32 Friday 13.09.13 theibcdaily Getting to Everywhere
Clearleap chief executive officer Braxton Jarratt examines how advances in video logistics technology are easing the challenges of multi-screen video
This year’s IBC is especially timely because it coincides with a transformation of the pay-TV industry into a very different sort of framework – one that is just as comfortable sending IP video streams to a tablet computing device as it is delivering managed video to the living- room television set. Driving this change is a confluence of technological capability and consumer expectation that is redefining what it means to watch television. Enjoying a favourite
programme no longer means planting yourself in front of a large, high definition screen that occupies a fixed location in the home. Instead, for a large population of subscribers, the expectation today is that content should be available at anytime over whatever playback device happens to be handy, and in whatever
environment that device happens to be. Accenture’s 2013 Video over
Internet Consumer Survey reflects the extensive reach of this phenomenon, noting that 90% of viewers globally now watch video over the internet, and in countries including Spain and Italy the percentage is higher still. That doesn’t mean content
is drifting inexorably away from the TV set, which remains the most-used screen for watching video. But it does indicate that viewers are extending and expanding the time-and-place footprint for television in interesting ways. While the experiences
enabled by video’s migration to new screens must be remarkably facile and user- intuitive, the behind-the-scenes manoeuvering required to enable them is increasingly
complicated. The world of multi-screen, multi-platform delivery is a labyrinth of video requirements in order to provide the exact same content in myriad ways. Image sizes, resolution,
encode/decode languages, metadata requirements and playback instructions vary, depending on the end device for which a programme is intended. At the same time, there is a long list of requirements for ensuring a compelling consumer experience that is consistent across devices. The good news is that
technologies and processes are emerging to satisfy the demands of a multi-screen consumption environment while enabling promising new consumer offerings such as subscription internet video products. It is possible today, for instance, to ingest,
translate, provision and export a single video programme that’s optimised for multiple playback formats and elegant presentation over multiple devices almost immediately. The result is a seamless
‘anywhere’ viewing experience in which content flows reliably across platforms and screens, and in which pay-TV providers can focus their energies on the creative and business possibilities presented by the multi-screen environment – rather than building and managing complicated (and costly) internal video processing departments. Whether the consumer
offering happens to be an internet subscription-video bundle, a wider range of ‘TV Everywhere’ delivery options, or an inventive new video-on- demand package is purely up to the provider. The point is
Opinion
Braxton Jarratt: ‘A labyrinth of video requirements’
that centralised solutions for complete multi-screen video management of large video libraries already are powering creative new implementations of multi-screen video. As the embrace and use of alternative video screens rises within Europe and elsewhere, it’s a capability that might just inspire television’s next golden age. 14.270
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