22 TECHFEED 4K
and IPTV solutions at media processing solutions developer Harmonic, believes 4K live OTT streaming is breaking through. “Constraints are being unlocked, or at least diminished, one after the other even if sourcing content for a linear channel and HDR compatibility remains challenging,” he says. Certainly, live 4K OTT will increase: anything that service providers do in the VOD space is likely to be emulated in live applications at some point. It’s just a matter of when the technology catches up. “If you look at the bitrate variance that you produce for VOD content, it’s standard to have H.265 4K variants at the upper end of that spectrum – I would expect this to become the case with live,” says Telestream’s CTO Shawn Carnahan. As always the nub of the issue today is cost – it is expensive. “While VOD delivery of 4K content is more expensive (than HD), it’s not that much more expensive,” explains Carnahan. “However, encoding live 4K streams requires significant computing resources (at least double). Combine this with the much higher delivery bandwidth costs and 4K live streaming is substantially more expensive. LIMITED BANDWIDTH It is limited bandwidth speeds to the home, rather than a failure of service providers to optimise the content delivery network, which is also inhibiting 4K live streaming. “The reality is that you won’t get anywhere near the same eiciency out of 4K encoding in a live application as you will for VOD,” says Carnahan. “The bandwidths required to deliver 4K live are pretty high – prohibitively high for most clients. We’re talking about 18Mbps minimum and that’s tough to sustain at the consumer level. “It’s a catch-up game. As more consumers have fibre in the home with
IMPLEMENTING UNIVERSAL HDR SUPPORT WOULD BE IDEAL BUT IS NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE
100 Mbps sustained connections, then it’s not so much of a problem.” Amazon recommends at least 15Mbps, while Netflix advises 25Mbps. But if other devices at home will be occupying your bandwidth, 15 or 25Mbps alone won’t suice. Latest figures from UK communications regulator Ofcom, based on a survey from November, show the average UK broadband connection is 46.2Mbps, compared to 36.2Mbps the previous year. Ofcom also broke the data down by connection type. For example, at peak times fibre averaged 33.5Mbps and cable (Virgin Media) achieved 99.7Mbps. Anyone in the UK with an ADSL connection is still suering from 9.6Mbps download speeds. However, there’s a clear digital divide between rural and urban locations, with
more than half of broadband customers in rural areas receiving an average download speed of less than 10Mbps, compared to 21% for the whole of the UK and 16% in urban areas. Under current plans, the UK government is aiming for 98% coverage for superfast (24Mbps+) broadband, and an assurance that the remaining 2% can get at least 10 Mbps on request. “Most countries in western Europe have a fairly good penetration of high connectivity into the home, but that doesn’t mean consistency of delivery over the internet isn’t a challenge,” says Ian Munford, the Director of Product Marketing and Enablement for Media Solutions, at content delivery network provider Akamai. “Many devices are competing for bandwidth in the home.”
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