Exploring the future of media technology
GENDER DIVERSITY AN 8K FUTURE?
ANDROID TV MR AT LFW
On-the-go content for planes, trains and automobiles
3 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka WELCOME
It’s our passenger video special! In this issue we look at technologies for delivering video to travellers, whether its in-flight entertainment to your own device, content streamed to the kids in the backseat or a trip in the connected car of the future, where you will be able to kick back and watch the latest VR hit for the
EDITORIAL EDITOR Neal Romanek +44 (0) 1223 492246 nealromanek@bright-publishing.com CONTRIBUTORS Ann-Marie Corvin, David Davies, Adrian Pennington FEATURES WRITER Chelsea Fearnley CHIEF SUB EDITOR Beth Fletcher SENIOR SUB EDITOR Siobhan Godwood SUB EDITOR Felicity Evans JUNIOR SUB EDITOR Elisha Young ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Matt Snow +44 (0) 1223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com KEY ACCOUNTS Chris Jacobs +44 (0) 1223 499463 chrisjacobs@bright-publishing.com DESIGN DESIGN DIRECTOR
duration of your commute. We also check in with how 8K is doing. Will this mega-format really be the end of the line in pixel inflation? Japanese public broadcaster NHK is planning on making a big splash with the format at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and has already launched an 8K channel. Still, there are some who think that HD, with a little HDR thrown in, is as much quality as you’ll ever need. We’re proud to feature in this month’s Genius Interview David Ross, head of broadcast technology mainstay, Ross Video. Media tech companies rise and fall – and then rise again – and then fall again – but Ross Video has managed a steady rise, and a steady expansion of its services since the company was started by David’s father in the seventies. Ross’s insights are words that any company trying to weather modern tech disruption would do well to take to heart. And it was cake and candles (actually just one candle!) at this year’s BVE show in London, where we celebrated our first birthday. Bright Publishing launched FEED at BVE one year ago and in that year, we have gone from being an unknown quantity to one of the top b2b magazines in broadcast. FEED hosted BVE’s Techflow Futures Theatre at the show, which ran keynotes and discussion panels on the future of streaming video tech. We ran sessions on esports, OTT start-ups and blockchain. Look out for more of FEED at events near you, and let us know how we can help!
Andy Jennings DESIGN MANAGER Alan Gray SENIOR DESIGNER & PRODUCTION MANAGER Flo Thomas DESIGNERS
Man-Wai Wong Lucy Woolcomb PUBLISHING MANAGING DIRECTORS Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck
NEAL ROMANEK, EDITOR nealromanek@bright-publishing.com
@FeedZine @feed.zine
Need to update or cancel your FEED subscription? Email us at feedsubs@bright-publishing.com BRIGHT PUBLISHING LTD, BRIGHT HOUSE, 82 HIGH STREET, SAWSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE CB22 3HJ UK
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06 NEWSFEED
32 GENIUS INTERVIEW
Dispatches from the world of online video
We talk to CEO David Ross about how his company has gone from strength to strength in a famously fickle business
10 NEWS IN DEPTH
The UK government issues a damning report on Facebook’s data practices
42 THE OTT TV FILES
Android TV is becoming the de facto option for many operators. What’s next for Google’s TV entree?
12 YOUR TAKE
Immersive viewing is about more than screen resolution
48 FUTURE SHOCK
14 TECHFEED
A spectacular mixed reality show hits the catwalk at London Fashion Week
With Japan’s NHK gearing up for an 8K Olympics, will the giant format become a global phenomenon?
54 ROUND TABLE
We talk to the mentors and mentees of Rise, an organisation dedicated to gender equality in the broadcast industry Media Honeypot connected start-ups in snowy Helsinki, and at BVE, FEED celebrated its first birthday
60 HAPPENING
70 START-UP ALLEY This month we look at
54
gamifying how we watch TV, managing rights with blockchain and making VR come alive
48
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SEE PAGE 66
22 WI-FI ON THE WING In-flight connectivity gets upgraded to first class with Axinom 26 BACKSEAT DRIVERS PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
Will car makers beat Silicon Valley in the race to the in- car video ecosystem?
30 VIDEO PROCESSING IN THE CLOUDS IFE content that can be viewed directly on your own device
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Words by Neal Romanek
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
THESE PEOPLE DO NOT EXIST
With every hit of the refresh button, thispersondoesnotexist.com produces photorealistic human faces from scratch. Though the faces appear to be a set of randomly selected headshots, they are actually the product of an AI algorithm called a generative adversarial network (GAN). GANs were first introduced as a concept in 2014 by computer scientist Ian Goodfellow. They consist of two neural networks: the generator and the discriminator. These computer
programmes compete against each other millions upon millions of times to refine their image-generating skills until they’re able to create fully fledged human faces. Since its conception, Nvidia – designer of GPUs for the gaming market – has been at the forefront of this technology. Researchers for the company have led multiple GAN studies but, until recently, weren’t able to create high-quality, 1024x1024 images using this method. In late 2017, Nvidia cracked the
code using a technique called StyleGAN, which builds on the original technique by giving researchers more control over specific visual features. The power of algorithms like StyleGAN has raised a lot of questions. While it has the potential to increase artistry and revolutionise video games and virtual worlds, it could also be used for more dubious purposes, like political propaganda and influencing online campaigns. Previously, GANs have even been used to create deep fakes.
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7 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
Russian telecom providers plan to temporarily disconnect from the internet to test the country’s cyber- defence capabilities before 1 April – the final date for amendments to a draft law mandating a ‘sovereign’ internet. The draft law requires all internet traffic to be carried within the country’s own networks and any traffic leaving Russia would need to go through routing points, subject to control by Roskomnadzor (the body responsible for censorship in media and telecommunications). The goal is to provide a digital shield over Runet in the event of foreign cyberattack. The Russian news site, RBC, has said a domestic internet, if not impossible, would be very expensive and could lead to major disruptions to digital traffic. Russian IT expert Filipp Kulin openly opposes the idea. He said: “The disconnection of Russia from the web would mean we’re already at war with everyone. In this situation, we should be thinking how to grow potatoes in nuclear winter, not the internet.” Navalny’s aide and IT specialist, Leonid Volkov, said: “Unplugging from the internet would be a challenge. Russia tried and failed to do this in 2014. Technology has not advanced since then. It would take at least another five years before Russia had even a hypothetical chance of isolating its segment of the internet from the rest of the world. Roskomnadzor has so far attempted, to no avail, to block the popular encrypted messaging service, Telegram. It has also tried to force Facebook and Twitter to relocate servers to Russia, where Russian intelligence agencies would have access to them. RUSSIA TESTS WEB EXIT
OPENAI’S NOT- SO-OPEN AI
Brightcove, specialists in managing, delivering and monetising video in the cloud, has announced it is entering into an agreement to acquire Ooyala’s online video platform (OVP). This will include the company’s Backlot, Analytics and Live platforms, alongside its underlying IP and associated patents. The acquisition brings together two big players in the online video industry. Brightcove hopes it will offer its clients a more comprehensive video management and technology platform, while growing its customer base and market reach. In addition, Brightcove will also take ownership of its engineering, support and sales staff, as well as its customer, reseller and partner relationships. OpenAI, an AI research company backed by Silicon Valley bigwig Elon Musk, has developed an AI capable of generating realistic text (GPT-2) in response to prompts – everything from fantasy prose to fake celebrity news stories, and even homework (yay!). In response to the below prompt from The Lord of the Rings , “Legolas and Gimli advanced on the orcs, raising their weapons with a harrowing war cry,” the AI spat back: “The orcs' response was a deafening onslaught of claws, claws and claws; even Elrond was forced to retreat. ‘You are in good hands, dwarf,’ said Gimli, who had been among the first to charge at the orcs; it took only two words before their opponents were
reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the night.” On the AI, Forbes wrote: “It manages to develop a coherent dialogue over multiple paragraphs without making repetitive mistakes or going off-topic. It is the closest to making conversational AI possible and could help doctors scale advice over chats and improve translation systems.” Despite these potential benefits, OpenAI is not releasing the AI to the public for fear of misuse, as it could be used to mass-produce fake news, create spam/phishing content or impersonate others online. Instead, the company is releasing a technical paper and smaller version of the AI model.
BRIGHTCOVE ACQUIRES OOYALA’S OVP The transaction will give Ooyala more time to concentrate its efforts on its Flex Media Platform. CEO Jonathan Huberman said: “We’re ushering in a new chapter, as we continue to focus and expand on Ooyala’s flourishing workflow and media asset
management solutions, centred around our successful Ooyala Flex Media Platform.” The acquisition will reportedly cost £11.5 million. The announcement comes on the heels of a 6% year-over-year increase in the company’s revenue.
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8 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
We’ve all heard that too much screen time is bad for teen brains, but a new study says that, comparatively, regularly eating potatoes has nearly the same negative effects as screen use. The study, led by the director of research at the University of Oxford, Andrew Przybylski, found only 0.4% of adolescent well-being is related to screen use (slightly surpassing the negative effects of eating too many spuds). Smoking marijuana and being bullied were found to have 2.7 times and 4.3 times more negative association with adolescent mental health than screen use. The study acknowledges current empirical evidence that regular use of digital technologies negatively impacts the psychological well-being of young people, but questions the secondary analysis of large-scale social data sets. Though these data sets provide a valuable resource for investigations, their main variables and observations are often explored with a flexibility that marks small effects as statistically significant, leading to potential false positives and conflicting results. Professor Przybylski addresses these methodological challenges in the study by using information from other questions across three data sets to put the statistical findings on screen use into context. This method of analysis aims to remove bias by examining practical significance (as opposed to statistical significance). “Even when using the same data sets, each researcher brings different biases with them and analyses the data differently,” says Amy Orben, lecturer at University of Oxford and author of the study. “Of the three data sets we analysed, we found over 600 million ways to analyse the data. We calculated a large sample of these and found you could come up with a large range of positive or negative associations between technology and well-being – or no effect at all.” Przybylski says: “Bias and selective reporting of results is endemic to social and biological research influencing the screen time debate. We need to put these findings in context for parents and policymakers.” SCREENS ARE NOT BAD FOR YOU, NOR ARE POTATOES
5G GETS CLOSER
Qualcomm announced a new 5G modem – called Snapdragon X55 – and antenna ahead of the Mobile World Congress, which may help accelerate the roll-out of 5G. The Snapdragon X55 is Qualcomm’s second-generation 5G modem. While the first-generation X50 was integral to major 5G trials or launches, Qualcomm hopes the X55 will accelerate the roll-out of 5G on commercial devices, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, connected cars, etc. The X55 is a seven-nanometre single chip that supports both full mmWave and the spectrum between LTE and mmWave. This gives the X55 an advantage: it can fall back on 4G connectivity. Qualcomm says this will help initial 5G deployments, allowing more sites to go up in a shorter time, as telcos will be able to merge existing 4G with the 5G spectrum. The mmWave set-up will enable the X55 to achieve download speeds
capable of up to 7Gbps and 3Gbps for upload. Of course, a modem can’t do all this without an antenna, so Qualcomm has also launched a new 5G mmWave antenna module alongside the seven-nanometre chip: the QTM525. Qualcomm’s vision is that, once the full mmWave spectrum is established, the Snapdragon X55 will be able to facilitate 8K 60fps VR video streaming and video editing with split processing between cloud and local hardware, as well as multi-person video chats with real-time voice translation and synthesis.
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10 NEWS IN DEPTH Facebook
Words by Chelsea Fearnley FACEBOOK ON THE ROPES Facebook is taken to task in a new report published by the UK government
o regulate, to not regulate. The debate around the regulation of Facebook and other social media platforms has become a game of
“This report evidences that Facebook’s monopoly and monetisation of non- consensual mass data harvesting, together with bullying tactics and ability to court the powerful, have allowed it a troubling degree of power and have dominated the development of our political communication infrastructure, encouraging and enabling the worst kinds of abuses of power by nefarious actors globally.” She adds: “I am delighted the report evidences the enormity of the recent Cambridge Analytica and Facebook crisis for politics and security in a digital age, not just in Britain but affecting millions around the world. Facebook’s profits are soaring and there has been not nearly enough media coverage to illustrate the significance of what is an extensive and detailed report by the DCMS.” PROPOSALS The report calls on the British government to establish an independent investigation into foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election. It recommends
clear legal guidelines are established for technology companies to act against illegal or harmful content on their sites and calls for a code of ethics defining what constitutes harmful content. It also states an independent regulator should monitor tech companies, backed by statutory powers to launch legal action against companies that breach the code. “It’s great to see it recognises concerns about both foreign influence and lack of transparency in networks of companies that deal in security, commercial and political work – which have huge implications for our democracies and security. It’s also great that the report endorses handling these companies in the influence/strategic communication industry in the UK and US with regulation and licensing,” says Briant. “Most importantly, the report highlights great weaknesses in our electoral law and the need for larger penalties and remedies that would help us understand what really happened in 2016 – the exploitation of a loophole in electoral law to funnel money to the DUP (Northern Ireland’s right wing Democratic Unionist Party) is deeply troubling – our government must allow proper investigation of this.”
The Daisy Oracle (“he loves me, he loves me not”). But what does it really mean to regulate platforms that have become a principle means of communication globally? And are a few regulations all that’s required to rein in the spread of disinformation? And how does regulation keep from becoming? The UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee (DCMS) has led an 18-month inquiry into the matter of disinformation and fake news, and its ability to spread unfettered on social media. The investigation concluded in February and a final report was released on its findings and proposals. It reflects heavily on the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal and the hand Facebook played in swaying votes in the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum. EXPOSURE The report accuses Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of contempt of Parliament in refusing three separate demands for him to give evidence, instead sending junior employees unable to answer the committee’s questions. It also warns British electoral law is unfit for purpose and vulnerable to interference by hostile foreign actors, including agents of the Russian government attempting to discredit democracy. We spoke to Dr Emma Briant, expert on media and propaganda and researcher for DCMS.
WE CANNOT DO THIS ALONE, IT IS IMPORTANT WE PUSH FOR INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS TO TAKE THE LEAD
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11 NEWS IN DEPTH Facebook
COME TOGETHER The report directly addresses UK law, but the management of these platforms needs to be an international affair. “We cannot do this alone, it is important we push for international legislation and transnational organisations to take the lead,” says Briant. “Otherwise, the impacts of data privacy legislation protecting only the already-privileged West will only amplify problems of inequality, conflicts and migration, which can then be exploited for propaganda purposes by the far right and other nefarious actors. We already saw this inequality in how the SCL Group companies operated globally, and this worldwide divide cannot be allowed to worsen.” She adds: “Cross border issues of movement of data and investigation need working out. It’s good to hear Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU will be audited, but
there needs to be international cooperation to enable full investigation of the matter of whether Arron Banks’ companies moved British data or derivatives to Mississippi for their new AI venture there. This has been shockingly slow-moving.” REGULATION DEBATE Briant tells us it is not enough that our parliamentarians have leapt forward in their comprehension of the challenges. The recommendations in the report need to be actioned through legislation. She urges people to write to their representatives to influence industry regulation if they want to ensure ethical conduct in elections. “This report shatters any confidence anyone could have had in the EU referendum and rightly calls for extensive police-led investigation. Our politicians need to know what the people really think of their democracy being corrupted by
foreign influence, dark money, dark ads, cheating, lies and lawbreaking in this way,” explains Briant. The debate of whether to regulate or not to regulate is not so cut and dried. While the report evidences clear reasons for regulation, it does not go into detail about who would be enforcing it or how it would be enforced. Inherently, regulation is a political act. We’ve witnessed what excessive regulation looks like in other parts of the world, where regulations serve only a small subset of the population. Regulators would need to be independent, driven by objective fact and be dedicated to putting public interest first - all of which are contentious in a free society. Briant tells us that for regulation to work, it would need to be put in place through a global collaborative effort, but it could be years before the world powers sit down to discuss this.
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12 YOUR TAKE Finding HDR
UHD has helped push the boundaries of the user experience, but immersive viewing is about far more than high spatial resolution FINDING A WAY TO HDR
scene where detail can be seen in the shadows and in the bright light of the campfire, or the ability to smoothly follow a football through the extreme contrasts of sun and shade on the pitch. HDR encompasses the technologies of not only much greater contrast (the difference between the bright and dark areas being displayed simultaneously), but also more realistic colours and digital image details (deeper sampling depth). This enables far more image realism and, by providing the capability to reproduce a much higher peak white level, creates a feeling that the image ‘pops’. Specular highlights and better discernible black levels populate areas in shadow.
– which I define as the combination of HDR transfer function, wide colour gamut (WCG) and 10-bit sample depth (quantisation) – has yet to be realised. There are presently six different HDR formats being discussed in the media: PQ10 (PQ = perceptual quantisation), HLG10 (HLG = hybrid log-gamma), HDR10, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and SL-HDR1. Although the Ultra HD Forum has helped create and publish important guidelines over methods for future implementation, the industry remains conflicted as to which system will produce the most compelling HDR quality and represent the best investment in the long term. The consequence of this indecision has been a delay in HDR deployment. Another challenge is the live mixing of content in SDR, with content produced
MATTHEW GOLDMAN, SVP TECHNOLOGY, MEDIAKIND HDR is an industry game changer that will shape the way we consume TV
The combination of UHD content with HDR (high dynamic range) has raised the expectations of content owners, broadcasters, service providers and consumers alike. If you compare HDR to traditional TV viewing – now referred to as SDR (standard dynamic range) – there is an obvious difference in the experience. If you compare an SDR viewing experience with an HDR one, the noticeably enhanced effect of HDR makes the contrast and colour of the traditional TV experience seem muted and washed out. The point behind HDR is to deliver a fuller, richer image – for instance, a night
THE CURRENT SITUATION The full potential of the HDR system
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13 YOUR TAKE Finding HDR
in the various HDR systems. This has complications for live production, which requires everything to work flawlessly in real time. There are no retransmission options, and obvious bandwidth challenges with producing and delivering 4K content (3840x2160 resolution at 50/60 fps progressive), a situation that is further complicated when HDR is included. OVERCOMING HDR CHALLENGES The industry is slowly moving toward solutions. For example, we can already deliver live ‘colour volume’ mapping: converting SDR to HDR (via inverse tone mapping) or HDR to SDR and distinguishing between different light levels of HDR. We can also enable end- to-end UHD delivery by using live tone mapping to mix live and pre-produced content. This allows content producers to establish native formats and for broadcasters to perform any necessary conversion to ensure all content conforms to a uniform ‘house’ format. HDR can be monetised successfully, because there is such a noticeable upgrade in the viewing experience. In fact, HDR is arguably the best TV improvement since colour displaced black & white. Broadcasters are beginning to increase the
THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGE FOR THE INDUSTRY IS TO COLLABORATE AND CONVERGE AROUND A SINGLE, LONG TERMHDR FORMAT
amount of content in 1080p50/60 HDR, and 4K television displays are already able to upconvert these images to 2160p. If these sets are able to support HDR, we can deliver an experience that gets extremely close to native 4K HDR viewing. While new innovations such as 8K promise exciting glimpses into the future (8K TVs were a big splash at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas), the most immersive viewing experiences we have ever seen can be achieved today already through far simpler implementations. This is an important consideration, particularly when enormous screen sizes are required to perceive the differences between 4K and 8K resolutions, thus incurring huge costs for the paying consumer and for NEXT-GENERATION IMMERSIVE VIEWING
the industry in providing the necessary infrastructure to deliver it. New immersive technologies are also looking beyond higher spatial resolution. We can see this in the rapid development of emerging innovations, such as 3D immersive sound and 360-degree headsets, which enable augmented, extended and even virtual reality. In the future, they could potentially combine to completely redefine the way we experience video. The immediate challenge for the industry is to collaborate and converge around a single, long-term HDR format. By greatly reducing bandwidth requirements and offering a richer, more lifelike picture, we will see a rapid increase in next- generation immersive UHD/HDR services. For the viewer, it will undoubtedly be a case of ‘seeing is believing’.
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14 TECHFEED 8K
Words by David Davies 8K: THE FINAL No sooner had 4K/UHD services started to roll out than talk began about 8K television. With Japan’s public broadcaster NHK gearing up for an 8K 2020 Olympics, will the format become a global phenomenon?
n software and systems design circles, there is a concept referred to as ‘good enough’, indicating consumers will use products that
the most of UHD formats, a larger screen size is required. While 55-inch screens are currently proving the most popular among those upgrading to 4K/UHD, the minimum recommended display for an optimal 8K viewing experience is 65in. Quite apart from the cost implications of such a massive display – at least during the early period of availability – the continuing adoption of larger screens runs contrary to the trend for smaller living spaces. For instance, in the UK, a 2018 study by LABC Warranty discovered the average lounge in new-build homes is 32% smaller than in equivalent homes constructed in the 1970s. So, some serious practical issues to deal with there for consumers, and although current transition from SDI to IP-based infrastructures will likely make the move from 4K to 8K production less problematic than that from HD to 4K, there are challenges for compression, distribution and reception of the huge (48Gbps) signal. However, the starting point for any evaluation of 8K’s long-term prospects has to take into account the groundbreaking work undertaken by NHK in Japan. THE FINAL FRONTIER? After years of development, NHK began broadcasting in 8K on a permanent basis in December 2018, introducing a bespoke satellite channel, NHK BS8K, that is on air 12 hours a day. Sports and live performance
are sufficient for their needs, despite the existence of more advanced technology. If the average viewer was inclined to think HD was ‘good enough’, it certainly hasn’t prevented manufacturers from encouraging them to upgrade to a 4K/UHD-enabled TV. Now another cycle of renewal appears to be on the cards, with the rise to prominence of ultra-high resolution 8K UHD, which offers a total image dimension of 7680 (horizontal) x 4320 (vertical) pixels. The format has twice as many horizontal and twice as many vertical pixels as 4K UHD, as well as four times the linear resolution of 1080p (Full HD). Although 8K is now becoming a broadcast industry talking point, it has actually been in development for many years. Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, is undoubtedly 8K’s greatest advocate, commencing R&D on the format as far back as the ’90s. Standardisation followed later, with the format and interface standardised by SMPTE in 2007 and 2010 respectively, and it became part of an ITU recommendation for UHD TV, along with 4K, in 2012. While the core groundwork is falling into place, some issues at the consumer end may prove more intractable. To make
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15 TECHFEED 8K
FORMAT?
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16 TECHFEED 8K
I BELIEVE 8KWILL BE THE ULTIMATE AND FINAL FORMAT AS A 2D VIDEO FORMAT FOR BROADCASTING
appear to be headlining the schedules to date, with some programmes – such as concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras – also transmitted in the stunning 22.2 multichannel sound configuration that is part of the NHK 8K Super Hi-Vision system. In summer 2020, the technology will undergo its most high-profile showcase yet, as NHK delivers 8K broadcasts from the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Takayuki Yamashita, senior research engineer at NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories, expects NHK’s parallel development of 4K services (a dedicated 4K channel also launched last year) and forthcoming deployment at the Olympics will give more broadcasters the confidence to implement 8K. “I believe that showing how 8K programme production and transmission are possible on the same 4K production workflow will accelerate the 8K production for future Olympics and other big sports events,” Yamashita says. “Especially since public viewing is particularly important for boosting large sports events, and 8K broadcasts are expected to lead to new business creation.” BETTER EIGHT THAN NEVER Among the manufacturers who spoke to FEED for this piece, the general consensus between them was that the availability of 8K production equipment will steadily improve in the coming years. “Given the current state of production and post-production equipment for 8K, we believe the market is still developing,” says Takaaki Imoto, senior general manager of overseas sales and marketing for broadcast systems manufacturer, FOR-A. Imoto says that over the next few years companies will introduce many products – including cameras, recorders, editing equipment and peripheral devices, “so broadcasters and production companies can establish an 8K production workflow”. Noting that FOR-A has already released test signal generators, frame synchronisers and upconverters for 8K, Imoto observes that 8K is well-suited to other markets, such as live events, signage, medical, security and surveillance. “In terms of the speed of
8K adoption, it may occur earlier in those markets than in broadcasting.” Sébastien Verlaine is marketing and communications manager at video technology company EVS, whose XT-VIA production server supports 8K and has been used at a number of flagship events. “Should there be more interest from our customers in the near future, we will probably increase the number of channels supporting 8K and upgrade our content management and live tools to support 8K as well,” Verlaine says. Interest in 8K at present still comes mainly from Japan, and Verlaine isn’t sure what the global impact will be of next summer’s broadcasts. “I think the 2020 Olympics will definitely raise awareness, but I’m not sure it will raise interest,” he says. “Many flagship events are still produced in 1080i, and 1080p with HDR a convincing alternative to UHD productions for some customers.” Thomas Bause Mason is director of standards development at SMPTE, which, as mentioned, began to standardise 8K more than a decade ago. He agrees the Olympics is an important milestone, especially in NHK’s home country. He says: “It will not only drive viewership in Japan, but also drive the development of 8K TV sets as NHK has to ensure TV sets are actually available in the market. This is the major goal line for NHK, which has been working on development of this system since the mid-90s. R&D reaches back even further. As for the rest of the world, 8K production is being noticed, but many people question the sense of an 8K TV system and are focusing their attention on making 4K and HDR work.” THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT Consumer interest is difficult to predict at the best of times, but with Samsung expected to bring a 98-inch 8K TV to the market in Europe by this March, and most other major manufacturers likely to launch a commercial 8K TV by the end of the year, availability of domestic product won’t be an issue for long. “Common access to higher-priced 8K TV sets will happen in 2020,” says Mason, who expects “high quality, AI-powered
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17 TECHFEED 8K
upconversion mechanisms in 8K TV sets will help adoption by upconverting HD or 4K content to 8K”. He adds: “Hypothetically, I would expect large-scale 8K content delivery to be at least a decade away.” The ability of content to maintain parity with consumer product is going to be instrumental. But it could be that if viewers are sufficiently wowed by their early experiences of 8K, they will be prepared to make the leap and wait for content producers to catch up. As Imoto reminds us, “After watching HDTV, viewers didn’t want to go back to watching in standard definition.” He adds: “Likewise, if viewers are amazed by a stellar 8K experience, that would go a long way towards making 8K production more popular.” BEYOND 8K… Given the accelerating cycle of format transition, it is logical to ask what could happen – if anything – beyond 8K. After many years developing the 8K format and contemplating the future of broadcast video, Yamashita’s words carry particular weight here: “I believe 8K will be the
ultimate and final format as a 2D video format for broadcasting,” he asserts. “It is attractive to record at 8K for reuse or archive of broadcast content. It seems natural the viewer would want to watch the 8K content at its best – on an 8K TV without downconverting – if the cost of 8K displays decreases. “In 2013, the price of a 70-inch 4K TV set was $7000 — the same as an 8K TV of equivalent size today. Since OTT companies started producing 4K content and 4K broadcasting began, prices have declined and 4K TVs have become common. It is obvious a similar movement will happen with 8K TVs, which will be common in five or six years.” Yamashita also thinks the car could become a venue for 8K viewing: “If autonomous driving becomes a reality, an 8K display matches a big window, doesn’t it?” Beyond that, though, it is probable the current industry focus will shift away from resolution to other criteria. “For next- generation broadcasting systems beyond 8K, we are seeking a new axis that is not based on resolution,” he concludes.
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18 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
Entertainment Partners used AWS cloud services to bring the Hollywood’s back office infrastructure into the digital age STUDIO SYSTEMS
he most powerful thing in Hollywood isn’t technology or talent. It’s payroll. “I know there’s a joke that
Studios loved the idea. In the production of a film there are many different fee structures, union regulations and specially negotiated contracts involved that processing payroll on a production by production basis is an accountancy nightmare. A TV series didn’t want to have to hire an actor, then terminate her, then hire her again, then terminate her and so on… they were happy to let Entertainment Partners deal with the entire headache. The company grew, continuing to acquire production management resources, including Central Casting and the industry standard budgeting and scheduling software, Movie Magic, and it became 100% employee owned. When the founders retired in around 2002, Entertainment Partners was in a position to be the go-to solution for a host of behind-the-scenes processes, including developing a private insurance product which took a load off the studios who were concerned about the bureaucratic challenges posed by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
“It was then we realised that the studios are looking to us to keep them compliant and, in fact, to modernise them,” says Cogan. “As much as technology has revolutionised the film industry, it is all contributing to what appears on screen. There are no development dollars going into revolutionising those back office processes that haven’t changed since the days of Cecil B. DeMille.” CALLSHEETS IN THE CLOUD Entertainment Partners decided to take up the task of digitising the operation of the industry’s back office systems, from time cards that crew can fill out on their smartphones to calculating carbon offsets for productions. The need for flexibility, scalability and universal access meant a speedy adoption of cloud-based infrastructure. Initially these were built on Entertainment Partners’ own on-premises servers. “In our private cloud, we had full control of everything. But as we scaled, it became more and more challenging,” says Darren Ehlers, Entertainment Partners’ SVP of Product Management. “To have the security and other requirements in place became more challenging to manage, and so we made the decision to migrate everything to AWS.” Entertainment Partners’ migration of its entire business to AWS cloud services took about nine months from start to finish. “It went flawlessly. Our users saw no impact whatsoever,” continues Ehlers. “They left on a Sunday morning and came back on a Monday morning and off they
there are no rocket scientists in Hollywood, but one of our co-founders was, in fact, a NASA rocket scientist,” says Ron Cogan, VP of Communications at industry payroll giant Entertainment Partners. “His brother was in casting and said ‘If you want to apply your software skills to our industry, you should know that there is no standard cost reporting tool that the industry uses. If you can crack that, you’d be set.’ So he came out to Hollywood and created the standard industry cost report and quickly realised wisely that the largest spend in production is labour. He thought, ‘If we can hook up some payroll component to this, that might be really synergistic.”
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19 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
THE STUDIOS ARE LOOKING TO US TO KEEP THEM COMPLIANT AND, IN FACT, TOMODERNISE THEM went. They really didn’t notice a difference. In fact, they saw some performance improvements, which is great. Since then we’ve been able to deploy some security changes that we wanted to deploy, and we’ve added some capabilities for disaster recovery.” Given the big studios’ deep concerns about information security, Entertainment Partners wondered if there would be any objections to the involvement of an off- premises third partner. “We got no pushback from any of our clients,” says Ehlers. “In fact, a lot of them were happy that we were moving to AWS, away from our own private environment. Some of them had already adopted AWS, so they were comfortable with it. The perception seems to be that AWS is very secure in the market, and customers saw the move as an improvement in security.” GETTING SMART WITH SCHEDULING Entertainment Partners has been working hard to guarantee the studios a safe data environment. A leaked script, or even a call sheet, could wreck a shoot, not to mention the reams of contract and financial data generated by a production. Scenechronize was one of the first Entertainment Partners production tools that was placed fully into AWS. Scenechronize is a cloud-based scheduling and production management platform that works across devices and houses every document generated by the production. Its capabilities include easy script breakdowns, slide creation,
watermarking and sophisticated permissions management. Entertainment Partners’ SmartAccounting is the product most recently being transitioned into an AWS environment. SmartAccounting manages the production accounting process through the whole life cycle of the production and then feeds into the payroll system that Entertainment Partners uses to pay out of. “Scenechronize and SmartAccounting are the tools and products most used by our customers, and, of course, they’re the largest in the industry too,” says Martin Mazor, Entertainment Partners’ chief information security officer. Having a system that approached zero downtime was also essential. “We wanted to go from a two-nine to four-nine availability metric: from 99% to 99.99% availability,” says Mazor. “And that four- nine model, in the IT world, is an incredibly hard thing to do. A four-nine (99.99%) availability metric is saying you’ve got roughly five minutes of unplanned downtime a month. And we got there based on AWS’s auto-scaling capabilities and a multi-region model. “To do that, not just the application, but the engineering of the product infrastructure itself has to be built around that four-nine model. For us, both Scenechronize and SmartAccounting are built in two regions in a parallel model. We’re using both US West and US East AWS data centres, and they replicate in real time between themselves. They’re also in two different data centres in each of those two regions. So we’re replicated into four data centres. A lot has to happen before a user is impacted.” It looks like studio back office infrastructure really is moving on from the days of Cecil B. DeMille. But one
Hollywood truism still remains unalterable: when a studio head tells you to make something work, it had better work – or else. Entertainment Partners is definitely making it work. “All of this may seem like a bit of overkill
in some situations,” admits Mazor, “but getting that 99.99 availability metric is paramount for us.
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20 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
CAMPUS CLOUD TOUCHDOWN
Pac-12 Networks is one of the largest sports broadcasters in the US. The college media organisation recently switched its entire infrastructure to the cloud
rofessional sports take top spot in US television viewing, but university level sports has an avid following that –given fierce
fan engagement and enhanced advertising revenue. By tying together a standardised video encoding source that feeds a comprehensive cloud production workflow and distribution network, Pac-12 Networks raised the bar for college sports coverage. “The way viewers expect to consume games is changing,” says Mark Kramer, VP, Engineering and Technology, at Pac-12 Networks. “Without AWS, we couldn’t meet our fans’ needs. Now, we’re quickly setting up new workflows at scale, such as live-to-VOD and OTT monetisation. We’re changing how schools produce collegiate sports and giving fans much better, personalised experiences. We’ve solved a huge, yet simple problem: how not to run out of storage. Translation: we’re making assets available to consumers and syndication partners the minute they’re recorded, so more people can see them in more ways.” In August 2018, Pac-12 Network aired the first collegiate football game of the season, Utah’s home-opener against Weber State. “Performance and video quality were awesome,” remembers Kramer. “Everything was gorgeous during the game for linear broadcast and TV everywhere audiences. This was a huge moment – it was a threshold we’d worked towards for years.” POWERING SPORTS With the new cloud-centric approach, Pac-12 Networks’ master control uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and
university loyalties – can eclipse the pros. The Pacific-12 Conference, or Pac-12, is the university sports organisation covering the western US, a region that contains some of the country’s top college teams and its most spirited rivalries. It comprises 12 universities and covers 11 men’s and 13 women’s sports, including that venerable college institution, American football. Pac-12 Networks is the conference’s media arm and is the first such company to be wholly owned by 12 universities. It offers the full range of Pac-12 sports, from football, basketball and baseball to swimming, gymnastics and rowing. The network offers streaming of all the conference sports and includes livestreaming channels from each university, an output that makes it one of the top live sports producers in the country. Last year, Pac-12 Networks moved its entire video and media infrastructure to AWS. Determined to transform the sports fan experience – reaching more viewers at more locations, on more devices, Pac-12 Networks took a cloud-enabled approach. The upgrade involved a re-imagining of core master control production workflows, as well as solutions for content archiving, personalisation and monetisation. NEW WORKFLOWS The network hoped to demonstrate that higher-quality services would bring greater
WE’RE MAKING ASSETS AVAILABLE TO CONSUMERS AND SYNDICATION PARTNERS THE MINUTE THEY’RE RECORDED
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21 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
Amazon Glacier as petabyte-sized primary archives for all its recorded content, and as the basis of an automated ingest workflow. Being able to call on unlimited amount of Amazon S3 storage, as required, liberates other aspects of the production workflow, enabling, among other things, the creation of a new live-to-VOD capture feature. Using the entirely cloud-based workflow, AWS Elemental MediaTailor now provides a simple option to perform server-side ad insertion (SSAI) for live and on-demand content, augmenting the means for content monetisation. Other AWS services in the Pac-12 cloud infrastructure include AWS IAM, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon EC2 Autoscaling, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). The number of Pac-12 games now being powered by AWS over the 2018-19 season is 850. Pac-12 Networks is connecting its 10Gb multi-venue contribution network to AWS using a 1Gb AWS DirectConnect. AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage services prepare all live streams for delivery in Apple’s HLS format to iOS, Android, Web, Chromecast and Apple TV devices. AWS Machine Learning services adds the potential for a whole new range of service enhancements in the future, including automated gameplay highlight clips and real-time closed captioning for broadcasters. Another potential application involves AWS Lambda, a serverless application model that uses less compute for processing clip and highlight generation. In this workflow, the moment a game is over, Pac-12 Networks would have all assets, such as game highlights, directly accessible for streaming and syndication partners. As a result, a variety of highlight options could be quickly made available to the fans, offering a much richer post-game experience. “As we standardise AWS machine learning and media services, we’ll be able to usher in a new era of entertainment for collegiate sports enthusiasts,” reveals Kramer. “Our fans will benefit from highly reliable and personalised viewer experiences, even in times of rapid traffic spikes like conference championships or rivalry games. Also, our internal teams will be able to experiment with ease using
AWS services to rapidly test new ideas.”
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22 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka P ANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES Managing Content
In-flight connectivity gets an upgrade to first class with help from Axinom WI-FI ON THE WING Words by Neal Romanek
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23 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILE Managing Content
assenger entertainment is as old as travel itself, but it has evolved to the point that any journey without a good video offering
YOU NEED TO HAVE A MECHANISM IN PLACE THAT ENSURES QUALITY ON THE PASSENGER SIDE
is considered totally unsatisfactory. What started out as a storyteller on a Viking longboat is now multi-channel multimedia entertainment and – if you’re aboard a modern cruise ship – sports activities, live music with dancing and bumper cars. In-flight movies have been entertaining passengers since the very dawn of flight. The first was the showing of a promotional film about the city of Chicago, on a low-altitude flight over the city during a two-week festival of Chicago’s business and industry in 1921. And the prehistoric spectacular The Lost World was shown on a 1925 flight from London to Paris. In the ’60s, in-flight showings of feature films became commonplace. These were projected in 16mm, via a horizontally mounted projector, and featured pneumatic audio (sound conveyed from tiny speakers in the arm rests via hollow tubes). Today, in-flight entertainment includes a huge array of video, audio and game content – as well as a variety of ‘infotainment’ options, including the
ever-popular flight data monitoring screen. In the fully digital realm, content can be moved around with a flexibility and scale unimaginable in the early days of flight. And new technologies are delivering it to passengers on the ground, sea or air with equal ease. TAKING TO THE AIR Axinom has worked in digital content management for 18 years. Its portfolio includes solutions for content management, content delivery, digital rights management and video ingest and processing with a substantial footprint in the OTT video space. The company, with headquarters in Germany, extended its offerings into aerospace with the Axinom IFS in-flight server system, which queries, filters, verifies
and streams video content to passenger or crew devices. “The company began with content management,” says Stefanie Schuster, Axinom’s chief commercial officer. “This was always the core of our product portfolio and when we started in 2001, we weren’t targeting one specific industry. Our content management system was a back end for e-commerce models, for marketplaces, for big companies – it worked across any kind of industry. “When all the different devices and the front end applications came onto the scene, and all the digital rights management around it, we became more involved with media companies – the big broadcasters, big telecommunications companies – and went into it with a strong focus on digital rights management. There was, for the first
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24 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka P ANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES Managing Content
time, this possibility to actually protect the content for video streaming and, therefore, build some business models on top of that.” Security in every part of the content delivery chain is essential for in-flight video. Axinom’s DRM experience and the flexibility of its content management platform made the company a ready partner for the passenger entertainment sector, particularly as airlines were beginning to offer content that could be viewed on passenger-owned devices, rather than the familiar wired seat-back screens, which had dominated the industry previously.
“On-board an aircraft, one of the things you get as a passenger is high-value, studio content,” notes Schuster. “If you want to stream that on a passenger device, content protection must be in place, because when people bring their devices off the aircraft, you need to make sure they can’t take the movies with them. For us, this was also the entry point into the industry, because we were already well known in the digital rights management space.” The latest in-flight entertainment systems are hosted via a server on-board the aircraft. The server might run myriad services, one of which could be a video
streaming service. The content uploaded to the aircraft becomes available locally to be streamed throughout to different devices around the aircraft. PASSENGER PERSONALISATION Streaming directly from an aircraft server to a passenger’s mobile device or laptop offers a host of benefits. The most obvious is the doing away with the mechanical headache and sheer weight of having a wired-up entertainment system in each seat-back – in an airplane, weight is money. Being able to stream directly to a passenger’s own device also opens up the ability to deliver more personalised information. That could be in the form of offering content genres, which the customer might have previously favourited, or which could be predicted based on available data about the customer. It could also include personalised information about the customer’s destination, or even tailored advertising. Being confined to a seat for hours at a time may be an uncomfortable experience for you as a passenger, but it’s just where an advertiser wants you, and if customer data can allow delivery of targeted advertising, sales information or special offers from the airline or its partners, all the better. “Many players already have their on- board wireless networks working in a stable and reliable way,” says Schuster. “The next thing is making these entertainment systems personalised and seamless and connected, moving that passenger experience closer to the experience you would have on the ground, in your home. “For example, the system might already know your bank details and allow you to log in with the same credentials. If you
A FIRST FOR FILM A promotional film about Chicago was the first in-flight movie, shown during a low-altitude flight in 1921
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