theibcdaily Saturday 08.09.2012 125 Broadband content has not been embraced by pay-TV operators Connected TV evolves
Conference Analysis By Ann-Marie Corvin
Embrace the Connected TV or watch as Xbox, Samsung and Google steal your business: that’s the message TiVo boss Tom Rogers sent out to pay-TV players at an IBC Forum session on the Evolution of Connected TV Platform. “The reason that Xbox and Samsung and Google have emerged in this space is that broadband content has largely not been embraced by pay-TV operators,” said Rogers, whose company powers cable operator Virgin’s catch up service in the UK market. “They must bring these services into the package they provide and offer them across other connected devices, or these platforms will develop as
Chinese state broadcaster puts transcoders on air
Linear Acoustic By David Davies
Chinese Central Television (CCTV) – the predominant state television broadcaster in mainland China – has specified the Linear Acoustic LA-5269 Dolby Digital/Plus transcoder for its new HD-ready broadcast facilities in Beijing.
The LA-5269 can encode, decode and transcode all of the most popular
multichannel audio formats in use by television broadcasters today, says the developer. Metadata is supported via an RS-485 connection.
Linear Acoustic transcoders
are already in operation on CCTV-3 (arts and entertainment), CCTV-5 (sports) and CCTV-8 (series television), and will eventually be installed on all 24 CCTV HD channels, which are accessible to more than 1 billion viewers. Mr Xu Gangming, director of CCTV’s Transmission Department, said that the LA-5269 had “not only simplified the system structure, but also provides stable, high performance 5.1-channel surround encoding for our HD channels. It fits the rigorous requirements of handling audio metadata and supporting the top quality programme production and distribution we demand at CCTV.” 8D29
Paralympics broadcast beyond TV
AJA By Carolyn Giardina
The International Paralympic Committee is using AJA technology to help broadcast an estimated 700 hours of coverage of the 2012 Paralympic games online. Twelve AJA Ki Pro Racks with assorted KiStor Drive module sizes, several Mini-Converters, Two Io HDs, a Kona card, two Kumos and a Kumo CP are used to record, edit and broadcast multiple feeds from the Olympic Broadcast Service
(OBS) on six
Paralympic.org channels and six video streams on ParalympicSportTV. “Increasing visibility for the Paralympic games is a huge priority for us. We know a large number of people are interested in the games, but aren’t able to watch them on TV,” said Jochen Farber, independent broadcast consultant, IPC. “Using a range of AJA gear,
from the Ki Pro Rack to Mini- Converters, KUMO routers and more, we’re able to broadcast the Paralympics to a much wider audience,” Farber added. 7.F11
competitors packaging services within their own interfaces,” Rogers warned. However, Stephen Taylor, an independent analyst at Redshift Strategy added that there are still plenty of reasons for established TV platforms to resist the pressure from players such as Google and Apple “but they need to improve their user experience and deepen their relationship with the viewer.” Representatives from Google, Xbox and Samsung were also present at the session to lay down their strengths in the connected TV space. Samsung’s Dan Saunders,
director of content services, outlined how the CE manufacturer was working with telcos, broadcasters and third-party app companies to build services, while active usage of its connected service has risen from 15% to 50% in two years.
Suveer Kothari: “Open access to the web and integrating it into the user experience is a must”
Rohan Oommen, general manager, Xbox EMEA, UK, said that his platform had arguably the biggest penetration of users of any of the main players – 40 million users across 35 countries. Xbox – which currently offers its customers around 200,000 movies and TV shows – claims
that users are now spending more time viewing content than playing it.
Suveer Kothari, head of global distribution partnerships at Google TV, said that the search engine giant was planning to build on its experiences with smartphones.
Extreme slow-mo for Brazil
I-Movix By David Fox
Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, TV Globo, has become the first Latin American broadcaster to acquire the I-Movix X10 continuously streaming ultra slow-motion system. It will add X10 to its existing complement of SprintCam Vvs HD systems to further improve its coverage of major sports. The X10 systems will be based at its Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo production centres and will be used to provide more ultra slow motion footage of premium events such as football and volleyball
A matter of time: The I-Movix X10 handles realtime, continuous slo-mo at 300fps
tournaments. TV Globo will also use the X10 for the production of special projects in the network’s documentary and soft news departments.
“TV Globo has a tradition of innovation in sports broadcasting and is always looking after solutions to improve how stories are captured and presented to its audience,” said the Director of TV Globo’s News and Sports Engineering Division, José Manuel Mariño. “It is important for us to have the most modern and the best tools available so that we can achieve this goal, and our partnership with I-Movix has been very fruitful.” The X10 is believed to be the first live ultra-motion package to deliver realtime, continuous extremely slow motion in full HD at 300 frames per second (or 600fps in 720p). 11.D75
In Brief
Quality Manager watches Belgacom TV Belgian telecom operator Belgacom has deployed Witbe’s Multiscreen Quality Manager solution to ensure that its subscribers enjoy the best quality of experience when watching TV on any device, says the developer.
The Witbe platform is using the Belgacom TV service in a similar way to consumers, in that it is connected to Belgacom set-top boxes in several cities in Belgium. It also logs on Belgacom’s TV Everywhere portal via web browsers and uses Belgacom’s TV Everywhere app for iOS and Android to ‘watch’ live TV and order on-demand content across all devices.
Belgacom engineers, marketers and managers have access to analytic dashboards reporting KPIs (Key Progress Indicators) such as channel change time, video streams quality, portal responsiveness, delay to launch the app and log into the portal, success ratio when buying on-demand content and other key parametrs. KPIs are available per device type and geographic location enabling management to focus troubleshooting actions and measure the impact of infrastructure investments on the quality delivered. 4.C55
Colour calibration The latest additions to TVLogic’s range of HD LCD multi-format monitors are the LQM-471W 47-inch quad-split monitor and the XVM-175W 17-inch full HD reference monitor. LQM-471W is a quad-split monitor that provides a large format quad-input display for versatile multi-source monitoring in control rooms. As such, it offers 1920 x 1080 native HD resolution, four HD/SD-SDI inputs/outputs and a selection of display modes. Other features include timecode display, audio dis-embedder and speakers. LQM-471W also includes a variety of marker and safety areas and TVLogic’s colour calibration system for colour alignment.
AJA in use by the IPC in London
XVM-175W combines TVLogic’s video processing and colour processing technology, combined with 10 bit IPS LCD panel with RGB- LED backlight. It offers 1920x1080 native HD resolution and accommodates a range of multiformat inputs including 3G/Dual Link HD- SDI, HDMI and DVI. 10.D26
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