28 TVBEurope Wrap-Up
Satellites: getting more bits from more places to more places, faster
A projected 50% increase in satellite TV channels, growing demand for HD — and beyond — and the increasingly competitive news industry were the driving factors behind what was hot in the satellite industry at this year’s NAB, as Ian McMurrayfound out
ACCORDING TORon Samuel, CEO of Eutelsat America, there were 31,000 satellite television channels broadcasting worldwide in 2011 and this is forecast to rise to over 47,000 channels by 2021. As such, it’s no surprise that his company, together with many others in the satellite industry, were at NAB to show off their latest and greatest offerings. In Eutelsat’s case, that meant talking to visitors about how the company’s recently-launched satellites have strengthened their capacity to provide cost-effective solutions for contribution links from Asia and Australia into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Another topic of conversation was Eutelsat’s
thanks to their bandwidth availability and coverage” said Samuel, noting that, of those 47,000 channels, almost a quarter are expected to be in high definition. “Ground still needs to be covered to improve compression and achieve industry- accepted standards. To bring quality Ultra HD content to the home, the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) compression standard should allow a significantly lower bit rate than current prevailing codecs such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. HEVC is generally considered by the industry to be one of the key elements towards wide deployment of 4K and 8K resolution. “Our commitment,” he
Stuart Brown: “It’s no longer enough to cover events, particularly sports, with traditional camera angles tethered to wired cameras”
launch in Europe in January of an Ultra HD demonstration channel as a platform to enable companies
Martin Turner: “BGAN HDR is taking video newsgathering to a whole new level”
in the broadcast chain to test the performance of their equipment and the end to end chain.
“We believe satellites will
be a natural platform for broadcasting Ultra HD content
continued, “is to providing capacity, reach and the highest quality of service to accommodate new channels, enable broadcasters to expand their channel offering and explore new formats. Beyond the pure broadcast opportunity, we are now also able to bundle TV with broadband services — using the KA-SAT High Throughput Satellite — for an all-satellite Triple Play experience.” Inevitably, HD was a hot topic across the show floor. Among the three new — for the American market — products on show from Cobham were a new HD MPEG-4 IP Encoder that, according to the company, enables a camera operator to instantly establish bi-directional communication and transmit live, broadcast-quality HD video from anywhere that has access to broadband connectivity. Also unveiled was the Solo Micro HD, a fully-featured COFDM digital video transmitter. The third new product was Cobham’s MediaMesh, which received its launch at IBC in September. MediaMesh is described as an IP-based platform that uses wireless technology designed for rapid set-up of a field newsroom to enable journalists to establish a live, two-way production system in minutes. Stuart Brown, broadcast systems director at Cobham Broadcast, explained the thinking behind the new products. “In a “see it now” world, we believe it is vital that journalists and producers are not only able to get to a scene first, but be first to transmit live video and audio while events are unfolding,” he said. “In their respective applications, MediaMesh and the new HD encoder do just that. “As for the Solo Micro HD, it’s no longer enough to cover
www.tvbeurope.com May 2013
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