theibcdaily Monday 16.09.13 77 C4 launches rec engine In Brief
Conference Analysis By Ann-Marie Corvin
Channel 4 is set to unveil the first fruits of its viewer engagement strategy by releasing a user recommendation engine based on the data and feedback the broadcaster has gathered from its 9 million registered users. In a session on the merits of collating big data, the commercial broadcaster’s chief technology officer Bob Harris revealed that the product would be ready in “the next few months”. Under the leadership of its CEO David Abraham, Channel 4 has become a key advocate of audience insight and technology in a bid to deliver new products to
TV fights
the devices Conference Analysis
By Kate Bulkley Liberty Global-UPC’s head of design Andrew Kearney says that the TV industry is facing a “generational shock” by 2020 when the teens of today will be consuming TV in a very different way. “That TV is not going to change does not gel with the behaviour of my 12-year-old son,” Kearney told the ‘TV Fights Back: The Battle for the Viewer Experience’ session. “He is watching zero TV and we need to stop riding the complacent wave that there will be no change.” To meet the different needs of this consumer, Liberty Global-UPC has launched its Horizon set-top box remote control on Apple’s iOS and “others are in process”, said Kearney. Allowing viewers to access the same user experience that they would get from their Horizon set-top box on other screens is key to keeping pace with changing consumption patterns. “Having another experience on another device solves some of the big issues about group viewing as well,” says Kearney.
Indeed the set-top box is said by some to be morphing into a home hub loaded with many tuners to allow many devices, but some also say the set-top box will be disintermediated by services offered in the cloud. “We want our Horizon experience to be on all devices and all surfaces so the fact that my son doesn’t watch TV as such is irrelevant.”
ad targeting – I think we are only at the beginning of what we are going to do with this data,” Harris said.
Bob Harris: “I think we are only at the beginning of what we are going to do with this data”
advertisers and viewers. “It would be a mistake to assume that big data is all about
However, fellow delegate Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels warned that not all recommendation engines win over users. “Six years ago Amazon built something called Digital Soulmate – which matched people who had purchased exactly the same thing. People hated it. They hated the fact that they were not as unique as they liked to think they were.” Talking about the size of C4’s
current data, Harris said that the broadcaster regularly processes between five and 10 billion rows of data.
“If we were to print it all out it would be 455 miles high. Each
one of those rows contains 25,000 characters – that’s 3.4 million copies of Shakespeare. It would take on average 23,000 years to read it all.”
Harris added that data mining is not cheap – it is costing Channel 4 “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to use Amazon’s EMR cloud service – but he added that to use a proprietary system or its own in-house platform would have been between “three to five times” more expensive.
He added: “If you think you are going to move into big data using relational databases, then think again. Open source is the only option if you are not sure whether there is any value in there. Pay as you go pricing is important and it is scalable,” he said.
Earth TV buys 70 cameras Ikegami
By David Fox Earth TV is purchasing 70 Ikegami HDL-23 miniature PoV 1080p cameras to fit in new outdoor robotic and augmented reality systems. “We transmit via IP and
broadcast from our Munich office,” said joint managing director Nikolaus Lohmann. Customers include ARD, SVT Sweden, N24 Germany and RTL 7. “We’ve just had our 150,000th show [after a decade in operation]. We think we are the most successful TV format ever,” he added. Although most broadcasts are short, used either for weather or before news programmes.
Earth TV’s joint MDs, Claudius and Nikolaus Lohmann, with Ikegami’s Daniel Storch and the new camera
The HDL-23 will be built into Earth TV’s new full, remote motion-controlled weatherproof camera housing, which can survive hurricanes and freezing temperatures. The cameras also do motion-controlled time lapses. Pictures need to look good at night, and the camera delivers low-
noise images from its three 1/3- inch CMOS sensors. It will get the first cameras later this year. The two companies have also entered a development partnership and are planning a range of Broadcast Robotic Systems especially for broadcast customers. 11.A31
Minima is minimised Ianiro/Visio
By David Fox Visio’s Minima 30 is a bright new continuous LED light source with variable colour temperature control. Despite drawing only 30W, it delivers four times the output of the original Minima unit, and is smaller too.
It can be mounted on-camera or on a stand, weighs 624g, and its power draw means it can run for longer, making it suitable for ENG camera crews and event videographers. Power options include: Sony NP series battery (the NP-750 provides 2.5 hours
Minimal power, maximised output: Ianiro’s Allen-Miles with the new Minima 30
continuous shooting); D tap cable; and a 12V AC connection. “Minima 30 is very well built and delivers 50W tungsten equivalent
with very good colour control across the dimming range. Its power profile is impressive: we’ve tested it with a V-lock battery and seen up to 10 hours on a single charge. At under £250, it is exceptional value for money,” claimed Ianiro International’s MD, Nick Allen-Miles.
The build quality is also
improved: the hot shoe is now metal and can be mounted in three different positions to facilitate a better shooting angle. Its 60º angle of illumination can be increased to 120º with its diffuser, and it is promised to maintain colour fidelity at all brightness levels. 11.E32/11.G45
300 channels for E-digital E-digital is deploying the Evertz 300 channel high- density encoding and transcoding platform, targeting 500,000 customers through its cable service in and around Bangalore via RF and WAN. Evertz provided the end- to-end infrastructure to run simultaneous cable and multi-screen services to the entire region with a single bandwidth-efficient MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) headend, making it possible for E-digital to be the first operator in Bangalore to provide such converged services. 8.B40
New IP-cores for
JPEG2000-RAW Intopix has introduced a new range of IP-cores for the JPEG2000-RAW compression technology. Designed for FPGA
circuits that manage HD, 4K or 8K Bayer camera image sensor output from 10- to 16-bit, the new development provides a ‘visually lossless’ compression at various frame rates.
The JPEG2000-RAW IP-
cores generate fully standard JPEG2000 files (ISO 15444-1) from a camera’s digital sensor. It does this by, prior to conversion, storing each of the sensor’s colour channels separately into a full colour image with an optimised and flexible rate allocation. In doing so it preserves the access to any demosaicing algorithms, the control over white balance, exposure and colour grading in post production. 10.D31g
Local products
for local people Hitachi Kokusai has set up a Turkish subsidiary to target expansion of its broadcast equipment business in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It will go live next month and is intended to move beyond simply supporting sales and maintenance by embracing the ‘local production for local consumption’ based business style in Turkey’s free trade zones, where it hopes to locally develop, design and manufacture products. It should also help Hitachi take advantage of Turkey’s plans to change to a digital broadcasting system. 11.D42
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