Tablet viewers start to shun traditional broadcasters
economic times. NAB provides a perfect opportunity to showcase our technologies and solutions to the global marketplace.”
At the end of January 2013, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) agreed on a new video coding standard designed to address the growing issue of network pressures as online video proliferates.
Building on the ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard, the new High Effi ciency Video Coding (HEVC), will considerably ease the burden on global networks where the ITU suggests that video accounts for more than half of bandwidth use. HEVC data will essentially need only half the bit rate of its predecessor, which the ITU calculated currently accounts for more than four-fi fths of all web video. Somewhat bullishly, the organisation added that the deployment of HEVC would “unleash a new phase of innovation in video production spanning the whole ICT spectrum,” providing a “fl exible, reliable and robust solution, future-proofed to support the next decade of video.”
NAB 2013 showed clearly what technologies will be deployed to take advantage of this trend of connected devices; in particular it showed just how much of a near certainty it is that HEVC will be the standard on which future video services are based. Despite consumers’ voracious appetites for high-quality content instantaneously today, the ability to capture video with state-of-the-art equipment in increasingly higher-resolution formats has far surpassed the technical infrastructure in distribution. When TV in UltraHD (4K) resolution becomes more common, it will mean much higher bit rates, creating a massive burden on the bandwidth of both fi xed and mobile networks.
Just before its well-publicised takeover by ARRIS, Motorola Mobility’s Mike Gannon, senior product architect of the fi rm’s Home Division and one of the contributing editors for the HEVC, stressed just how the advance of HEVC could offer benefi ts such as ”scalability, time to marketplace and lack of confusion in the industry... reducing bandwidth and storage capacity.”
“Multiscreen video has led to a vast increase in the demand for content over networks that are bandwidth constrained. If you look today where they are using MPEG- 4 for HD video this is probably a bandwidth of 5-6 mbps in products; HEVC is going to half that,” Gannon added.
“We’re hearing a lot about 4K video and HEVC will play an important part in that delivery... The greatest impact will likely be felt in second or third screens. HEVC will allow... in today’s network- based DVR world, the ability to take in a single high-quality version of [content] and transcoding at the edge in the most appropriate format is key. [With HEVC] you are reducing storage costs in the network as well as transmission
costs...The impact of HEVC to the home will have a signifi cant factor in reducing the speed at which operators need to increase infrastructure.”
HEVC sets the standard
Judging by what the leading technology vendors had on offer at NAB, this proposition looks certain to come to fruition. Of those combining to effectively make NAB 2013 the HEVC show, multiscreen content delivery supplier Elemental Technologies demonstrated what it said were “ground-breaking” cloud capabilities for monetising multiscreen video with a unifi ed software architecture designed to enable live and on-demand video processing on-premise or in cloud or hybrid ground-cloud deployments. Elemental also highlighted 4KTV Ultra
HD encoding, HEVC/H.265 encoding and UltraViolet content creation, with video streaming to a variety of end-user players and devices.
As well as displaying technologies encompassing multiscreen and integration with the Adobe Primetime video publishing and monetisation platform, Envivio announced HEVC and future Ultra HD solutions. It showed how its network media processor can perform live packaging of content in the Adobe HDS format to monetise a high quality, TV-like viewing experience across connected devices.
Rovi debuted its new DivX Video Service which contains components for managing the entire video distribution chain from creation and secure delivery to multiscreen playback, and is designed to integrate with over-the-top (OTT) entertainment services. Rovi plans to update DivX Video Service to support HEVC/H.265 later in 2013.
As the drive towards producing technology based on the HEVC standard begins to ramp up, Harmonic even went as far as to release a video about the next-generation compression standard, with a brief defi nition of the technology and examining its numerous benefi ts and applications.
While it seemed evident that a technically effi cient and low-cost solution for disseminating the massive amount of data required for high quality video is desperately needed, it may be some time before the technology is available. Dror Gill, chief technology offi cer at Beamr, suggested that even though the proposed HEVC standard promises up to 50 percent bitrate reduction, it will take at least fi ve to seven years for mass-market penetration. “This timeframe is not fast enough for what is needed in today’s marketplace,” he warned.
ibeconnects.com | May/June 2013
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