As global broadcasters gather in Amsterdam in early September for Europe’s biggest broadcast technology show, network infrastructure providers are clamoring to show how their products support new standards that will enable greater efficiencies, increased resolution quality and more HD and Ultra-HD (UHDTV) content. Advances in compression will change how broadcasters deploy services in the future.

“It’s all about efficiency – how efficiently are these networks deployed – are they saving cost? How much do they allow broadcasters to send more content over the same network?” says Thomas Van den Driessche, vice president, market strategy, Newtec.

Among the expected announcements are key modulator products supporting H.265 and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) – the new compression codec standardized in January that will pave the way for HD and UHDTV content, regardless of the device or network used.

In the United States, many broadcasters are considering leapfrogging over the emerging MPEG4 format to HEVC, a move that would free up bandwidth spectrum for other applications. Europe, too, is experiencing significant momentum toward HEVC.

“Last year at IBC we saw announcements about HEVC; this year at IBC you’ll see products that support this technology and next year you will [see] mass deployments,” Van den Driessche says.

All these compression advances are good news for everyone in the broadcasting space: satellite operators can put more live channels up, while terrestrial service providers can use a smaller amount of bandwidth. HEVC delivery will occur over all distribution channels, from cable to satellite, terrestrial and telco networks.

In April, European satellite operator SES tested an end-to-end file transmission solution for UHDTV content. The test paves the way for further HEVC-based transmissions, including during the 2014 FIFA World Cup next summer. SES believes that the new HEVC standard will be the future of UHDTV commercial broadcasts and foresee that the industry will be developing prototype UHDTV receivers in the coming months.

Paris-based video compression provider, Ateme will announce an Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) capable of decoding HEVC at IBC. The provider, which counts DirecTV as a major customer, also plans to unveil HEVC readiness in its Titan product line.

Benoit Fouchard, chief strategy officer of Ateme, says the timing is ripe for HEVC as “everyone will be experimenting with this new codec and will be interested in adding at least one of them to their lab.”

Ateme demonstrated the codec during the French Open (tennis), encoding and streaming high-resolution images at the French Grand Slam to PCs, TVs and tablets.

The HEVC compression format “will allow us to carry the same video with the same quality but with half the bit rate. If you could put 20 channels on a satellite, now you can put 40. The question for the satellite industry is, ‘When will it be ready? and ‘Where can I actually use it with products that are mature and robust?’”

 

New Standard for Satellite Modulation

The debate over a new satellite communication standard to follow DVB-S2 will be another hot topic at IBC 2013. While DVB-S2 remains the dominant standard for satellite modulation, innovations in technology – some proprietary – are pushing the industry toward the need for a new standard.

At IBC, Newtec will officially launch S2 Extensions, which it hopes becomes the follow-on to the DVB-S2 standard. Newtec says, together with the HEVC codec, S2 Extensions can deliver efficiency gains of up to 60 percent for applications over satellite.

“We’ve launched the technology already in the higher speed IP markets,” says Van den Driessche, acknowledging that Newtec is seeing strong interest among broadcasters for the new capability.

“I think we’re at a point where we need a real timeline for a new standard because innovation keeps growing,” says Fouchard, noting that the follow on to DVB-S2 has generated significant debate as companies continue to position their own performance gains to the standard. “It’s difficult for our clients to discern which technologies are real novelties and which are not. I’m looking forward to when the debate is ended and there is a standard way to apply innovations that are interoperable,” he adds.

At IBC, Newtec will also announce inroads with its VSAT multi-service platform, Sat3Play, with an expanding number of services and applications it can offer the satellite industry. According to Van den Driessche, the solution could be used to deliver an interactive television experience for consumers. He says it is already widely deployed among Middle East broadcasters to automate their satellite transmission flows and to exchange information.

 

Monitoring Solutions for IP Networks

HEVC, DVB-S2 and VSAT innovations are not the only developments expected to make a splash at IBC. Management and monitoring of IP networks will also play a dominant role at the show.

“Monitoring has become more important to our industry than ever before,” says Janne Morstol, chief product officer for Nevion, a provider of next-generation managed media transport solutions. She has noted many more IP network service providers have come on the scene, and more broadcasters are choosing to outsource their IP networks, similar to how they did with satellite.

Satellite operators also are going to IP. This has led to more hybrid networks, underscoring the need for more robust network management.

“You have a broadcaster handing over to a network, handing over to a satellite operator. At each point in the chain, providers want to monitor the signal to ensure they are meeting their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and to show the handoffs were handled correctly,” says Morstol, explaining that if there is an issue, broadcasters want to quickly determine the source of any signal disruption.

“When you start to build IP networks, if you don’t put a management layer on top it gets complex. We take away that complexity, allowing you to very easily put up connections, take down connections, and monitor those connections,” she continues.

Nevion plans to announce increased monitoring capabilities to support IP networking, which Morstol says is a critical component especially since more and more of these networks are not permanent, and require frequent reconfiguration. The company’s VideoIPath product will enable this management, she says.

Technology for monitoring is also getting more cost effective, which is fueling industry interest. According to Morstol, companies are getting 20 to 25 percent more monitoring capability for the price they paid three years ago.

Joe Sucharda, vice president of marketing for Sencore, a U.S.-based signal transmission and content monitoring firm, is also seeing growing market demand for signal monitoring of IP networks.

“As you move to IP, not only do you need to be able to deliver signals but you also must be able to monitor them in an uncontrolled environment,” he says. “The biggest message we have at IBC is certainly bandwidth efficiency and the ability to confidently deliver content in a variety of formats. Flexibility is very important.”

Responding to the need of the industry to monitor “hundreds of streams of video,” at IBC Sencore will demonstrate a 10 GB monitoring system where customers can track signals through a standard web browser or centralized management system. Sencore’s new MRD 5800 contribution receiver/decoder and its versatile MRD 4400 distribution decoder will also be among the products showcased at IBC.

Ateme also is expected to announce IP networking video compression technology but didn’t elaborate on specifics of the solution in advance of IBC.

 

Providers to Tout Carrier ID

Both Tempe, Ariz.-based Comtech EF Data and Newtec, which have worked together on a unified standard for Carrier ID to combat satellite interference, will showcase products compliant with the new DVB standard. This compliance is particularly relevant in anticipation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup – the first broadcasting event where satellite carriers are mandating use of the Carrier ID standard by all broadcasters.

“We’ve got the modulators ready with the Carrier ID standard,” says Van den Driessche, noting that it’s the satellite operators who are responsible for monitoring signals for interference and jamming, and identifying the carriers that cause interference.

Comtech’s new Carrier-ID embedded broadcast modulator, the DM240XR, will also be featured at IBC, as well as its MCDD-100, is a new type of receiver that can receive Carrier ID signals.

“We already have the product that embeds that signal and we are just releasing commercial versions of the product that can receive that signal,” explains Lou Dubin, Comtech’s vice president of product management.

Comtech also will be pushing its new CDM-760 Advanced High-Speed Trunking Modem, a commercial modulator that goes over 72 Msps – the bandwidth necessary for UHDTV.

“Some of these high-speed 4K and 8K services will need such high data rates, that normal transponders will not be adequate – they’re going to have to go to these wideband transponders,” says Dubin. “We think we’re uniquely positioned to offer a single modulator that can go onto a wideband transponder.”

While Europe and the United States have long been established leaders in digital and HD technologies, the prospects for adopting these new technologies quickly is most evident in Asia, according to Fouchard. Asia leads the world in broadcast subscriber growth, led by China, India and Vietnam, according to recent market research.

“What amazes me is countries that were barely on the map a few years ago are now running with various ambitious Greenfield projects where they can apply the latest and greatest technology without any handicap from legacy systems,” Fouchard says.

 

ODU Market

Product innovations that drive better efficiency are not only limited to the transport and transmission side of the broadcasting industry, but also to infrastructure technology that touches consumers inside and outside the home.

“Entropic is hearing two distinct requests from the Satellite ODU market: more tuner support off a single cable and lower cost and power,” says Troy Brandon, senior product marketing manager, Entropic. “Service providers are looking for an end-to-end solution that bridges the technology from outside the home (via ODU) to inside the home via set-top boxes.”

The company’s new Digital Channel Stacking Switch (dCSS) solution doubles the available tuners supported by a single cable. The technology supports a total of 24 tuners off a single cable run – compared to the 12-tuner limitation using analog CSS (aCSS).

“Our extremely high-speed analog-to-digital technology enables a more flexible, multi-satellite support architecture to support top DBS operators while providing industry- leading power consumption,” Brandon comments. “With the cost of content continuing to rise, operators are looking at areas where they can control costs such as SAC.” VS