TRENDS ///


you can seamlessly integrate VOD and OTT." Jan Weigner agreed that


there are too many vendors and consolidation is inevitable. As to future trends, Weigner sees that "in the First World non-linear is going to take over from linear, and linear can be a realtime streaming provider." For his part, Scott Rose also


sees the focus on reducing operational costs through CiaB deployment: "CiaB have less moving parts, and require less maintenance,” he said. “A position in master control needs up to five staff to provide 24/7 presence. It is not just the playout automation that will reduce manning requirements, but smart monitoring." Fault monitoring and error


reporting by exceptions does allow fewer staff to run more channels. But this hasn’t necessarily reduced their costs “Broadcasters that have freed staff have in the main redeployed them to more creative tasks,” said Rose. One of the needs to reduce


costs stems from more


Pebble Beach Systems’ Stingray solution


channels splitting the same advertising pot. With respect to this dilemma, Don Ash of Playbox Technology said, "More channels are launching on satellite and OTT. In areas of the world like Western Europe, the advertising revenue is being split across more channels, leading to the need to drive down the capital and operational costs of running a channel, including cost of content, playout and delivery." However, Ash believes that by making automation systems


"simple to install and easy to use with little training or understanding, broadcasters can reduce the costs of playout,” he said. Jan Weigner observed that


ad revenues are still rising for television, and that the Internet is primarily hurting print. "Where revenues rise, there comes more channels,” he said. “In Western Europe, there has been an explosion of channels sharing flat advertising revenue, so channels have to be low, low cost. Eastern Europe


and Asia have seen ad revenues rising with commensurate growth in the number of channels." We have come a long way


from programs arriving in master control on tape carts and the whizz and clunk of cart machines. Content now arrives silently, and master control resembles a data centre. Conventional video hardware is being removed from the workflow, and software running on commodity platforms has become the way forward. ///


////////////////16


TV Technology Europe I February-March 2014


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