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Sports streaming special• OTT, VoD, Cloud TV, Cable, Satellite, IPTV, DTT, IoT • The latest news, views and features

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Editor’s report:The days of live sports being the last bastion of traditional payTV subscriptions have come to an end. Sports are already one of the key drivers for the increase in linear OTT services and channels. Thanks mainly to sport, Dataxis estimates there are over 7m European linear subs paying for streaming TV services. Disruption is coming not just from digital giants but sports-centric OTT aggregators and sports

federations going direct-to-consumer, an especially appealing route for Tier 2 sports that have a dedicated fan base globally. So while there is growing evidence that viewing of live scheduled sports is in decline, streaming formats have become the new engine for growth. As the old saying goes, in every threat there is an opportunity. The same goes for voice interfaces, where operators have found a new confidence on the back of smart assistants’ adoption. GN

Contents

05 NewsThe latest video news, views and analysis

08 Data corner: OTT sportsNiche sports offer a low-cost way for global streaming services to enter competitive sports bidding, while out-of-country rights present the opportunity to scale globally

10 COVER STORY Assessing how digital giants are poised to disrupt the status quo of live sports broadcasting

14 Q&A: ESL UKThe final part of our sports special features a chat with the COO and executive producer of esports company ESL UK about production technology in the esports world and what TV can bring to the table from a content perspective

17 Voice interfacesOperators globally are finally deploying voice control, starting with better content search and discovery. Two features in this section examine the latest trends and what lies in store

24 Next-gen compressionAOM’s AV1 codec is emerging as a major alternative family to the MPEG/ISO community, putting pressure on HEVC. What does it mean for the future of OTT and broadcast delivery?

28 Cyber securityAn update on the Digital Production Partnership’s new programme that tackles security practices in broadcast

30 AR vs VR A comparative look at the relative merits of augmented and virtual reality formats as they relate to television content

32 CSI AwardsAll the categories in this year’s awards, which are now open for entries

34 Events diaryKey industry events taking place in 2018

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Sports streaming special• OTT, VoD, Cloud TV, Cable, Satellite, IPTV, DTT, IoT • The latest news, views and features

Coveer2018-April-v2.indd 1 21/03/2018 17:20:23

EditorGoran Nastic

CommercialCamilla Capece Pallavi Pandey

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16th annual CSI AwardsDeadline for entries: 18 June 2018

CSI Awards 201814 September 2018, Amsterdam

@CSI_Magazine #CSIAwards

www.csimagazine.com/awardsIn association with

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When Ooyala’s owner, Telstra, announced in early February it would write down some $500 million of its investment, it led to questions of what exactly went wrong.

The Australian telco pumped hundreds of millions into Ooyala in three years to tap into the growing trend for online video. Ooyala also had designs to become a YouTube-type platform for the enterprise video space, an ambition it has since downscaled. Telstra is still looking for a buyer for Ooyala’s struggling ad-tech business, but is keeping its online video platform (OVP) and automated workflow-management system units.

Ooyala’s core OVP business helps companies launch OTT services fast with ‘data-driven insights’. But the OVP space is a crowded one, with the likes of Kaltura, NeuLion and Brightcove vying for a share of global deployments, on top of larger players like Nokia, IBM, Verizon and Comcast.

Rethink Research puts the blame partly on the wider move to the cloud: “Vendors similar to Ooyala are now essentially worthless, ravaged by the commoditisation of video technologies inside cloud technology titans like AWS. A shift in the video market has been approaching for some time.”

While the doomsday hyperbole is perhaps overstated, there is the real question of where cloud giants leave OVPs and are these platforms now a commodity?

Kaltura itself recognises and admits that the world has changed since the launch of the first OVPs more than a decade ago. “All manner of service providers have started looking at OTT and IP video streaming platforms not just as a side car to their primary broadcast distribution business but as the cornerstone of their future growth strategy [Ed: Disney being a good case in point]. They are making the move to a cloud TV-shaped reality in which an OTT video platform provides the core video platform for delivering all of these next-generation TV services,” says Gideon Gilboa of Kaltura.

“From a vendor perspective the industry’s tilt to IP, cloud and software creates a fantastic market opportunity. But the flip side is that it also throws up some rather large technological, operational and organisational hurdles. For many of the OVP vendors, the bar was set too high and they couldn’t clear the hurdles cleanly,” he says. “Even large legacy pay-TV

technology providers such as Ericsson have not been able to make the necessary shifts - from hardware to software, and from on-prem to cloud and SaaS models.”

These new software-driven cloud TV platforms need to match the availability and scalability of broadcast TV; offer the personalisation and interactivity inherent in OTT technologies on the big screen; support myriad business models, and a mix of live, VoD and time-shift services; among many other requirements.

There will arguably always be room to partner with third party providers to help deliver a complete solution for those who don’t have resources to launch multi-screen apps and other video products. Perhaps one lesson is that companies should focus on what they are best at and there will always be room for best-of-breed technologies - storage, encryption, encoding, analytics and so on – in dedicated platforms, even in a cloud-based world.

news in brief

Swiss operator launches 10Gig internet and 4K HDR Apple TVSalt has entered the Swiss fixed line market with one of the first commercial 10 Gbps broadband services anywhere in the world, and a promise to undercut its local triple-play rivals. Salt said it will offer the 10Gbps internet product, 300 television channels and unlimited telephony in Switzerland for 49.95 Swiss francs (EUR40) a month. The service also comes with a 2.2Gbps WiFi router and a new 4K HDR Apple TV box. These speeds across 30 cities and regions in Switzerland come courtesy of the FTTH network of Swiss Fiber Network, a joint venture comprised of energy providers.

Digital payTV subs pass 1bn but OTT sets the paceThere were over one billion digital pay TV subscriptions across cable, satellite and IPTV platforms even though OTT net-subscriber additions outstripped net pay TV subs by 3 to 1 in most regions. Western Europe added eight OTT subscriptions for every pay TV net addition. Digital pay TV subscriptions in North America continued to decline, losing 3m homes in 2017, while OTT subscriptions increased by nearly 30m. Digital payTV has Asia-Pac to thank for its growth, with the region accounting for 83% of net adds, according to IHS.

What does Telstra’s experience with Ooyala mean for the future of OVPs?

News

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news in brief

MediaFirst on Amlogic SoCs Ericsson’s MediaFirst middleware is being ported directly onto Amlogic’s chipsets. The integration of Amlogic’s S905X chipset solution enables consumers to speedily access content, including High Dynamic Range (HDR) content, across MediaFirst set-top-boxes. Amlogic’s S905X chipset is optimised for both OTT and IP environments, and deployed with major operators worldwide. The combination provides more choice and flexibility to operators, the companies said.

RDK adoption globallyATX Over 40 million devices running RDK are now deployed by operators worldwide, while member companies are downloading RDK software components more than four million times every month. RDK Management said there are now more than 40m RDK-based set-top boxes and broadband gateways deployed worldwide, up 63% from last year. New software is typically released every two weeks, and member companies are downloading RDK software components more than four million times every month, a fourfold increase from the same time last year. Membership also continues to grow, with the community now passing 350 companies, which is up 17% from 2017.

News

All US TV stations to stream by 2022 As streaming video continues to gather pace, a new report suggests that every major US TV network will introduce a direct to consumer OTT service in the next five years.

All major TV networks will offer a direct-to-consumer streaming service by 2022, according to the TDG, which will accelerate the unbundling of cable TV packages over the next five years. Big media companies are reacting more boldly to changes in TV viewing behaviour, consolidating, bulking up on originals, and marketing directly to consumers are driving their strategic direction.“These are early signs of an emerging media tribalism,” says Mike Berkley, TDG senior advisor and author of the new report. “Major

networks will increasingly reserve their best titles for their own direct-to-consumer services, which will help drive total network DTC subscriptions close to 50 million by 2022.” The industry first flirted with DTC models three years ago when HBO and CBS launched the industry’s first standalone subscription services. Today, both brands enjoy five million paying DTC subscribers. Berkley warns, however, that DTC strategies come with great risk, especially for

TV networks. “The legacy model is built upon decades of comfortable relationships between networks and operators. If networks extract too much high-value content too quickly, channel conflicts are inevitable.” Seeing how these stations make the switch, at what speed, and what impacts it will have on their economics and bottom line will be the interesting part. Presumably, the argument is that those who fail to launch D2C services will become extinct and it’s a case of adapt or die.

Older viewers “hooked” on SVoD - studyPeople aged 55 to 64 who subscribed to an SVoD service exhibit almost no difference in viewing time between younger age groups, finds Ampere Analysis.

The net effect of on demand services like Netflix

and Amazon seems to be widening their reach, spreading into older generation. In the UK, the penetration of Netflix subscriptions amongst 55-64-year old figure has risen almost three-fold from 2015

to 25% now, according to the latest poll from Ampere.

The research firm found that those between 55 and 64 are increasingly getting “hooked” on these services, almost as much as 18-24 year olds. The average

55 to 64-year old SVoD user watches over 1 hour 20 minutes of SVoD per day, almost exactly that of an 18 to 24-year old subscriber.

Ampere polled 33,000 people with an internet connection across 16 markets. Overall, however, 55-64 year olds do consume much less SVoD across the entire spread - less than eight minutes per day, compared to nearly 40 minutes daily for the younger group.

At present, just 13% of SVoD subscribers are 55 or older; the vast majority, 44%, are under 35 years old.

06 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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In 1996, Rupert Murdoch described sport as a ‘battering ram’ for success in pay TV, going on to tout its importance above all other genres and types of content.

Until very recently, the spiralling costs of sports and the bidding frenzies around top-league

soccer in particular suggested that nothing about Murdoch’s view 22 years ago had changed. But with the recent pull back by Sky and BT in the latest round of bidding for the UK Premier League; the rise of mega-budget TV drama driven by the likes of Netflix and other SVoD players; and the push back in several markets around traditional

pay TV, it seems reasonable to state that the position of sport has shifted.

Sport is still key. Across the big European markets and the US, between 40 and 52 per cent of the population say they ‘love sport’, and those that love it, just as Murdoch said all those years ago, tend to love it above all other content. Of the big European markets, it will surprise no one to discover that Italy and Spain are the biggest sports lovers. For pay TV, eager to service mass-market demand for subscription TV, sport then will need to remain central to the offer. But what about streaming and SVoD services?

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made tentative moves into sports rights acquisition, particularly in the USA, but beyond sports-specific niche SVoD services and the platforms of the major US leagues themselves, SVoD players have yet to make inroads into the sports arena. A mooted bid for UK Premier League rights by Amazon failed to materialise, despite reported efforts by the League to package and re-package rights to suit Amazon’s needs.

Changing attitudes to sport and the niche sports opportunityAttitudes to sports are changing. And these changes are particularly noticeable among the youngest consumers and among those who have chosen to substitute traditional pay TV platforms for SVoD services. SVoD-only homes; that is homes where the only form of paid TV is an SVoD platform, show noticeably lower interest in all types of sports, with the exception of mixed martial arts. So if streaming and SVoD players are to look to sports in the future, where should they be focusing their attention?

Not all sports are created equally, particularly when it comes to willingness to pay to watch. Across several hundred specific sports and events analysed by Ampere, the most common rate of willingness to pay is between 20-40%, meaning that for most

Data corner

Sports and streamingBy Guy Bisson of Ampere Analysis

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sports, this proportion of fans are willing to pay to watch.

Within this most common range, however, there is wide variation across countries and sports. For the crown-jewel rights of the national major sport leagues like Premier League in the UK, NFL in the US, Bundesliga in Germany, between 50% and 80% of fans are content to pay to watch. Less popular sports, that nonetheless have very specific fan-bases, like cricket and motor racing, also have a relatively high willingness to pay — typically between 30% and 60% of fans. Other key second-tier sports, though, can be highly variable in pay willingness, notably rugby and golf, where the range of attitudes towards paying to watch is highly variable with lots of fans not willing to pay to watch at all.

One clear opportunity for streaming services is niche sports. Martial arts and other fight sports have a low interest overall within the population, but a particularly high willingness to pay within the fan base. Given low relative interest, rights are also far more affordable. Interestingly, fight sports are the only general category of sports where SVoD homes have higher than average interest overall in watching.

But another area, and one that fits strategically with the global model of streaming and SVoD distribution, is to look to key national leagues outside their country of origin. Using the UK as an example, it is clear that the youngest consumers (18-24 year olds) are more likely than average to enjoy international soccer leagues, a trend that is also clear in other countries.

So niche sports offer a low-cost way for global streaming services to dip their toes in the pool of competitive sports bidding, while out-of-country rights present the opportunity to scale globally. Interestingly, this is the same model that is being used for a lot of high-budget drama within the SVoD and streaming space, where a streaming partner works with a local broadcaster,

taking all rights outside the country of production.

• The PGA Tour, the professional golf body, is the latest sports organisation to go direct-to-consumer, with the launch of its first channel across smart TVs. The OTT channel will be ad-supported and content will include highlights/recaps, player interviews, tournament previews and live featured hole coverage from PGA

Tour Live. The Xumo-powered service will be made available on LG’s Channel Plus platform and across the Xumo distribution network, including Hisense, Sharp, Vizio and Panasonic connected devices. “The PGA Tour continues its quest to serve golf fans wherever they are, and however they want to consume our content,” said Luis Goicouria, SVP of digital platforms and media strategy at the PGA Tour.

Data corner

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The value of live sports - often considered the last preserve of linear scheduled television against the rise of on-demand - continues to soar.

But audience behaviours have changed and many viewers are moving away from large cable packages. Traditionally, viewers have been happy to pay for TV packages to ensure they are able to watch their favourite sport or team. Competition from broadcasters anxious to attract and retain sports fans, especially younger ones, within their subscriber base has already driven the value of premium sports rights to all-time highs.

Now cash-rich internet players are muscling into the sports arena and making the future of live broadcaster packages uncertain. These social media networks and tech giants are fuelling disruption and further fragmenting the sports broadcasting arena.

“For both traditional broadcasters and their new internet competitors, a new battleground is emerging and once again sports content is at the heart of it,” declares Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) in a white paper on the topic. “The winners will be those most able to acquire, deliver and generate value from premium sports

content for a new generation of fans.”

This is especially the case for the relatively small number of sports events

and brands that have genuinely global appeal. The exclusivity of those rights is a major factor in driving subscriptions.

Ofcom’s 2017 Communication Market report found

that over half of UK homes subscribe for original content while Recent Ampere Analysis research identified a large and affluent group of sports fans which can, and do pay, a significant premium to watch their favourite teams and competitions. For example, 18% of BT subscribers cited sports as a motivation for choosing the service. Now, OTT providers are focusing on streaming live content in attempt to boost subs.

“With sports fans so overwhelmingly eager to pay to access their favourite competitions, there is tremendous scope

to further monetise sports on TV,” says Ampere’s Alexios Dimitropoulos. “The challenge will be to balance the enthusiasm for niche competitions, particularly evident among younger viewers, with the demand for big ticket events such as the Champion’s League. Online services have a chance to maximise this demand, with an expanded offering of sports events, and that’s why we’re seeing Facebook, Amazon and Twitter make their first forays into this space.”

Naturally this drives prices up. For example, last year Fox bid $2.5bn to keep out Facebook’s $600m offer and secure 20/20 Indian IPL cricket for Star India for the next five years.

The threat of a bid from Silicon Valley ahead of the latest EPL auction led UK incumbents to circle the wagons. A carriage deal announced at the end of 2017 permits Sky and BT customers to gain access to all Premier League matches without being forced to choose to buy TV packages from either or both. By reducing the rivalry to obtain the best games package in the EPL auction meant the pair were able to reduce the overall cost this time around (with Sky paying on average £1 million (16%) less per match for the period 2019-2022).

Exclusive sports programming

OTT sports

Streamers pick up the battering ramDigital giants are poised to disrupt the status quo of live sports broadcasting with implications for infl ated rights, editorial presentation and new partnerships. By Adrian Pennington and Goran Nastic

10 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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Sports streaming special• OTT, VoD, Cloud TV, Cable, Satellite, IPTV, DTT, IoT • The latest news, views and features

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remains, as Rupert Murdoch famously decalred a decade ago, “the battering ram” on which to build and secure a pay TV business.

“EPL are the crown jewels and securing them enables protection on growth, provides resources to ramp up OTT and broadband offerings, and allows both BT and Sky time to grow other genres such as exclusive dramas, to lessen the impact of sport,” says Stuart Ferreira-Cole, commercial director at digital TV designer Ostmodern.

Broadcaster reach versus digital monetisationYet no technology giant has become the main video partner to a major UK or US sports league, in part because of a reluctance among leagues to pull games off mainstream TV and award full rights to an online provider.

In the US, rights to the most lucrative league in the world, the NFL, remains the preserve of broadcasters Fox, NBC and CBS, who collectively paid $27 billion over the eight-year period 2014-22.

While public service broadcasters have long ceded control of sports rights, their national reach and cultural status remains attractive to federations. Properties like Wimbledon, FIFA World Cup, Match of the Day, the Grand National, London Marathon and Olympics will remain a staple of BBC or ITV coverage for as long as their audiences dwarf those on pay TV or

OTT. The English Cricket Board’s decision to return a portion of test coverage to the BBC from 2020 after granting exclusivity to Sky in return for a substantial fee is another example.

Nonetheless, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google and Snapchat have all

dabbled in live sports over the past couple years either winning rights (such as Amazon’ serving of ATP Tennis events from 2019) or working in partnership with a broadcast rights holder, such as BT Sport streaming the 2017 UEFA Champions League live and free over YouTube to broaden viewership and thereby also appeal to (or appease) advertisers, or NBCU’s pact with Snap to live stream clips of the Winter Olympics).

Additionally, the NFL and the EPL are keen to test the water by tendering digital packages for NFL Thursday Night Football and mid-week Premier League games in the UK where multiple matches are played, and potentially streamed, simultaneously.

Facebook and Twitter’s business models currently rely on advertising and will look to serve in-stream and live ad breaks to recoup the cost of content licensing fees – in addition to the broader strategy of using video to keep more people on the platform and generate ancillary advertising income. Twitter has a more established video advertising capability for premium content, building on the launch of Twitter Amplify with the NFL in 2014.

“Both Facebook and Twitter have a global user base that would certainly appreciate the addition of live sports content, but for now, both are looking to build out new formats for viewers around the major sports,” says Gareth Capon, CEO, Grabyo which creates and publishes content for sports clients on

social media. Twitter partners with BT Sport each

week to simulcast its ‘live score’ show on Saturdays and is working with a number of US rightsholders to bring live highlights, news and bespoke programming to the platform, he notes.

OTT sport multipliesIn exclusive research, Ampere Analysis polled 28,000 internet users across 14 markets to evaluate their willingness to pay for sports content. Of those that enjoy watching sport (42%), the vast majority would be willing to pay regularly to watch at least one of their favourite events. With interests ranging from soccer to the Olympics, tennis to motor racing, basketball, athletics and cycling, are broadcasters and channels missing out on opportunities to further monetise sport?

Sports are set to feature heavily on Facebook video hub Watch. The network’s sports rights effort will be spearheaded by Peter Hutton, the former Eurosport CEO who helped deliver the Olympics for the pan-European digital broadcaster.

Internet tech companies not only bring cash, but also expertise in using data and analytics to better engage and extract value from fans via advertising. At the same time, sports fans now expect flexible options for viewing; broadcasters, rights holders and brands need to create more content and viewing options than ever before.

Consequently, while there is evidence that viewing of live scheduled sports is in decline, OTT formats have become the new engine for growth embraced by sports-centric aggregators like Eleven Sports and Perform’s DAZN, on top of leagues or federations like MLB.TV, WWE Network, NFL GamePass, NHL TV and The PGA Tour.

F1, the world’s most popular motorsport now under the management of Liberty Media, will be the next to live stream races although the sport has existing pay-TV deals to untangle before it goes completely OTT.

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“OTT services offer fans the flexibility to watch live away from TV, whilst offering rightsholders the ability to own each fan’s personal, shopping and behavioural data, using this to advertise and cross-sell with regional, targeted messaging – a relationship which is missing from linear TV,” suggests Capon.

Broadcasters are looking to give customers the same flexibility in viewing while also keeping them within the live pay-TV product by launching their own versions: Eurosport Player, Bein Sport Connect, Fox Sports Go, Sky’s NOW TV.

The daddy of the them all is Disney’s ESPN-branded sports app. With technical backend under command of BAMTech, the technology outfit it bought from the MLB for $2.5bn, and a new base for BAMTech Europe in Amsterdam, Disney has a launching pad for the $5 per month service on this side of the Atlantic. Disney boss Bob Iger calls this “a massive strategic shift in the company’s content distribution strategy.”

Sports federations employ a dual strategy of D2C and broadcaster deals depending on market dynamics in each region.

Niche opportunitiesWith the number of available channels multiplying over the top come great opportunities for second-tier events, niche sports as well as female and youth sports. OTT allows for a lower barrier to entry than traditional methods and allows new specialist services to go direct to consumer. While the addressable audience may be smaller, fans are passionate, usually without other means of other access and can subsequently be charged a premium.

The BBC’s move to stream an extra 1,000 hours per year of mostly niche sports like bowling is possible in part because some sports have cut a deal for exposure via BBC online.

“Less prestigious leagues whose games aren’t fully broadcast will make

non-exclusive deals with a variety of streaming platforms to gain visibility and increase fan engagement,” suggests Alon Werber, CEO of automated sports production vendor Pixellot.

“While the most expensive leagues will continue selling their rights to broadcasters, we will see some shifts in tier 2 sports and second-level leagues,” he says. “For these leagues, the advent of OTT, together with automated production, is a game changer,” he says.

Werber thinks women’s sports will drive this revolution. “Today about 95% of sports programming is male. In many cases, streaming services have the power to democratise sports broadcasting by opening programming to more sports and levels of professionalism. Facebook, for example, broadcast two qualifying matches of the women’s World Cup tournament and drew a large audience. Youth sports are an important segment for OTT too, targeting parents and school alumni.”

A new breed of ambitious digital publishers like Goal.com, Dugout and Copa90, are attracting millions of younger users who appreciate the opportunity to access an engaging mix of footage, social interaction with their favourite players and teams, and fan-generated content. These sites too are picking up niche live rights. Dugout, for example, has begun showing Scottish Football League action; Copa90, which generates 80m views a month, streams friendly fixtures.

“Sports content often drives significant levels of online conversation,” says Capon. “Social platforms are arguably the most direct, scalable medium for clubs to interact with fans on a global basis.”

The average Winter Olympics fan spent nearly two and half hours on social media, according to a GlobalWebIndex survey.

Social influenceCapon thinks a growing focus on live streaming will force clubs to change the way that they look and sell social

sponsorship. “Traditional sponsorship packages have been sold on reach and impressions. Yet the trend in sponsorship is towards meaningful partnerships between brands and rights holders where results are measured beyond awareness and reach metrics. Fan engagement is a key part of this. Social networks give brands and rights owners the potential to maintain an ongoing conversation with fans throughout the week, rather than just during the match or game, and to build hype around live events.”

With the shift to OTT comes a shift in editorial presentation in which linear viewing is eschewed in favour of shorter highlights sessions and engagement around the live event. “Data suggests that younger audiences are not tuning into watch full-length matches, instead relying more on short, catch up clips,” says Ferreira-Cole.

“Digital content that is shareable or even editable generates a high level of engagement, particularly amongst younger age groups,” adds Werber.

Sky Sports, for example, acquired the rights to EPL clips offered by News UK, via The Sun app, to connect with these audiences.

Think 9 seconds, 90 seconds, 90 minutesIf traditional media has been slow to understand this behaviour when trapped in large broadcast deals, it’s become imperative to think in a shorter mindset, but combining new forms of popular short-form content with broadcast-quality live event coverage.

For this reason, Ferreira-Cole thinks the tech giants are still not ready to

OTT sports

12 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

“Sports TV channels will cease to exist in the format we know them today.”

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become full-on sports streamers. “Sports broadcasting requires building a narrative and storytelling around the ebb and flow of sporting events which means you need continual engagement with fans, whether it’s through fantasy league updates, social media, team updates or gossip,” he says. “This is something that the streaming giants, who provide a much more PPV-based experience, cannot currently provide.”

For example, putting an Anthony Joshua fight on Netflix as a PPV won’t work in this context as it doesn’t allow the drama of the fight to be built up, reckons Ferreira-Cole. One partnership he feels does demonstrate the power of creating a buzz around a sporting event is Matchroom and Sky (signatories of a 7-year deal to 2025 to show Matchroom events like boxing and darts).

“The collaboration has revived boxing, creating a fantastic entertainment product,” he says. “Other

new entrants in the market are also seeing success including ITV Box Office World Boxing Super Series, which uses a 12 million addressable audience and a free-to-air platform to drive new ITV audiences to a PPV experience.”

As the cost of rights increases, so too does the importance of sports OTT services being able to monetise their content effectively.

For established broadcasters, this requires rethinking traditional business models and offering customers a variety of ways to pay for the content they consume on their services. For example, the NBA League Pass streaming

service lets subscribers select from a menu of à la carte content, including skinny bundles and one-off events, PPV one team, day pass, SVoD, ad-funded and a variety of other models.

But it will take more than fresh business models and opening the wallet for rights for OTT to take-over mainstream sports coverage. OTT will need to deliver on the high production values viewers have to expect from broadcast.

Technically, high-resolution and reliable low-latency feeds over IP will be challenge. Buffering continues to dog sports streamers. DAZN suffered these glitches when launching into Canada with exclusive NFL coverage at the start of last season. Eurosport also had to apologise to subscribers and offer refunds when Bundesliga live streams were similarly hit. An alleged failure to make good on an HD service resulted in a class action brought against Showtime for its online PPV of the

Mayweather v McGregor fight in August. Live stream piracy – which also afflicted the Showtime internet service – needs constant attention by rights holders too.

As IHS notes in a recent report, ‘New Frontiers for Distribution of Sports Content’, the biggest challenge for operators is to develop a model that is economically sustainable and sufficiently appealing to consumers to replace or at least diminish pirated streams on websites and set-top boxes.

What’s a broadcaster to do?To survive cord cutting, traditional media has to offer subscription options combining incumbent TV and OTT. Werber argues. “Sport fans will pay more for the content they want but won’t buy a buffet of sports channels. If you’re a hockey fan you will pay for a hockey channel and not a premium channel that also broadcasts hockey. Similar to the NBA league pass, NBCUniversal launched a $50 ‘Premier League Pass’ live streaming subscription service to US customers. I predict more leagues will go in that way.”

The trends are strong enough for Werber to declare, “Sports TV channels will cease to exist in the format we know them today.”

Ferreira-Cole also believes the writing is on the wall for broadcast aggregators. “Would you argue that broadcasters govern reach when Netflix has over 100m subscribers and audiences in over 130 countries? This domination is exactly what many of the biggest sports rights holders crave. Broadcasters may dominate their local markets and will likely continue to do so for some time, but they just don’t have the financial backing to compete in the long run on a global scale.

Traditional players will need to consolidate, combine forces or rethink their offerings in order to stay relevant - but intrinsically and historically, broadcasters aren’t well equipped, structured or even legally permitted to work together.”

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CSI: Can you tell us a little how ESL started and how it has evolved?Rob: ESL was founded in 2000 in Germany. It originally started as a website for people to compete in video games against each other, and since that it has become a global leader in esports. We run and broadcast competitions. We create content on a national basis for some of the products we run and global

products like ESL1 and we work with publishers like Blizzard. We do production for them and run esports tournaments for them. It’s been a gradual shift. Around 2004/5 you couldn’t really stream or watch video games online, the bandwidth wasn’t there and it cost a bomb to push video content over the internet. That improved with broadband and online streaming solutions coming along, but the real seminal moment was Twitch for the pick-up of esports globally because a lot more people were able to access the content. We were doing TV productions in Germany in 2006/7 with quite basic broadcast equipment and that’s now levelling up to the point we’re using OB trucks for our big stadium events.

Is the success of esports globally a surprise for you?Rob: Gaming globally is incredibly popular, with an estimated 2bn gamers on different platforms. The UK is the second biggest gaming market in Europe and esports is a tranche of gaming. From our point of view, one of our big modus operandi for SL is to grow that esports bit of the pie and puzzle for gamers. We are able to create exciting and engaging content that is gaming ultimately but with a competitive twist. We’re not surprised at the size but maybe the speed over the last couple of years has been quite wild. I think it’s because the stigma of gaming is starting to be washed away by the acceptance of people playing

computer games, it’s becoming much more accepted.

What’s the business model and how do you use different platforms?Rob: We have owned and operated products, like the upcoming DOTA tournament in Birmingham in May. They are our tentpole events we have a few times a year and we have Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) which is Intel’s longest running marketing campaign, running for over 11 years now. They are the World Cup or Champions League of esports. Then we have other products like national championships that cover different games and that we monetise through sponsorship and media rights. At the moment that is weighed more towards sponsorship but we are seeing an increasing trend for media rights to take over in the next couple of years. The other revenue pillar is growing for publishers to operate competitions ion their behalf, like Blizzard (the company behind Overwatch), which might be white labelled or co-branded.

How does the technology work from a production, broadcast and streaming viewpoint?Sam: Primarily we do own our own set of fly-away kit, which we chose for a couple of reasons. It’s ultra-mobile, and we end up doing broadcasts in different venues, even inside cathedrals. We’ve designed our own kit and infrastructure because there aren’t a lot of off-the-shelf broadcast options that we can use to

Q&AQ&A

CSI’s Goran Nastic caught up with Rob Black and Sam Deans from ESL UK, about the growing esports phenomenon, how TV can fit into the ecosystem,

and what impact technical advances coming out of the esports world are having on more traditional sports broadcasting

It’s sport, but not as we know it

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create esports productions. Esports requires a different set of skills, people and hardware to a typical sports production, mainly because it doesn’t follow the content format of a traditional TV sports show nor technological practices. It means we’ve re-written the rules. We’ve developed systems that can extract live data out of games and out of the online chat like Facebook chat or Twitch chat and people participating in conversations around our broadcast, we can pull data and specific matches from that and bring it into our broadcast, we can complement our broadcast with stats which are pulled digitally from the game. We’ve created our own hardware

and software that fits with the fast pace and technical emphasis of esports productions. In a football match, for example, it’s about the cameras and a lot of research has gone into the lens and 4K UHD, but in esports are games are in a virtual world so it’s more about the experience and how to present that environment, giving the user as much information as possible to complement their experience and deep diving into stats, deep diving into different camera angles in the game, and what they get back from watching an ESL broadcast versus playing the game themselves. What it’s done, because we’ve go so far in our technological advances, is that a couple of weeks ago we were able

to offer on-air graphics services for the intentional table tennis world championships. It was nothing to do with esports or gaming but the reason we got this contract to work with an OB truck with a TV production company for a host broadcast was because we were able to execute so quickly on this graphics project - we had a three-day turnaround on on-air graphics creation and on the fourth day we were onsite with the TV crew. For us that was a milestone, the first time in the UK we were able to provide services to the TV industry not the other way round. We beat traditional TV graphics houses who couldn’t turn that project fast enough. That’s a really

Q&A

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good milestone of how far esports production has come and we are now actually beating traditional TV companies in some respects these days.

There is a massive shift in broadcast into the cloud. Is this something you are using as well?Sam: Yes. We use Amazon Web Services a lot. Our end-destination is online streaming and we use AWS to distribute our content further. One recent event, Clash Royale, where ESL UK was broadcasting in 9 different languages at once, we had 9 full workflows remotely in the arena, with 9 sound-desks, being streamed out to 9 different locations across the world and our technology manager had to set up these instances of Amazon servers around the world to help ping our streams worldwide. We went into India to get into Asia, and we had different European hubs, it’s amazing the network of servers we spun up for that. It’s different to cable and satellite distribution, it’s all done over the internet, streaming servers and IP. Actual cloud based broadcast, the interesting thing for us is the two-way integration with our audience and that sets us apart most right now from TV. How we distribute content using Twitch or Facebook Live or YouTube Live, all these online streaming platforms offer a

two-way conversation. A company called Blurrt we work with take data feeds from social media like Twitter and other live chats and can analyse it for sentiment, they can sentiment track the data, use the cloud to render the graphics and pull it back into our broadcast system, it’s all done online, live and dynamic. It’s all done using cloud-based data aggregation and rendering, we’re bringing that out through HTML5 rendering back into our broadcast solution.

What can TV bring to esports and what benefits do you see there?Sam: From my angle it’s really interesting because two years ago the conversation was how to get esports onto TV and now it’s flipped to ‘What left in esports for TV to pull out?’ That switch in mentality is super interesting because the format of esports programming doesn’t necessarily suit TV nor do we think we have to put our content onto TV, that’s not a requirement we’re aiming for any more but I think there are still massive opportunities’ for TV networks and content producers to tap into esports as an entertainment sector. We’re doing reality documentaries about following an esports team and we’ve sold that content to Hulu and that was an interesting case study for us where we can take a different type of content, more TV friendly, and it did really well. It’s not so much taking esports broadcasting into TV but using what TV us really good at which is telling stories and the personal element of interest.Rob: That content is from an esports point of view more what we are interested in pushing onto linear. There’s been an appetite for years to

have esports on television but a lot of that has been driven from a naive point of view prior to Twitch. Taking standard esports content onto TV we’re not really going to gain any kind of viewership from that, that core demographic is not really watching linear TV any more. This ‘shoulder’ content we think is a better discovery tool for new fans of esports that the actual pure content. It’s an interesting piece and we are in the middle of everyone finding their way in terms of what kind of content is best on linear platforms. We’re starting to see interesting formats come out on Hulu and similar services and we will see more of that coming in the future.

Finally, there’s been discussion about esports becoming an Olympic medal sport. Is this something you are keen on?Rob: The Olympics is obviously a prestigious event, but they are celebrated on a national basis competing, which doesn’t fit the esports model in many ways, where teams mix multiple nationalities. That’s one difficulty though maybe there are games where a single player can represent their country. The other issue to bear in mind is that the Olympics is ultimately a product vehicle with a heavy commercial aspect. Not only that but the Olympics have dwindling viewership, while ours is growing. It’s almost got to the point where the Olympics need us more than we need them. I don’t personally mind whether or not we are involved with the Olympics, but from a commercial point of view that’s probably the strongest driver for them in having an interest in esports.

Q&A

16 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

“It’s almost got to the point where the Olympics need us more than we need them. ”

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Special focus on voice control in television

Voice interfaces

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Voice interfaces have had a rather long gestation period, but this virtually changed overnight when CES2017 became the “Alexa

show” with over 1,000 Alexa-controlled products found at the exhibition. Partly thanks to Alexa, 2017 became something of a banner year for voice interfaces.

According to Futuresource, smart speakers represented over half of the total 49.6 million voice-assistant (VA) devices shipped worldwide last year and the research firm expects that 2018 will see a marked increase in devices supporting far-field voice communications.

“It does seem like we have been talking about voice for at least five years but solutions like Alexa have thrown this into the mass consumer conscious,” admits TiVo’s Charles Dawes.

At the recent Cable Congress, operators agreed that voice control is the future. Jeff Binder of Layer3, now part of T-Mobile US, even declared the death of the traditional remote: “Lots of

our customers use voice for TV already. The conventional remote control will be gone in a few years. It’s ‘90s technology that will be thrown in the trash.”

Voice or conversational search is one way of improving content discovery, something that has become more difficult in an era of apps and platform fragmentation. VAs also transform the EPG into a more interactive experience. Both these reasons are driving the new wave of operator interest in voice.

So is the fact that voice recognition is improving, thanks to machine learning/AI and new DSP entrants. But the challenge remains to get the system to work almost perfectly (95%+ accuracy is the target, even in loud environments), otherwise consumers will stop using it. Set-top boxes as smart assistantsThere are currently two main ways in which TV operators are deploying voice. For the most part, they are using push-to-talk TV voice remotes (see chart), and in a handful of cases they also include integration with generic voice assistants, such as Alexa and Google Assistant, using a combination of AI and their natural language engine.

Direct integration of voice recognition capabilities into the TV remote requires more investment cost (although operators may look to introduce voice capabilities as part of the usual hardware upgrade cycle).

On the other hand, it does give the

operator more control over the search and discovery experience and potentially allows the operator to deliver a much more personalised and focused voice service than a generic assistant could manage, according to David Watkins of Strategy Analytics.

“TiVo has the advantage of years of experience building a vast database of entertainment focussed metadata which helps power its knowledge graph engine and so it has the capability of handling fairly complex voice based search commands,” Watkins says.

Sky is one operator that has taken this approach and uses TiVo’s technology for its Sky Q platform (see table, on the next page).

The second approach, meanwhile, requires very little investment on their part (and no replacement of boxes or remotes) and operators can leverage the rapidly expanding base of smart speaker owners, as well as their internal AIs.

Most operators are expected to take a cautious approach and deploy fairly basic voice capabilities initially before adding more complex functionality. It is thought they will then build full support for high profile third party assistants into their products and maintain their own entertainment focused assistant in the form of a skill or app that sits on top of the Alexa or Google Assistant platform, both of who have a wealth of data on their users that an operator could potentially tap into.

“We actually think the way forward could be a combination of all of them. Operators seem to relax when you give them that alternative,” notes Charles Cheevers of Arris. Being able to bypass Google and Amazon but still keep users in the same environment makes for a better user experience, he argues.

The virtual assistants of Telefonica, Orange (Djingo) and Deutsche Telekom, for example, have skillsets developed that are unique to them.

Cheevers thinks specific operator skills could become something of a killer app in the realm of voice controlled smart homes. One example

Voice interfaces

PayTV fi nds its voiceOperators are embracing voice control in growing numbers. The next step will see them widen the use of the technology for new services, fi nds Goran Nastic

18 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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is customer support calls, either self-help assistance with service issues or where a user says ‘What’s my current bill?’ or ‘I want to buy more broadband’.

“We see that as an interesting application. We see the TV and the set-top box as a good portal for those kinds of things. You can use the real estate, speakers and graphics of the TV to talk back to you,” Cheevers explains.

According to Cheevers, effectively any set-top box that has RF4C (Zigbee) or Bluetooth can be turned into a smart assistant, citing growing interest in putting far-field microphones and speakers in the STB.

And STBs are generally located in rooms where there is a lot of engagement and within speaking distance of a microphone. The nice thing, from a payTV perspective, is that the set-top box can become more than a video decoder.

Room for other forms of inputComcast reports that voice queries via its millions of deployed voice remotes more than doubled for Pyeonchang compared to the 2016 Summer Olympics. During the first few days of the games, voice was driving nearly 50% of all traffic to the Olympics homepage on its Xfinity X1 set-top box. Comcast said using voice remotes “becomes habitual really quickly”, a habit that the industry would like to see spread. However, voice is by no means the best suited input mechanism for all situations, such as volume up/down or scrolling through a list of channels.

For this reason, Watkins believes basic control is unlikely to disappear anytime soon and operators will do well to remember that it is difficult to force change on consumers. “There are still a lot of consumers who are simply not interested in voice control. Operators face a big challenge in convincing them of the benefits of voice interactions. Industry may present voice as a natural interface but many feel awkward and uncomfortable using their voice to communicate with technology.”

Voice interfaces

www.csimagazine.com April 2018 19

Select recent operator deployments of voice technology

Sky One of the biggest voice deployments. Users have to push the voice button on the side of the Ruwido remote, with the underlying solution provided by TiVo. Sky revealed that Sky Q customers, of whom there were roughly one million at the end of June, had made over 9 million voice searches to date since the functionality was introduced in March 2017.

Virgin Media Ireland The cable operator has integrated Nuance’s Dragon TV voice technology to allow subscribers to fi nd and play video by speaking. The new functionality is enabled via the Virgin Media TV Anywhere App on mobile phones. Virgin Media subscribers in Ireland can search and access fi lms and TV channels by speaking into their smartphone microphone.

Yes The DTH provider was the fi rst Israeli operator to launch voice, in September 2017, making it easier for subscribers to search and fi nd premium video con-tent in both Hebrew and English. The conversational interface is powered by Nuance’s TV speech recognition solution and integrated into the voice-powered remote control from Universal Electronics (UEI).

DISH Customers with a Hopper, Joey or Wally set-tops will soon be able to use Google Assistant voice to control their TV in multiple languages, including English and Spanish. It is designed to help users navigate, play, pause, fast-forward, rewind and search TV content based on channel, title, actor and genre. DISH already offers a voice-based TV interface, powered by TiVo.

Canal Digital Its new Android TV-based OnePlace service features a 4K UHD box with voice search for satellite and OTT viewers. It offers universal search across all available sources. Incidentally, it’s also one of the fi rst Android TV based deployments for DVB-S.

Swisscom TV Voice search turned into a comprehensive voice control function in 2017, powered via the ‘Smart Remote’ that can cope with multiple dialects – it understands com-mands in Swiss German-, standard German, French, Italian and English – and “quirks of speech”.

SK Broadband Augmented its IPTV service with voice-controlled AI for more intuitive search. B tv x Nugu now allows users to search for a programme using natural language even if they do not know the exact name of the programme, and apparently the AI understands the context between sentences.

Source: CSI

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Since the launch of services such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix in 2007, content discovery has become an increasingly

complicated proposition for consumers as more and more content has been made available to them from multiple sources.

Whilst those in Generation Z (people born from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s) know no different, many from

Generation Y (also known as millennials, the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s) and earlier will remember the time before on-demand content became ubiquitous; a time when content was relatively simple to find. The industry has started to introduce systems to enhance content discovery, starting with tools to allow consumers to search through to more advanced solutions that can predict, suggest and personalise content choices

based on the needs and desires of the consumer.

However, for the most part the consumer has been stuck with a cumbersome input device – namely the remote control – to try to express what they are looking for. This has arguably limited the amount of usage and has frustrated consumers who all too often say, “There’s nothing on TV for me!”.

But all is not lost – for the last few years, the industry has been awash with a buzz about how voice-based

interaction will become a core part of the content discovery experience for consumers around the world; re-simplifying the way that consumers search and discover their content. Over the past 18 months, an increasing number of solutions have come to market and we’re now past the tipping point where talking to your devices is no longer a sign that you’re losing your mind.

However, in reality, bringing this simplicity to the end-consumer is actually a complicated set of tasks that is the result of many millions of dollars of investment in research, development and innovation by companies like TiVo.

Ironically, the main method of input for most consumers with a voice-enabled content discovery experience, is actually that device that was previously limiting their ability to concisely express themselves. However, the advent of a new generation of devices to introduce services, such as 4K video, has given operators and consumer electronics manufacturers the opportunity to roll out voice-enabled remote controls. Additionally, the introduction of far-field voice devices, such as Amazon’s

Echo range, Google’s Home and Apple’s HomePod smart speakers, are providing new ways to interact with content discovery services.

When a consumer uses a voice-based discovery experience, their voice is first transformed by the speech recognition software into a string of words that can be processed by a natural language understanding (NLU) engine. The real intelligence behind it is the second part and how it is further linked to the information about

Talking about entertainment discovery Charles Dawes outlines how voice simplifi es the way consumers fi nd their favourite content

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entertainment content.Basic systems that don’t have

advanced NLU can recognise the name of an actor or a specific genre, but they are unable to decipher the complex multi-faceted queries that consumers expect to be able to use.

TiVo’s entertainment-tuned NLU engine that is combined with TiVo’s Knowledge Graph, colloquially known as its ‘Entertainment Brain,’ is what gives services using TiVo a competitive advantage. When the typical consumer sits down to watch TV and he or she can simply say, “What’s on TV?”, and have a system that will respond with a set of personalised results that include appropriate content for the time, day, where they are in their latest favourite show and what’s going on in the world, then consumers have the ultimate discovery experience.

However, TiVo’s technology takes this a step further. Users can simply say, “Find me Roger Moore movies from the 80’s,” and the NLU will understand “Roger Moore” as an actor, “movie” as the type of content and “80’s” as the time for release of these movies. Imagine the number of key strokes with a remote control it would take to do this similar search the platform even allows users to filter the results by simply saying, “Just comedies,” to give results such as the ‘Cannonball Run’ or ‘Curse of the Pink Panther’. This allows the user to speak to the device as they would to a friend or family member.

TiVo is helping operators in North America and Europe to roll out advanced, voice-based discovery experiences, and it has even started to uncover some interesting insights into real usage. Each quarter, TiVo seeks real consumer opinions to uncover key trends relevant to pay-TV providers. This survey includes questions including how consumers interact with voice recognition technology and how often. In the Q4 2017 Online Video and Pay-TV Trends Report from TiVo (Survey Size: 3,330 / Geographic Regions: US, Canada /Age

of Respondents: 18+), it’s evident that there is steady growth in the number of respondents using voice search 9–16+ times per week and a drop in the number of users doing 1-7 searches per week.

These year-over-year figures tell us that as users get more acquainted with voice search, they find greater value in the feature and tend to use it more.

Ultimately, voice-based discovery is transforming the entertainment experience and is therefore becoming a must-have feature of any new platform that is coming to market. Since TiVo has demonstrated the technology can

also be deployed to in-market devices using a Bluetooth USB dongle, this makes the potential market penetration even deeper.

Right across the demographic divide, consumers are embracing the simplicity and enjoyment of finding their favourite content easily, enabling them to spend more of their precious leisure time consuming entertainment.

Charles Dawes is senior director, international marketing, at TiVo

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Untitled-1 1 21/03/2018 12:18:33

The content distribution industry is going through a period of extraordinary change. Shifting trends in technical

architecture, distribution models, and audience demand has prompted organisations to adopt a more responsive content delivery strategy in an attempt to future-proof content distribution processes in an increasingly competitive, fast-moving market.

With greater agility and appetite for change, media organisations can focus more on the innovations that are influencing content creation and distribution – and deploy new solutions with confidence. At Media + Networks, it’s our priority to document these changes as they happen and share them with key influencers to accelerate discussion and new ideas.

The Media + Networks State of the Industry survey gathers these trends and insights. Released ahead of our video distribution event, TV Connect 2018, the survey identifies the opportunities, challenges, and innovators that are shaping the

industry’s future. Discovering major themes in today’s content distribution landscape, the survey gathered responses from 280 participants across 78 companies ranging from cable and satellite operators, OTT players, content creators, and more.

Multi-platform, multi-screenIn the survey, broadcasters emphasise that a rise in SVoD services, 4K/UHD content, and OTT has meant traditional content distribution processes have been pushed into reinvention. Offering a hybrid linear, on-demand model, broadcasters have begun to adopt a 360-degree approach to grow audiences, improve viewership, and ensure programming is monetised. This same approach is thriving in the cable and satellite sector with operators moving toward consolidation as response to TV disruption and growth in multi-platform delivery. PayTV bundling is also being challenged, so opportunities to expand into OTT and adjacent businesses are an increasingly inviting option.

Keeping up with OTT rivals, broadcasters are boosting their agility with cloud-based technologies. By moving processes to the cloud, broadcasters can build an efficient distribution model where the delivery cycle is faster, streamlined, and more scalable. Couple this with a rise in multi-screen viewing on mobile, broadcasters are gaining greater audience control by boosting their presence in the broader media space across several platforms with ease.

The main challenge content delivery is facing across every industry sector is piracy and security. Piracy continues to have an unwelcome presence in the content delivery industry and is driven by professional pirates operating

the most complex, smart interfaces. New solutions tackling piracy and content

delivery is something we, and the industry, expect to see grow.

Next-generation storytelling Content creation continues to drive opportunities for cord-cutting and as a sector, is a major player in the distribution trends and models we know today.

A large percentage of participating content creators say they are benefiting from the original content boom. We’ve seen Netflix successfully lead the way – a view widely accepted by survey participants who named the SVoD platform the top innovator in content creation – and we’re beginning to see more and more media players take note including Disney and Fox.

With original content placing greater demand on costs, processes, and next-generation storytelling such as AR and VR, it’s encouraging that the survey concludes that content creators’ top priorities for the future align with overcoming these challenges. Scaling businesses to work in parallel with the current, and future, content distribution industry provides new opportunities to produce and distribute original content efficiently.

Every industry sector reported improved business performance as they continue to gain momentum in an ever-evolving landscape. Joining forces to overcome shared challenges, media organisations are listening by adopting new innovations in content creation and delivery to embrace new opportunities.

TV Connect returns to London Olympia in May 2018.

TV Connect 2018

The future of content distribution: a 360-degree approach By Niall Hunt

Niall Hunt is Digital Content Lead, TV Connect

www.csimagazine.com April 2018 23

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The video compression business has entered the most volatile phase of its 25-year history as the code base for the Alliance for Open Media (AIM)

AV1 codec is on the verge of being frozen so that it can be incorporated into devices and services. For the first time there is a serious competitor to the long-standing codec range developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) along with the ISO/IEC Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG).

The AOM camp was given a huge lift early 2018 when Apple joined retrospectively as a founding member, just as Facebook had done in November 2017. These two giants joined the real AOM founders such as Amazon, ARM, Cisco, Google, Netflix, Microsoft and IBM. A number of major key technology companies joined as general members, including chip makers AMD and Sigma Designs. This left Samsung as one notable absentee among the big technology giants, but it is about to join according to sources inside the camp.

With such weight behind it AV1 would look to have gained unstoppable momentum, especially as AOM was set up out of frustration with growing disarray within MPEG. This has been acknowledged by MPEG chair and founder Leonardo Chiariglione, who recently wrote two blogs expressing his regret over the broken model and ideas over how to repair it before it is too late. The main point is that the formally

tight royalty pools associated with MPEG patents whereby technology developers recoup their investment has disintegrated somewhat in the last few years after arrival of the latest codec called H.265 or HEVC. Perhaps mindful of this threat recently decided to eliminate streaming content distribution royalty fees, on top of reducing certain royalty rates and caps.

Meanwhile Google had produced its own open source codec VP9 for its own ecosystem, but the deteriorating licensing situation surrounding MPEG and HEVC helped galvanise activity and wider cooperation around its successor VP10, which became united with Cisco’s Thor and Mozilla’s Daala into a common development effort culminating in AV1.

However, HEVC had a head start on AV1 and is already being deployed by a number of broadcasters for transmitting ultra HD or 4K content over the air, at least in trials. It is also worth noting that just 7 months before joining AOM Apple had given an equal boost to HEVC with the announcement in June 2017 that is was deploying the compression standard across all of its platforms, including Mac, Safari, Apple TV and iOS11. This announcement was naturally interpreted widely as a big endorsement for HEVC, given that iOS traffic accounts for about half of all video streaming over the internet.

But then with Apple subsequently joining of AOM it became clear not all that traffic would be encoded with HEVC after all. Apple was perhaps planning to support third-party developers who want to stream videos

to iOS devices using AV1, so that they do not have to support multiple codecs to reach all their users. This also looked like recognition by Apple that AV1 was likely to be the favoured codec on non-iOS mobile devices. Apple will have been aware of Netflix’s stated intention that it will initially support AV1 in browsers as soon as it is available and then on connected devices once the chips have been developed 18 months to two years later. Netflix is fed up paying HEVC royalties and joined AOM in the hope of avoiding these costs by moving to AV1, providing the QoE is not reduced. Apple is also likely to launch its own OTT services and so encoding in AV1 may be essential to reach non-Apple devices.

Apple might also have noted the comment by Thierry Fautier, Vice President of Video Strategy at Harmonic and President of the Ultra HD Forum, that HEVC has seen little traction outside Ultra HD deployments, even among broadcasters. This is chiefly because HEVC is complex to deploy and expensive from a licensing perspective, so that the established H.264 codec has tended so far to be retained for non-UHD content.

However, with anticipated proliferation of UHD content, as well as VR 6DoF (6 degrees of freedom) and 360-degree video, with even 8K and FOV (Field Of View) set to figure increasingly in trials over the next few years, there is growing demand for more efficient codecs. For that reason, there has been quite heated debate over the relative merits of HEVC and AV1, although it is hard to assess because the two are at different stages of their lifecycle.

So while there are some claims that AV1 can be more efficient than HEVC, at least in some circumstances, it is too early to compare meaningfully, according to Fabio Murra, SVP Product & Marketing at V-Nova, developer of the proprietary Perseus codec. “V-Nova has integrated all of these major codecs with Perseus and we have compared

Compression

Apple fuels fl ames of next-gen encoding warsAV1 codec arrives with all OTT guns blazing - but will broadcasters stick with HEVC, asks Philip Hunter

24 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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and evaluated their performance,” says Murra. “It turns out that each codec has different strengths and weaknesses for different use cases. However, the fact that the AV1 standard is not yet finalised means that for now we can only talk about potential benefits, and not a tangible technology that we can yet measure in terms of value. It will take considerable time for production workflows to be upgraded to support AV1 as codec support on legacy hardware will take time to implement, or may require expensive hardware upgrades. This means that AV1 is most likely to be adopted first in consumer-side applications such as YouTube and for video on social networks, rather than in traditional broadcast workflows.”

Murra argues that AV1’s open source model meant it would not readily yield turnkey off the shelf solutions for broadcasters and would introduce risks over who would be willing to undertake the significant development work, maintenance and testing required. This could be overcome if AV1 gained sufficient momentum, since that would make it worthwhile for relevant developers to commit the resources.

It is true that the open source

approach makes the raw product a bit rough round the edges, with a range of options sometimes designed as “experiments” in the case of AV1. These are configuration options in the form of extra coding tools that can be either included or omitted from the final implementation, which confers greater flexibility and potential for tuning to specific service types or qualities, but with additional complexity. There are, for example, some more advanced entropy coding tools, designed to minimise the number of bits needed to represent a given level of prediction between frames.

Building blocksVideo compression has two principal components, within frames or intra-frame, and between frames or inter-frame. For the former, the idea is to exploit redundancy such as regions all with the same pixels that can be summarised in just a few bits. For inter-frame or temporal compression the focus is on accurate prediction of motion in as few bits as possible. The prediction has a probability of being right, which can be raised or lowered according to the accuracy required and techniques like entropy encoding

attempt to do this as efficiently as possible. The greatest focus in advanced codec research is now on inter-frame temporal compression because that is where there is greatest scope for optimisation and further efficiency improvement.

AV1 was rather confusingly set the goal of improving on efficiency of both VC9 and HEVC by about 50%. That would have been expected in the case of VC9 being a predecessor but HEVC is more of a contemporary so that goal was more ambitious and has not been achieved, according to Fautier. He is scathing of claims by AOM sources that AV1 performed 25 to 35% better than HEVC, which as he says has not been verified by independent sources. Fautier cites tests indicating that AV1 performed worse than HEVC for premium content, especially where there was fast moving action.

But AV1 being younger has greater scope for optimisation and has additional tricks up its sleeve, according to Dorota Bouskela, Corporate Marketing Project Manager at Ateme, which has already integrated the codec into its Titan encoder platform. “AV1 has taken the opportunity to revisit some of the coding tools previously

Compression

www.csimagazine.com April 2018 25

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taken for granted,” he says. Bouskela cites various features that he

considers gave AV1 an edge, such as motion warping, which is an object-based approach to inter-frame prediction by allowing for changing shape of forms such as animals or human figures as they move. It was developed in the 1990s in a different context, to help animators portray natural motion of such objects, allowing for the distortions in walking for example, or turning. In compression this can allow more accurate movement prediction than traditional block-based approaches that do not identify objects or understand the changing geometry of their movement.

Looking to JVET and AV2Whatever the relative merits of HEVC and AV1, neither is the last word in compression and both already have successors on the drawing board. There is recognition that further improvements in compression efficiency will be needed to stream full ultra HD services at high frame rates and resolutions, certainly for 8K at 4320 x 7680 pixels. For this reason, the so-called Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) on Future Video Coding was set up by ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG a mere two years after final approval of the first HEVC version. In the past new MPEG standards have

come around only every 10 years but there is a feeling now that time lag will have to be almost halved.

There is similar urgency within AOM, which is already looking ahead to AV1’s successor AV2. There is speculation that Apple’s joining at this stage was motivated by a desire to be in at the design stage of AV2 so that it can wield much more influence over its course than it has done in the case of AV1. Samsung may be joining for the same reason.

Enter content aware encodingHowever, there is another way forward that may prove more persuasive for broadcasters and pay TV operators, if not for devices makers. That is content aware or adaptive encoding, which can be employed alongside established codecs to yield a performance boost.

The idea is simply to exploit the fact that not all content is created equal with some being much more complex or involving faster less predictable motion than others. This approach has been immortalised by Netflix which has applied it to re-encode its entire content catalogue for more efficient distribution in a project now almost finished.

Netflix cited an example with reference to its “key ladders” which associate specific bit rates and resolutions, so that 5.8 Mbps for example is deemed the minimum

acceptable bit rate for full HD or 1080p using the established H.264 codec. Netflix notes that its “one size fits all” key ladders failed to deliver the best quality for a significant amount of content at both ends of the complexity spectrum. At the low end, as in some cartoons or talking heads, it would encode at an unnecessarily low resolution and deliver images not as sharp as they could be. At the top end, for example fast moving sports content or where there is a lot of camera noise, it would encode at too high a resolution resulting in annoying artefacts, such as blurring or forming rings around images.

Now interest in content adaptive encoding is growing not for re-encoding a catalogue but as an adjunct for existing codecs in live operation. Beamr offers a combination of HEVC and content aware encoding, claiming the latter achieves 20% to 40% savings in bandwidth in addition to the 50% achieved by HEVC against H.264. “As a point of reference, a streaming quality of 1080p HEVC at VBR bitrate is 3Mbps,” says Beamr’s Mark Donnigan

This gives operators and broadcasters an extra option when plotting their next codec move. As Donnigan notes, many service providers face the decision of whether and when to migrate to a more advanced codec, with the alternative being to continue using their legacy package, probably H.264. “Of course, there is also the hybrid approach where a service provider uses H.264, the legacy, for their SD and HD content, and an advanced codec for their 4K assets, of which the only viable choice today is HEVC.”

There is always the further option of waiting for an even better codec to emerge, but at some point an upgrade is required. Content adaptive encoding offers an alternative that could delay that decision. But the wider picture is that AOM is emerging as a major alternative family to the MPEG/ISO community that has dominated the codec field for so long.

Compression

26 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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The launch of digital television in 1998 ushered in a new era for UK broadcasting. Screens became bigger; picture and audio quality

improved; the number of channels increased. Now, 20 years later, television is again being transformed by new distribution networks and devices that deliver new viewing experiences.

The DTG Summit 2018 explores the impact of this transformative change, and considers TV’s evolution over the next 20 years. The event – this will be The DTG’s 12th annual summit – takes place on May 10. It has five key themes:

• Driving Transformation – this is the opening theme, with keynote presentations from Matthew Postgate, Chief Technology & Product Officer at the BBC; John Simmons, Media Platform Architect at Microsoft; and Steve Unger, Group Director and Board

Member at Ofcom. Speakers will give their views on the underlying drivers of TV transformation and, in a panel discussion, will

share their predictions for the future.• Delighting Audiences – we hear

how broadcasters are serving viewers across multiple networks and devices, and how the user interface is becoming more personalised, and more invisible as voice search and navigation take new leaps. We look at changing TV consumption trends, and the latest approaches to programme discovery. Our international keynote will be presented by James Gibbons, General Manager of UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and Head of Commercial Development for EMEA at Discovery Communications.

• Offering Immersive Experiences – we take a look at the rise of augmented reality (AR) mobile apps and consider the technologies that are enabling these new viewing experiences, and we hear about the latest advances in virtual reality (VR) production – including volumetric capture – which promise more lifelike and compelling images.

• Innovating The Workplace – in this part of the programme we consider

how organisations are attracting and retaining the best individuals at a time of heightened competition for highly trained and creative staff. How is the world of work changing in our industry? How are some organisations improving the workplace culture? We also look at initiatives aimed at increasing diversity.

• Futureproofing TV Infrastructure – our closing theme explores future TV distribution. How might 5G support broadcast? How will IP networks scale to cope with increased live channel and on-demand consumption? Ed Vaizey MP, former Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, will deliver the closing keynote exploring the implications for public policy.

The DTG Summit takes place at 1 Wimpole Street – a state-of-the-art event space in London’s West End.

Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO of The DTG, said: “The DTG was founded three years before the launch of digital television. As a world-class centre for collaboration we have driven growth and innovation in the television and technology sectors. It’s in that same spirit of collaboration that we consider the next chapter for television, and meet those that are transforming the medium.

“It’s a great opportunity to take stock and hear from world-class speakers. As with previous DTG Summits it’s also a chance to network with friends and colleagues from across the industry, and make new contacts as well.”

DTG Members can receive complementary passes to the event by registering their interest online. Non-members can purchase tickets by emailing networking@dtg.org.uk. Details of the event, and the speaker line-up, can be found on the DTG website.

Industry column

Transforming TVThis year’s DTG Summit will explore fi ve key themes

Graham Lovelace is Executive Producer, DTG Summit

www.csimagazine.com April 2018 27

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Everyone in the media industry is now aware of cyber crime and the need for cyber-security. Every media-related conference is now debating the

problem, looking at how to measure risk and how to invest in protective measures.

The DPP has been looking closely at this area for some time. Our starting point, back in 2015, was the even more fundamental question of how to build trust in connected services, at a time when the moment a company goes online it seems to be putting itself at risk. Then a year ago we assembled a group of security experts from the broadcast and supplier community with the explicit purpose of finding a way to build security - and in the process, build trust.

And that’s when we found the security problems beginning to multiply.

“We work with some of the world’s leading media companies and often find ourselves dealing with security compliance processes that are time-consuming for us and our partners,” says Peter Elvidge, VP Technology at TVT. “In some cases, this is because standards differ significantly, making it challenging to effectively collaborate to prevent potential threats.”

With varying standards of security, and no way of knowing who is doing what, the good security practices of one company can be undone by the poor security practices of others.

The moment data moves, it is at its weakest. That’s why everyone in the supply chain has to understand their responsibilities. Platforms from major suppliers may have security built in – but they can still be breached if the environment in which they are used is insecure.

So what can we do about this? The answer, the DPP Member community was telling us, seemed counterintuitive: the best means of defence is openness and collaboration. Our working group suggested the industry was in need of a common, shared basic language to ensure that everyone was addressing the same fundamental requirements.

This was the starting point for the DPP to create standardised best practice for industry security: the Committed To Security Programme.

Creating checklistsWe wanted to create a means of assessing security that would be low cost and simple for the companies involved. So, working with a range of security specialists, we devised self-assessment checklists that would lead companies through a common set of basic security controls.

We decided there should be separate checklists for broadcast and production environments. The broadcast checklist was based on the excellent work already undertaken by the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) in defining basic cybersecurity measures that should be adhered to by suppliers to broadcast.

Our production checklist, meanwhile, built on work we undertook in 2016 to create a means for production and post production companies to assess their security. The production supply chain is more complex and diverse than for broadcast.

What about existing standards?We developed our checklists with an

awareness of existing security standards. There is plenty of overlap - which is a good thing - but there were also some gaps, particularly for the production checklist. For example, existing standards don’t consider long-term storage concerns. Such concerns put the less headline-worthy – though no less important - issue of content accessibility to the fore.

Tom Blake, Managing Director at Imagen, explains: “Most think of security as protection of copyright, i.e. from leaks, piracy or cyber attacks; however, just as important is ensuring that content is not simply lost through format obsolescence, data corruption, human error or business failure of a supplier. How can you be sure that your content will still be there when you need it, next week, year or decade? Content owners are wise to adopt industry standards and best practices in data management to avoid proprietary lock-ins, and to challenge suppliers on their business and platform continuity planning.”

Launching the ‘Committed to security programme’With broadcast and production checklists in place, we began beta testing with members of our original working group, to ensure first that we had covered all the key elements, and secondly that they would work for any sized company – from global entities

Cyber-security

Solving the other cyber security problemMark Harrison, Managing Director of the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), provides an update on the industry group’s new programme that tackles security practices in broadcast and production

28 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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such as Microsoft through to start-ups. The Committed To Security

Programme had a soft launch at IBC 2017, with ten companies that had worked with us to develop the programme. They all went through the checklist process and were awarded the Committed To Security mark. The development of the governance processes was supported by DPP Member company, Eurofins Digital Testing, which now provides audit and administrative support for the Programme.

In mid-October we announced the Programme more widely and invited all suppliers in the media sector to apply for either or both of the marks. The Committed To Security mark is awarded free of charge to qualifying DPP Members, while non-members can also apply at a license fee of £1,500 for the award of the Security mark for each of the checklists, payable annually on renewal.

The Programme recently hit its first milestone with over 20 accredited companies. It is an extraordinarily diverse list in terms of both size and activities; but all have a common commitment to security best practice.

Dropbox was among the first organisations to be accredited. Mark Crosbie, Global Head of Trust &

Security at Dropbox, comments: “The DPP’s approach to codify industry-wide security standards is a forward-thinking step that highlights the importance of information security in the media sector. Whether you are a broadcaster, production company or vendor, trust and security needs to be a priority, and all parties should work in tandem to protect their employees and users.”

Dominic Jackson, Product Manager, Enterprise Products at Telestream, adds, “When Telestream customers see a DPP Committed To Security designation, they know they are adding technology to their infrastructure which will maintain security protocols as integrated with other program-compliant vendors.”

It has also been a useful process for many to test and confirm their security measures.

Paul Clennell, Chief Technology Officer at dock10, comments, “We work for national and international broadcasters and content producers who are under increasing threat of cyber attack. We have always pursued the highest level of security integrity, but the DPP’s initiative distilled the really key criteria for cybersecurity into meaningful checklists.”

Ian Munford, Director of Product Marketing, Akamai, adds, “The DPP’s Committed To Security programme provides a thorough lens through which suppliers can examine their own service offerings. We’re both a media and a security company so we know what

it takes to protect data, but other companies, whose core skills are only in providing one type of service to the broadcast industry, are likely to benefit from having a checklist laid out for them to help them identify a minimum standard and expectation for all technology suppliers going forward.”

What’s next? As more organisations take up the programme we hope that the Committed To Security mark will become a globally recognised standard that broadcasters and content owners will come to expect of their suppliers.

As Jaspal Jandu, Head of Cyber Security at ITV, comments, “For most major broadcasters there is a heavy reliance on a handful of key suppliers around the delivery and transmission of our content. If these key suppliers are compromised in any way, it’s our brand and viewers that are impacted. Having a DPP mark for our suppliers allows us to gain a level of assurance around the resilience of our supply chain so that in turn our viewers can continue to enjoy our content uninterrupted.”

For our part, the DPP is delighted at the speed and enthusiasm with which the Programme has been taken up, and it has certainly fulfilled our ambition of creating a security programme that works across the whole supply chain.

To continue raising awareness of security best practice, the DPP will hold an exclusive summit later in 2018. The event is designed for IT professionals, CTOs, COOs, heads of department and anyone with responsibility for security. The aim is to create a highly practical event at which people with direct interest and experience in security matters will be able to share and build best practice together. More details about this event will follow.

For details about the Committed To Security Programme please go here: https://www digitalproductionpartnership.co.uk/what-we-do/committed-to-security-programme/

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Cyber-security

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In the movie ‘The Graduate’, our hero Benjamin, just out of college, is pulled aside: “I’ve got just one word to say to you”, a neighbour insists, “Plastic!” This, he claims, is the key to a successful

career. With hindsight he was right, albeit at the cost of the planet’s ecosystem. What would a good neighbour in our business say today? Could the one word(s) of advice now be either ‘VR’ or ‘AR’? If so, which will be the more successful?

There is no certain way to predict success in new media technology, but one view by Prof David Jofie at Harvard Business School is that you get a clue if you delineate the elements that contribute to success, and score them. If they all have high scores, you are on to a winner, and of course the reverse could be true also. The success factors can be weighted for importance, and they should probably be seen as the equivalent of mathematical vectors that combine with vector addition. My simplified unweighted list of potentially relevant success factors for new media is as follows. Do you agree?

Another simpler approach would be to try to locate the position of the new systems on a matrix of degree of

change/disruption versus gain in user experience. The more you gain in user experience for the least disruption, the more rapid could be success. A model matrix is shown below with some examples marked.

What would be the scores for VR?VR is not just one system; it is a family of systems. The family begins with ‘surround’ video, and the most common options here are 180 degrees and 360 degrees. It continues with systems that need a HMD (Head Mounted Display). The first is the 3DoF (Degrees of Freedom) or DVB Type A system. The user (roughly) can move his head in the virtual world but not his body. The HMD is usually a container for a

smartphone. The second is the 6DoF system or DVB Type B system. The user can move his body in virtual space. It uses a purpose-built HMD. Type B systems are usually connected to a PC or games machine,

though standalone systems are coming soon.

VR is used for the live delivery of 360/180 video with audio image following the ‘gaze’. It can be viewed on a TV, Tablet, or smartphone, by swiping. It’s often used for sports and events. Fixed screen compatible views can be available for normal broadcast. 3DoF for HMDs can be stereoscopic or monoscopic. The content length needs to be short. It can be used for short features to supplement dramas, and for the augmentation of linear content. 6DoF, the more elaborate one, is used for video games, medical use, museums, and sometimes personal communications.

What scores would we get for VR on our chart? The reader may care to complete this for themselves. Here’s what I found – without giving away the detail.

For 3DoF, the author found a mixture of good, modest, and poor scores. The biggest advantage of 3DoF is probably

VR vs AR

Success, VR, AR, and Benjamin’s NeighbourAugmented Reality has fewer weak points and can be an exciting addition to content, but what are its chances of success, asks David Wood, Consultant, EBU Technology and Innovation

30 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

SUCCESS FACTORS Score VR

Score AR

Quality of user experience

Ease of use

Equipment availability

Equipment costs

Content desirability

Content availability

Content cost

Usage externality (can we use the equipment for other things too)

Network externality (does it become more attractive, the more users there are)

Adaptability of users

Creativity of content providers

30-31_VRvsAR.indd 2 20/03/2018 15:37:55

its low cost and availability of content. From the scores we might conclude that commercial success in the long term is possible but not certain. Do you agree?

For 6DoF, the author also found a mixture, though a different set, of good and modest and poor scores. The biggest advantage is the better user experience. From the scores, we might conclude once again that commercial success in the long term is possible but not certain. Do you agree?

What would be the score for AR?AR is the mixing of digital content such as computer graphics with the real world surrounding the user, seen via his device, without blocking it out. Interest has peaked in AR with Pokémon Go. There is no need to explain to you how it works, I’m sure. It is used for the augmentation of linear content. It can be viewed on a “plain screen” via smartphone, tablet, or TV. AR has an important role to play in TV programme production, but for the purposes of this article, we consider only its use in consumer services.

AR glasses can provide the combination of surrounding scene and the generated graphics, and lightweight glasses may eventually serve as a substitute for smartphones.

What scores would AR get on our chart? The author found again a mixture of good, modest, and low scores. The biggest advantage is probably relative simplicity. AR needs nothing like the bandwidth of VR services. But in its present

manifestation, using the mobile phone, arm’s length viewing can be tiring. Overall we can conclude that success is possible, but not certain.

Common standards?One element to aspire to with both VR and AR is having common technical standards. For media systems in general they enable greater competition, bring greater consumer awareness, and with exceptions can bring more success. In both areas, VR and AR, there are large numbers of companies independently developing systems, and this may work against success for both. The good news is that there is some convergence on common standards in MPEG for VR and the IEEE for AR.

Decisive aspects of VR and ARCertainly, VR is an exciting experience. But at the same time, there are limitations, including the following: Headsets are not comfortable for users; you cannot socialise with others wearing a headset unless it’s in a multiuser virtual world; watching TV or the VR world and also using a tablet (multitasking) at the same time cannot be done wearing a headset; and a further critical limitation is that VR content needs to be short, up to 20 minutes in duration, so it cannot be used for some types of content, and strict production grammar rules need to have been applied for comfortable usage.

AR can be an exciting addition to content. AR has valuable uses that do not need an HMD. Holding a smartphone at arm’s length is not comfortable for long periods. AR glasses, including sophisticated types such as the Hololens, or simpler forms, may be the future.

Where do VR and AR lie on the simplified matrix?You may care to examine where VR and AR might lie on our simple matrix. The author’s ‘guestimate’ is shown below,

What could help make them successful? There is clearly a need for greater cooperation between the creative and technology industries to identify compelling content for the two systems. Furthermore, could we try to take a more scientific approach to success factor analysis – building on Prof. Jofie’s ideas? Could we substantiate the list of success factors and weight them, then suggest how the scores might add? Finally, how about greater cooperation between companies to agree common standards?

Conclusions180/360, 3Dof, and 6DoF do offer a user experience that is novel and attractive, but full mainstream success for VR media delivery is not certain. At least niche success is likely.

AR can offer an interesting and attractive experience, but full mainstream success for media delivery to the consumer with smartphones is not certain. At least niche success is likely.

Of the two, AR has fewer weak points, and will need considerably less bandwidth. Particularly given small lightweight AR glasses are available, AR could serve in many roles, including as an in-sight smartphone, and it could even achieve mainstream success in the long term. We could conclude that, on the face of it, wider success will come to AR than to VR – but time will tell.

What do you think? Maybe the surest new advice for Benjamin in a new ‘The Graduate’ would be to stick with Mrs Robinson?

VR vs AR

www.csimagazine.com April 2018 31

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The CSI Awards 2018 – Open for entriesDeadline for entries: 18 June 2018 Established in 2003 the awards are among the most prestigious and competitive technology awards in the industry, designed to recognise and reward innovation and excellence in the cable, satellite, broadcast, IPTV, telco, broadband/OTT video, mobile TV and associated sectors.

NEW CATEGORIES ANNOUNCED! • Best TV user experience (UX)• IP Playout• Best use of AI in video

For the latest news and updates follow us @CSI_Magazine #CSIAwards

1. Best digital video processing technology

2. Best network delivery technology

3. Best customer premise technology

4. Best monitoring or network management solution

5. Best content protection technology

6. Best content-on-demand solution

7. Best interactive TV technology or application

8. Best mobile TV technology or service

9. Best internet TV technology or service

10. Best ultra HD TV technology or project

11. Best TV everywhere/multi-screen video

12. Best social TV technology, service or application

13. Best data & analytics innovation

14. Best cloud/virtualisation innovation

15. Best IoT or smart home service or solution

16. Best virtual reality innovation

17. Best 5G project or innovation

18. Best TV user experience (UX) - NEW CATEGORY

19. IP playout - NEW CATEGORY

20. Best use of AI in video - NEW CATEGORY

The CSI Categories

Awards 2018page thirty two www.csimagazine.com CSI magazine • Awards

AWARDS CEREMONY14 September 2018

Amsterdam

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For awards or entry enquiries:

Luke Verrier+44 (0)20 7562 2424events@perspectivepublishing.com

For sponsorship enquiries:

Pallavi Pandey+44 (0)207 562 2435 pallavi.pandey@csimagazine.com

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ENTER NOW: www.csimagazine.com/awards

The CSI Awards 2018 will be taking place on Friday 14 September in Amsterdam.Join us at the 16th annual CSI awards to see this year's winners exclusively announced. The Awards ceremony will include drinks and canapés and will as always be a wonderful evening.

Date: Friday,14 September 2018

page thirty threewww.cable-satellite.comAwards 2018CSI magazine • Awards

AWARDS CEREMONY ENTER NOW

Why enter the CSI Awards? • Stand out against the competition• Attract talent• An opportunity to celebrate• Reward employees and motivate your team• Leverage your marketing - through PR and increased brand awareness• If you are shortlisted your company logo will feature at the awards

ceremony attended by hundreds of the leading names in the industry

In association with

32-33_Awards.indd 3 22/03/2018 16:23:15

Events diary 2018

Date Name Location Website

14-16 January CabSat Dubai www.cabsat.com

13-15 February FTTH Council Europe Valencia www.ftthconference.eu

30-January - 1 February CSTB Telecom & Media Moscow https://en.cstb.ru

26 February - 1 March Mobile World Congress Barcelona www.mobileworldcongress.com

27 February - 1 March BVE London bvexpo.com

6-7 March Cable Congress Dublin cablecongress.com

12-15 March Satellite 2018 Washington DC http://2018.satshow.com

12-14 March DVB World Warsaw dvbworld.org

20-21 March Connected TV Summit London connectedtvsummit.com

27-28 March Broadthinking Geneva tech.ebu.ch/events/2018/broadthinking2018

9-12 April MIPTV Cannes www.miptv.com

07-12 April NAB Las Vegas nabshow.com

26-29 April ASBU Radio & TV Festival Tunis www.asbu.net/home.php?lang=ar

9-10 May TV Connect London Olympia https://tmt.knect365.com/tv-connect

10 May DTG Summit London dtg.org.uk/dtg/summit.html

26-28 June Broadcast Asia Singapore broadcast-asia.com

12-14 June ANGA Com Cologne angacom.de/en

31 August -5 September IFA Berlin https://b2b.ifa-berlin.com

13-18 September IBC Amsterdam ibc.org

4-6 October IFTV Istanbul http://iftv.org/US/index

10-11 October AI World Summit Amsterdam worldsummit.ai

15-18 October MipCom Cannes mipcom.com

22-25 October SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo Atlanta expo.scte.org

November 2018 OTT TV World Summit London ottworldsummit.com

November 2018 CDN World Summit London cdnworldsummit.com

November 2018 Connections Europe Amsterdam parksassociates.com/events

December 2018 Future TV Advertising London futuretvads.com

For a full list of events taking place in 2018 please go to http://www.csimagazine.com/csi/events.php

34 April 2018 www.csimagazine.com

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To advertise contact Camilla Capece +44 (0)20 7562 2438 camilla.capece@csimagazine.com

BUSINESS DIRECTORY

Verimatrix specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services for more than 500 operators around the globe. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) and ViewRight® solutions offer an innovative approach for cable, satellite, terrestrial and IPTV operators to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. As the recognized leader in software-based security solutions for premier service providers, Verimatrix has pioneered the 3-Dimensional Security approach that offers flexible layers of protection techniques to address evolving business needs and revenue threats. Maintaining close relationships with major studios, broadcasters, industry organizations, and its unmatched partner ecosystem enables Verimatrix to provide a unique perspective on digital TV business issues beyond content security as operators seek to deliver compelling new services. www.verimatrix.com

6059 Cornerstone Court West, San Diego, CA 92121-3713, USTel: +1-858-677-7800 Fax: +1-858-677-7804Web: www.verimatrix.com

Intelsat is the leading provider of fixed satellite services worldwide. Intelsat supplies video, data and voice connectivity for leading media and communications companies, Internet Service Providers and government organizations. Intelsat’s valuable regional video neighborhoods deliver more television channels than any other system. Intelsat’s terrestrial network of eight strategically-located teleports and over 36,000 miles of leased fiber complements a global satellite fleet of more than 50 satellites, covering 99% of the world’s population. Intelsat utilizes a fully integrated satellite operations model, enabling global delivery from a single platform. With Intelsat, communications with your customers are closer, by far.

3400 International Drive, NW, Washington D.C. 20008 USATel: +1 202 944 6800 Fax: +1 202 944 7898Web: www.intelsat.com

EchoStar Europe is dedicated to enabling digital entertainment providers to optimise revenues by delivering added-value connected device solutions, services and applications. Through a comprehensive product range, including STBs, DVRs, home networking and TV anywhere technology, our solutions enable the provision of state-of-the-art and cost effective entertainment services.

Headquartered in the UK, EchoStar Europe comprises a number of business units and is affiliated with EchoStar Technologies, a subsidiary of the publicly traded EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS).

Beckside Design Centre, Millennium Business Park, Station Road, Steeton, Keighley BD20 6QW, United Kingdom Tel: +44 1535 659000 Fax: +44 1535 659100Web: www.echostar.com

There’s never been a better time #neverbetter for Cisco to partner with Service Provid-ers to transform Entertainment. As the longstanding, market-leading supplier of video entertainment solutions and cloud services, the company empowers Service Providers and Media companies to connect consumers and businesses to a world of new experi-ences. With more than 7000 video professionals, Cisco has the scale, resource, and vision to deliver differentiated solutions.

Cisco, One London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4EX Tel +44 (0)178 484 8500 Fax +44 (0)178 484 8600Web: cisco.com/go/videoscape

ATX Networks is a market leading global provider of access & video network solutions serving commercial, enterprise, and residential markets. ATX’s solutions include optical transport, RF management (1.2 GHz), video gateways & headends, video insertion, RF filters, transmitters/receivers, headend & MDU amplifiers, node segmentation, node/amp upgrades, monitor/control equipment, pads/EQs, digital voice switches, & connectors.

Corneliusstrasse 22, 60325 Frankfurt am MainTel: +49 171 998 3676Email: EMEAsales@atxnetworks.com Web: www.atxnetworks.com

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Your customers want live anytime, anywhere. Can you deliver?

NOT EVERY FORMULA FOR SUCCESS IS A WINNER!

With Ascendon, give viewers first run content like TV shows and live events (think sports, concerts and more) on their terms, on any device and with all the features that keep them loyal. The Ascendon SaaS, cloud-based platform gets you live in 90 days or less. Learn more at csgi.com.

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