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20-Nov-2009
by Philip Hunter
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HD pays but way forward unclear for all ops
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Content
BSkyB’s recent announcement that HD was making a major contribution to its revenues – and not just from subscriptions – highlighted how satellite operators in general are making the running here. While BSkyB as usual was coy about specific numbers, it confirmed that HD subscriptions, costing an extra £9.75 per month on top of the underlying content package, were still being taken up rapidly.
BSkyB’s Brian Lenz, Director, TV Product Development, also hinted that the roll out of HD had played a part in boosting advertising revenues, exploiting the fact that early HD takers tend to be high networth customers interested in luxury and corporate products. “The flexibility of this offering means we are able to target a large cross section of viewers at all times, offering flexibility and value to advertisers wishing to target all specific audience groups, said Lenz.
Despite this success, satellite operators are constrained when it comes to on demand HD, but then all providers face HD issues somewhere along the transmission chain. “All operators have their challenges when it comes to HD,” agreed Carl Furgusson, VP of compression product management at TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson group, and a major vendor of HD transmission systems. “Cable operators have competing demands for bandwidth on their networks, including on-demand and high-speed broadband. Where they are using MPEG-2 for HDTV there is increased pressure on bandwidth. Cable can make room for HDTV through various means – the most cost-effective, we think, is to actually focus on their standard-definition services and improve MPEG-2 compression on those. That can save at least 15% bandwidth which, when spread over hundreds of SD channels, adds up to a lot of bandwidth that can be made available for HD.”
Meanwhile the problem for telcos lies in creating enough access “last mile” bandwidth to stream HD into the customer premise. “Then where telcos are already offering HD, the next challenge is to extend the reach of HD services to more homes and ensure they can deliver more than one HDTV channel into a home simultaneously, enabling DVR watch/record in HD and HD multi-room.” The remedy here is a combination of access network upgrades and continuing improvements in MPEG-4 AVC compression.
Coming back to satellite operators, their high transmission bandwidth, combined with their market power, has enabled them to lead the race to deliver more HDTV channels. But because all that bandwidth is shared among all subscribers, coupled with lack of return path, they are constrained from offering many HD channels in time shift and VOD mode, at least without compromising picture quality. “Without a private network VOD solution, satellite providers cannot offer HD movies or catch-up content on-demand to the television and that gives cable and telecoms operators a way to counter the HD channel choice seen on satellite,” said Furgusson.
Not that BSkyB is losing much sleep yet over HD competition from cable, terrestrial and IPTV rivals. BSkyB pointed out there was still plenty of work to be done creating a large catalogue of HD content and then rolling it out. “Whilst HD production is increasingly becoming the industry standard, not all content is available in the format,” said Lenz.” We will continue to provide as much HD programming as possible, however there are no plans to move to an all HD format.”
Against this background it is little surprise that operators are not looking much beyond HD at the moment. “Few platform operators are seriously considering life beyond HD today," said Furgusson. “The priority is to provide more HD, with more channels available and bigger on-demand catalogues.”
Having said that Furgusson agreed that 3DV was on the radar screen for some major platform operators, with a firm launch commitment from BSkyB in the UK. Furgusson also pointed out that there was interest in moving to the higher 1080p HD standard for non-broadcast content. Currently most HD content exists as either 720p or 1080i, which are good enough for most current TV displays, but are likely over time to be superseded by 1080p. The trouble is 1080p consumes twice as much bandwidth to transmit, and twice as much storage. “We are a long way from 1080p HD for broadcast content, due to the high bandwidth requirements,” confirmed Furgusson.
Even 720p and 1080 are posing problems for terrestrial delivery, as Furgusson pointed out. “The digital terrestrial market has the biggest bandwidth challenge for HD. Improving MPEG-2 compression for existing SD services can create room for some HDTV. The increased modulation efficiencies from DVB-T2 will create more capacity but ultimately this market needs more spectrum or migration to MPEG-4 AVC compression, and eventually both.”
All operators then will have to address transmission issues in some form before they become “all-HD shops
About the author
Philip Hunter is a leading specialist writer on the business of delivery and consumption of digital entertainment. He writes widely for both technical journals and specialist web sites, as well as more general interest publications such as Prospect Magazine, conveying complex ideas and subjects in a clear but not condescending manner. In the multimedia content and TV arenas, Philip combines in depth technical knowledge with appreciation of the business models that will bring success in the new age of on-demand content consumption, identifying the opportunities and pitfalls facing operators, broadcasters and content providers as they embrace new platforms beyond the traditional end point of the set top box.
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