. For Spanish OTT operator,


Wuaki.tv, it is all about convenience. “Consumers want to see anything, anytime, anywhere,” said its COO, Josep Mitjà, but this isn’t easy to deliver thanks to the way rights are managed and the different technologies used (it currently


supports five DRM


systems). But it is worth it. “We see about 20 times more average revenue from a TV user than a PC user.” With broadband


“We don’t have an IT infrastructure department. It’s all managed by our service provider” Ali Bhagia


availability and speed increasing rapidly (fibre to the home is coming to major cities in Spain this year — as it is elsewhere in Europe), the internet can deliver high quality. However, getting the service right isn’t easy. The user interface has to be scalable, deliver all the services you want, and be simple enough to be used by anyone. It also has to be coherent across devices. “So people can instantly recognise where they are and what to do.” TV sets don’t have powerful


processors, so performance can be an issue. “You have to reduce anything that can take performance from the television’s CPU. All the resizing, etc., is done in the Cloud,” explained Mitjà. Service monitoring “is driving


us crazy”, he added, because if the user presses a button and it doesn’t work “it’s our fault”, even if it is nothing to do with Wuaki.tv, so it has to be continually monitored. It also does a lot of testing, which has to be manual if it is on a TV. “Open technologies always


win, at least in the long run,” said Mitjà, who believes that OTT will win eventually, ahead of HbbTV and DOCIS.


Star of India Star India uses the


Cloud both as a way of working with more than 100 production companies and of reaching viewers on new devices. “India has many languages and cultures, so some markets are very niche,” explained Ali Bhagia, head of Multiscreen. It also means its operations can’t be centralised. Star produces about 35 hours


of new content per day (all outsourced), 85% of which is delivered just in time; a problem when it is on tape that has to be encoded for use with new devices, which is why it moved to the Cloud. Now, production companies have a dedicated line to Star via its Content Live service. With no need to make physical copies, the legal and content teams can view content at the same time, and use iPads with anytime/anywhere access to add metadata and comments. It can now reach Indian markets overseas with just a time shift (instead of the three to five days seen previously). Star India is part of News Corp, which hopes to move to a similar file-based system for all of its broadcasters. Star also uses the Cloud to reach consumers. It uploads a


single file and the 25 delivery formats are created automatically, and viewers can switch between devices to watch the same content


“We see about 20 times more


average revenue from a TV user than a PC user” Josep Mitjà


without interruption. “We don’t have an IT infrastructure department. It’s all managed by our service provider,” he said. It is also a lot cheaper to roll out new services than to build its own infrastructure.


CineCloud In Japan, NTT is also using the Cloud for both production and distribution. Its IPTV service, Hikari-TV has about 2 million subscribers. It became profitable once it reached 1 million, and carries catch-up TV for the five main Japanese broadcasters. FTTH dominates in Japan, with almost two-thirds of all broadband connections, due to its low price. In February, NTT took part in an IPTV experiment, with the ITU in Geneva, to test live 3D streaming from the Sapporo Snow Festival and HD VoD within various virtual networks, with nodes also in Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. It successfully tested the performance and quality of content, audio and interactivity using various technologies, such as OpenFlow, and how different multimedia content from different sites could be integrated together. A key component was the new LIME standard


(Lightweight


Interactive Multimedia Environment — ITU-T H.762), “a HTML and Java-based language that is easy to create for,” said Hidefumi Ito, senior manager, R&D, NTT. It is also working on “realtime


content sharing for online production delivered via a distribution network using HTML5.” It is not about delivery, but to allow production and post houses to collaborate on the same content “over multiple sites connected to a high-speed network.” It involves integrated management of content, and allows users to work on the same content wherever they are. Transcoding, storage and


management will be done in the Cloud, while each production house or collaborator will have a JPEG2000 Codec and i-Visto Gateway connection, to integrate with the network, and a Codec/Gateway device for their own specific workflow. Called CineCloud, it is being introduced by NTT America as a global service (with the main connections between LA and New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong) along with the CineGrid consortium.


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