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• 23-Sep-2009 by Benjamin Schwarz
• Post IBC: Six Encoding trends
• IBC News

Both Sky and the BBC had some impressive 3D Video demos on display, as if 3D was going to be a British thing!? Two separate streams are required to render the 3D effect. Without understanding all the underlying technology you can bet that encoding both of them will require much less than twice the bandwidth (in fact it’s only a bit more than once the bandwidth). Despite all the talk, the encoding companies we visited didn’t have any demos. Sagem showed a surprising demo cancelling out 3D on a STB.

The was a noticeable move to software encoding form the hardware zealots with only Tandberg not supporting a software decoder in their line-up yet.

The 3 screens paradigm has been at IBC for some time now, but this year some of the demos were from real deployments. Encoding from one source targeting disparate devices actually happens in the field.

All the encoding companies I spoke to were excited about their latest offering for contribution networks. That is the link to the video headend (as oppose to from it). This requires bigger streams and more expensive high margin kit which might explain the excitement.

In 2005 the BBC’s compression guru told me 1080p50 was the only standard worth investing in. I should have taken more notice. 1080P50 or even 60 for the US pushed everything else out of the way this year. The 720p Vs 1080i debate seems like a life-time ago.

Finally, although rather discrete on the booths of the few encoding companies that deliver it, was rate adaptive encoding. This will probably have a greater impact than all the other trends put together. It will eventually blur the boundaries between OTT and walled garden services altogether.

Here’s an account of the vendors I saw at IBC and my view on what they were demonstrating.

Harmonic

Harmonic showed their latest hardware based high-end encoder called the Electra 8000 which brings 10 to 30% gain in compression. Apparently there is no underlying technology breakthrough to explain this but a new 'simulcast' or 'second output' architecture I failed to understand.  This would make the 8000 an ideal candidate for 3D.

Harmonic’s main novelty for the show though was the Prostream 1000 which transcodes any format to any format with up to 80 SD channels or 20HD ones in a single unit, so density is the real novelty here.

Continuing the never-ending expansion into new niches, Harmonic also showed off their QOS monitoring tool. This will compete with their previous partners, like Ineoquest. Fortunately for them though, Harmonic’s new product called IRIS is targeted at the head-end only (for now?).

Harmonic, in my view, was always the video company excelling in the compression of moving images. After listening to their automatic audio level adjustment demo they had at IBC, shows this impression is out of date. The impressive demo is the fruit of a partnership with Junger Technologies and brings a much needed solution to IPTV operators that aggregate channels from varied sources with wildly varying sound environments. Remember wincing at the sonic boom when changing to a louder channel which happened to be showing ads? Also, I certainly don’t admit to the kids that I can no longer hear when they zap around ending up on a channel that is quieter. They make enough fun of me as it is. So hurry up and sell that audio level adjustment to the telco headends I watch TV from.

The last demo from Harmonic was impressive although it did bring a smile. After years of denigrating software encoding (i.e. using ordinary servers instead of dedicated hardware) they showed the Prostream 4000 which is a multiple bandwidth live encoder (i.e. stream the same thing out at three or four different bandwidths). This is a long awaited response to Envivio who led this segment for several years. The Prostream 5000 is also software based but designed for offline, i.e. non-real-time encoding or more often transcoding.

As with all the stands I visited I asked about 2010 and that brought Harmonic to talk about the Scopus acquisition. The products that will ensue will target the contribution segment. That is the link between say a TV studio and a head-end. The video quality is much more important here. The techies will talk of 4:2:2 colour space and 10 bit sampling instead of the regular 4:2:0 and 8 bits that us mortals get delivered to our TV set-top-boxes. The 10 bits basically allow sampling almost a thousand levels of colour compared to the 200 available with 8 bit encoding used elsewhere. These high-end formats require over 25 Mbits/second for 1080p50 in MPEG2 (which is still in use at this high end of the market) and just over half of that bandwidth in AVC.

ATEME

I was excited to come see the company powering the TV headends of the French Telco’s nemesis namely Free.fr. Indeed Free created the triple-play standard of ‘as much as you can eat for 29.99€’. Originally an ISP business, now it’s one of the most comprehensive triple-play services on the planet with everything from home networking to HD; well, sort of HD...more like SD++.

The booth was pretty disappointing though.

After many years of championing the software encoder model, ATEME has now also embraced hardware encoders - coming to this middle ground from the opposite side as Tandberg did.

In terms of demos, the booth had a strong sense of ‘déjà vu’. Maybe the right people weren’t free to speak with me. Maybe all the innovation is hidden under the hood. In any case, innovation isn’t a goal, it’s a means. The ATEME boxes on show were 1u per HD channel.
ATEME was also talking about high-end contribution link projects. They are currently running projects for news contribution only where full 10 bit 4:2:2 encoding isn’t required although it’s new in their catalogue this year.

Envivio

I actually met Julien Signès, the Envivio founder and CEO, on the train back to Paris not at the show. We spoke mainly about the power of adaptive rate encoding, which after decades in the labs actually works. Move Networks (strangely absent from IBC) pioneered the approach over the internet. Big US networks use the technology for streaming on the Web. Move just acquired Inuk and announced a first Telco-TV deployment with this encoding technology in the Caribbean.

The beauty of this technology, now also available from Microsoft with Silverlight is that regular web infrastructure (in particular the cheap HTTP caches) work to mimic a kind of multicast effect. Video is encoded in small “chunks” that can easily be cached so the next user wanting the same stream only needs to go as far as the closest cache.

Also, the availability of low resolution versions of the stream you are trying to get means that really impressive zapping times are possible even if the first few seconds of video aren’t of optimal quality.

Signès explained to me that the downside to the technology, contrary to SVC, is that you must potentially push all of the various bit rates down the network. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter because this new technology actually works in the field and is scaling-up contrary to SVC.

Tandberg

The Tandberg stand this year was packed with interesting things and also where I had the most interesting surprises.

First of all, Carl Furgusson, VP Product Management, with a sparkle in his eye, told me of the mother of all innovations: an MPEG2 encoder. Yes I too thought he was pulling my leg, but actually when you stop to think about it, there is still a huge amount of legacy MPEG2 kit out there that can happily run for quite a few more years. This new EN8100 encoder, with its 15% gain in efficiency, lets you put an extra 5 SD channels per satellite transponder and therefore makes sound business sense.

The new encoders are greener too with a three-fold consumption drop from 150 watts/channel to 46 and 6 channels per 1u hot-swappable box. There was no revolutionary breakthrough underlying this improvement, just state-of-the-art horsepower under the hood.

On a more expected note, Furgusson also told of the improvements in MPEG4 of 20 to 25% with the EN8190 so that live sports will be available between 5 and 6 Mbits/second.

Like Harmonic, Tandberg are no longer on an anti-software-based encoding crusade, but they haven’t gone as far as having their own products yet. When such technologies are needed (frown in disappointment or even disgust here), Tandberg uses partners.

Encoding for contribution networks was also a leitmotiv with Furgusson, although contrary to most, this is not new business for Tandberg. 50 to 80 Mb/s rates are used to deliver channels to headends. Almost half of this still happens in MPEG2.

Gee it was refreshing to have an encoding company talk about encoders. One feels grounded for the rest of the show.

The first demo was impressive in its simplicity. It was a VoD service for cable networks in developing countries where infrastructure and ARPU mean DOCSIS 3.0 is too expensive. So no return channel is possible via cable. The return channel proposed is simply mobile phone SMSs. Back-office functionalities were built on the Entone software acquired recently.
The demo was smooth and made complete business sense. If VoD is to take off in a totally irrefutable paradigm changing way, this is one of the ways it will happen.

The second demo was the less unique STB-makers-nightmare: using an updated common interface card (CI+) to consume VoD on a TV either directly connected to the internet, or from a cable network, but in both cases with no STB. There was a queue in front of the demo which was quite telling but I had to pass my turn and move on.

The third device shifting demo was a bit ‘me-too’ in what we saw. The interesting part was under the hood with Tandberg’s Open-stream product powering the 3 screen experience in real time.

All in all, Tandberg’s booth was impressive at IBC this year. Who knows, if Ericsson buy up an STB maker they too can enter the true end-to-end provider space alongside Cisco and Motorola.

Motorola

On the Motorola booth you get whisked from one place to another by very nice people. They do so so so many things you have to put blinkers on to listen to one thing at a time.

Luckily, Frank Patterson (known to colleagues as Frank 1080p) former Modulus Video MD, got me focussed on the latest MPEG4 SE6000 encoders. He explained how the acquisition of Modulus Video by Motorola, who’s turnover exceeds $3bn in this space in EMEA, reassured potential customers and lowers their technology risk. His explanation of why the headend-space still has a few years of high margin business (read: you can get deals off catalogue prices) whereas the STB side is almost commoditized (so don’t bother trying there) was convincing.

The latest 1u boxes on show were not the most efficient in terms of space as they only do 2 channels but the transmission delay below 2 seconds is the key selling point here. Gone will be the days when you hear the technophobe neighbours celebrate a goal way before your IPTV delivered channel shows it.

The bandwidth figures Franck gave seemed a lot more credible than some of the promises I’d seen elsewhere. BT’s sports channels were delivered over IP at Standard Definition resolution at just over 3Mbps and regular IPTV as low as 1.2Mbps video (or 1.6 in Transport Stream).

Exterity

On the encoding side it was interesting to see a booth where it wasn’t all about bandwidth reduction. Exterity deliver bespoke solutions to businesses where the videos are usually delivered on a LAN. So 4Mbps per SD channel is fine. HD is of course in full 1080P50, you only need 15 Mbps but who’s counting anyway? Upshots are that video quality is of course improved and less processing power is required at both encoding and decoding end. You need to be a hotel guest or a business user of TV to benefit from this. Being a trader may not be in fashion at the moment, but hey you get the best quality TV services if you work for an Exterity client that is.

Pace

No, Pace isn’t here by mistake despite this being a headend article.

Pace have a completely new product line which was presented as the MultiDweller (TM) Platform from subsidiary Pace Networks. It is a set-top-box agnostic (like where all boxes are equal but maybe Pace boxes are just a bit more equal) small headend-in-a-box currently undergoing field trials with Telenor. With one of the leading STB makers moving sideways into hospitality headends, demonstrates this industry’s ability to blur boundaries. For a company with such a nice name, it’s surprising to have trademarked a product with such strange one.

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