A poll by TV Technology's sister publication TVBEurope and MediaKind has found consistent broadcast quality across all devices is the most important element for an operator when delivering streaming services.

The poll was carried out as part of our "Live Streaming 2020—Shifting Consumer Habits" webinar.

The audience was asked to vote on what they thought is the most important element for an operator when delivering streaming services.

The options were, consistent broadcast quality across all devices; bandwidth and storage optimization; per user targeted advertising and content replacement; and QoE monitoring and analytics.

Consistent broadcast quality was the overwhelming the choice of the audience, receiving 65.8% of the votes cast.

It was followed by bandwidth and storage optimization, which received 18.4% of the votes.

Per user targeted audience gained 10.5% of the vote, while QoE monitoring and analytics had just 5.3%.

The webinar featured a number of topics, including how the coronavirus pandemic could change sports broadcasting, particularly in terms of remote production; what are the biggest hurdles when starting an event-based streaming service; and will there be an acceleration to HEVC in the next year to improve bandwidth utilization?

"Live Streaming 2020—Shifting Consumer Habits" is available to watch on-demand.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TVBEurope.

At first it seemed like the stuff of a Hollywood thriller, but the social distancing, self-isolation and lockdown resulting from the global pandemic has rapidly become the “new normal.” Overnight, the face-to-face method of doing business has given way to the digital and virtual. The home working, event cancellations and travel restrictions made necessary by the COVID-19 crisis have meant enterprises that had previously used online communications mainly for webinars or streaming coverage of large-scale live corporate events now find that digital platforms are the only way to reach their business audiences.

Enterprises are now faced with the unprecedented challenge of ensuring business-as-usual and ongoing momentum, while prioritizing the welfare of staff, customers, partners and other business contacts. A March survey by Econsultancy and Marketing Week shows that 57% of North American marketers say their product or service launches are now delayed or under review, while a similar proportion say the same is true for marketing initiatives. 

The trouble is, live enterprise events such as press conferences, product launches, corporate announcements, investor briefings, customer seminars, town hall meetings and campaign kick-offs cannot wait indefinitely. Businesses need to get their message out and therefore have to find creative approaches to make the virtual as compelling and impactful as the live and in person.

MAKING THE VIRTUAL AS GRIPPING AS LIVE

By making the internet work for them in highly effective ways, astute enterprises are finding new ways to engage and inform their clients, employees, investors and other stakeholders. There are a few simple, low-cost options that many are already employing, such as basic video call and conferencing applications. The reality for corporate events is that webinar-level technology tools might be suitable for small, more intimate digital meetings, but a more robust and reliable approach is needed to take a major virtual announcement or conference beyond talking heads in a poorly lit room.

For live business events reaching audiences in the hundreds or thousands to have the gravitas and polish they need to really stand out, enterprises must raise their game and produce TV-quality experiences that offer the next best thing to being there. Those broadcasting to large, even global, audiences also need the scalability to manage surges in viewers. Broadcast-caliber live production and streaming, combined with remote production techniques, provides a clear professional-grade option. 

The remote approach is already being taken by broadcasters like CNN and ABC News. But even some of the broadcast networks are struggling when they don’t have the right setup to support parts of their news programs, sometimes resulting in bad audio, drop-outs and picture issues for video interviews streamed via home broadband—which is a “best effort” solution. The fact that most home broadband connections are geared towards the downstream and not uplinks is one of the major challenges with this setup.

To counter this, more organizations are effectively moving to the use of video links where interviewees use Skype or other special video conferencing apps that feed, contribution style, into a professional production environment. This allows production teams to create a recognizable host-led package that is near to broadcast quality.

BRINGING BROADCAST-GRADE RELIABILITY TO THE ENTERPRISE EVENT

This approach can be applied to either live news broadcasts or enterprise events with the help of studio facility and a broadcast services partner. At The Switch, we are already providing this type of production service through our Burbank studio, running a skeleton crew while acting as a central hub to manage these distributed productions. In these cases, a single participant can still come into one or more professional studios in global media centers such as Los Angeles, New York or London, while others join via Skype.

Although some guests are still contributing via open internet, this type of production facility can offer dedicated connectivity linked directly into key broadcast hubs and other distribution points, such as Amazon Web Services, and low latency links into global platforms such as YouTube Live, Twitter and Facebook. It’s not flawless, but it is a major step up from hoping each speaker’s broadband keeps stable while they are on camera.

Shifting from a live enterprise event to a video-based equivalent requires a level of professional expertise that will ensure that every aspect is delivered to meet the expectations of the audience. Especially challenging live events are those that include an interactive session, such as a press conference or client workshop, where a presenter is delivering a speech, along with video inserts, graphics and even a Q&A—an experienced partner can be key here.

BORROWING FROM SPORTS BROADCASTING

With most markets still in lockdown mode, even a closed auditorium with a three-person video crew—and far less potential for social mingling—still seems a step too far. We will reach a point, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, where the pandemic starts to diminish and a “behind-closed-doors” halfway house with just key participants and minimal crews will support enterprise events.

In this scenario, remote production can be applied to expand the number of locations for events, using approaches from the world of sports broadcasting. In effect, “ghost studios” with lights and cameras remotely operated from a centralized production desk can be run from many venues, including theatres, auditoriums and arenas—most of which already have dedicated lease line connectivity into a broadcast services provider that can guarantee bandwidth.

Live events will return, but as organizations start to become more comfortable with the top-end digital equivalents, the ability to deliver remote, virtual launches, conferences and presentations has the potential to become a primary option rather than a fallback for many events—or at least an essential component of enterprise outreach around them. This becomes even more crucial for organizations seeking to reach global audiences with a simultaneous message that drives their business forward.

George Lopez is senior vice president of operations at The Switch.

Washington, D.C.. — Point Source Audio’s CO2 Confidence headsets played a large primary—and a critical secondary—role for double mic’ing at the 2019 AIPAC Policy Conference held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington DC. Over 18,000 people attended the three-day conference and included members of Congress, students, and synagogue delegations. The guest speaker roster was massive (the AIPAC website lists over 400) and the audio needs were equally large with 120 channels of wireless mics being used. And, as typical, the expectations for fail safe reliability and sonic excellence with microphones were high.

AIPAC live interviews got “backup” from 40 redundancy headsets

To that end, audio supplier, Maryland Sound Industries (MSI) provided their client, Viva Creative, 40 of Point Source Audio’s CO2 Confidence headset mics for use with the Shure and Sennheiser RF systems that were utilized for the event. Given the amount of RF which, in addition to microphones, included IEMs, broadcast and security channels, the chance of being “stepped” on was very real and made frequency coordination and backup or redundancy options vital.

Robert Jones is the account manager for MSI and first tried the PSA mics at a demo and was impressed both with the sonic capability and the fact that he now had two identical microphones in one package. “In the past we’ve used two transmitters with a headset and with a lavalier mic as backup. If we lost a particular frequency, which can happen in an event this large, and needed to switch transmitters during the speech, the sound difference between the lav and headset is audible. With the Point Source Audio mics, the sound never changes and, on those occasions, where we do need to switch to the backup transmitter, the audience doesn’t notice. There is a sonic consistency we like.”

Jones also noted the increased speed and ease of mic’ing the talent with the PSA mics saying, “Once this thing gets rolling, it’s a constant process of removing the mic as the speaker leaves the stage, putting one on for the new speaker, and on and on. Anything that helps our techs with that process is much appreciated.”

Yvonne Ho, VP of sales & marketing at Point Source Audio, appreciates and understands the challenges of large-scale productions such as AIPAC and commented, “Beyond the audio quality aspect, our goal is to assist our customers in solving problems. If the tech crew can double mic speakers in half the time and ensure the live mic is fail-safe, then we are making real progress.”

The patent-pending CO2 Confidence Collection, a new class of wireless microphones, all have dual elements, each measuring a tiny 3mm that offers built-in redundancy. The CO2 mics also integrate two of the company’s important first-to-market features in miniature microphones: IP 57 waterproof rating, and the “unbreakable” headset boom bendable to 360° to bolster durability.

Point Source Audio will be showcasing the CO2 Confidence microphones for audio professionals at the upcoming InfoComm in Orlando, June 12 – 14, booth 5443. To learn more about Point Source Audio products, please visit www.point-sourceaudio.com

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About Maryland Sound
Founded in 1967 as a touring sound company, Maryland Sound has been an industry leader for over 40 years. While still maintaining a presence in the touring industry with artists such as Slash, Yanni, Seal, and other international artists, the company is now known as a leader in broadcast, sporting, and corporate events such as the Dew Action Sports Tour, multiple Presidential Inauguration Swearing In Ceremonies, as well as Inaugural Balls and, for 28 years, New Year’s Eve in Times Square. www.marylandsound.com

About Point Source Audio
Point Source Audio (@PSA_audio) manufactures and distributes worldwide their SERIES8, EMBRACE, and CONFIDENCE collection of miniature microphones — a unique line of headset, earworn and earmounted microphones known for their robust bendable boom and waterproof features. The company also holds two patents for the EMBRACE concealable microphone as well as the patent for the world’s first modular in-ear comms headset that is supporting the hearing health for audio, lighting and camera techs using headsets everywhere from sports to space. Founded in 2004, Point Source Audio is headquartered in Petaluma, California. For more information call (415) 226-1122 or visit www.point-sourceaudio.com. Follow the company on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PSA_audio.

In Part I, we looked at how the definition of broadcast quality has evolved over the decades and the FCC’s attempts to enforce standards. In Part II, we look at several more past examples and examine how broadcast quality is determined in the digital age.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—What really defines “broadcast quality” and has such a thing ever really existed?

Even though television gear has become a lot more reliable over the years, on-air slippages in performance do occur. If this happens during peak viewing hours and there's no backup equipment, the only choices are to shut down and make immediate repairs, or limp along with a somewhat less than "broadcast quality" signal until signoff (or in the case of today's 24-hour operations, a time when viewership is low) and then fix the problem. Such a decision has never been difficult, as "the show must go on" philosophy almost always trumps degraded signal quality.

Let me give you an example involving a 1950s low-budget small-market TV station in a southwestern state. It was described as really a “shoestring” operation by its former owner (the person who related the story to me). One evening the station got a call from a viewer who was very excited about a particular program being transmitted. It seems that individual had won a color TV (a big-ticket item then) in a raffle and the network show the station was carrying was the first time the set had displayed color (1950s network offerings were mostly monochrome). The station’s then-owner and chief engineer was also excited, admitting to me that he didn’t know that his rather antique Dumont transmitter could even pass color. When I asked if he couldn’t see off-air burst and chroma information on a waveform monitor, he replied, “at that time we didn’t even own one.”

Strike another blow for maintaining “broadcast quality.”

There’s also the story from a couple of decades earlier involving a network affiliated radio station in a medium-sized market. The station was getting complaints about a “squeal” in the audio on network programs. However, as the audio sounded fine in the control room, station engineering chalked it up to listeners’ set problems or maybe some sort of interference in their neighborhoods. Finally, the number of complaints increased to the point that it was apparent something just might be wrong with their signal. The problem was eventually traced to an oscillating amplifier used by the local phone company to deliver the network audio. It seems that the speaker used for control room monitoring had such poor high frequency response that operators couldn’t hear the “squeal.” “Broadcast quality” I have to wonder?

‘RELAXED’ QC MONITORING

Fast forward to the 21st century. I visit quite a few broadcast facilities, and during the past few years have observed that more and more master control rooms are now monitoring everything on consumer-grade large screen displays driven by multiviewers. In other areas (graphics production) I also no longer see the broadcast grade “critical” and expensive CRT monitors, but rather garden-variety computer displays.

The same sort of “relaxed” QC monitoring is also happening in camera control rooms. Yes, there are plenty of “critical” monitors available (Dolby Labs, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Plura, and a number of others all come to mind), but I don’t see nearly as many “broadcast quality” monitors deployed where color and overall image quality assessment is taking place as I did when the CRT was king. And speaking of monitoring, how about the multichannel “surround” sound that we can transmit now that we’ve gone to digital—5.1 and maybe even 7.1-channel audio? Come on—show of hands—how many of you have created a 5.1 or 7.1 listening environment in your master control room so that operators can ascertain that the correct audio is where it ought to be? (I thought so.)

What I see in my visits is most often a control room display indicating presence and relative amplitudes of various channels. Also, the monitor speakers, however many or few, are usually potted down; and in some cases there’s no one there to listen to or look at a surround display. I even visited one new major market facility that was constructed without a master control at all. Everything was running on automatic pilot and MC operations (such as they were—transmitter remote control point/logging and news microwave monitors) were contained in an alcove at the end of the newsroom.

CONTENT TRUMPS QUALITY

So back to my original rhetorical question: was there ever really such a thing as “broadcast quality?”

Yes, when I was moving through the professional TV ranks in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and even a few years into the new millennium, we certainly had plenty of paper with ink on it describing how things ought to be done. And we tried really hard to keep reasonably good looking (and sounding) signals on the air. However, if you worked during this period you might recall that there were also three stock “excuses” when things didn’t go exactly by the book: (1) It looks good leaving here, (2) We can live with it, and (3) The trouble must be “west of Denver” or “east of Denver” depending on where you were and whether New York or L.A. was feeding the network. (For those of you not old enough to remember, Denver was the location of a major AT&T Long Lines switching center).

We tried to keep a “broadcast quality” signal on the air; honest to Pete we did, but sometimes things slipped a little bit (or even a lot). However, content always trumps quality and as long as we had the ball game or soap opera or whatever up at its scheduled time, the phone didn’t ring much, even if the quality slipped a little.

I recently asked the chief engineer of a modern-day TV station about consumer complaints and he responded without hesitation that the few received dealt almost entirely with aspect ratio and loudness issues, and in working with the complainants, in virtually every case the problems were traced to consumers having monkeyed around with their remote controls. (“It looks good leaving here!”) He added that complaints about color, resolution (even when SD was intercut with HD), and other video attributes were almost non-existent.

So, back to my questions: (1) what is “broadcast quality” and (2) did it ever exist?

Based on my nearly 50 years of involvement in broadcasting, I would have to answer that (1) no one is really 100 percent sure and (2) no, I don’t think it ever really did. However, we always tried to put out a quality signal and I hope that broadcasters always will!

James O'Neal is a retired broadcast engineer who worked in that field for some 37 years before joiningRadio World’ssister publication,TV Technology, where he served as technology editor for nearly a decade. He is a regular contributor to both publications, as well as a number of others. He can be reached via TV Technology.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—If you were at the Hollywood SMPTE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition last October, you might have sat in on a paper authored by the CMO and co-founder of Archmedia Technology, Josef Marc. The paper (“What Does ‘Broadcast Quality’ Mean Now?) examined changes in the industry during the past decade or so, especially the impact of UHD, HDR, expanded color gamut and the like, and described how evaluation of imagery can be highly subjective (“color-challenged people may be more sensitive to compression artifacts than people with normal color sensitivity, memory seems to improve image quality, etc.”). Marc noted that this also carries over into evaluation of audio.

This off-air photograph of a 1940s station test pattern was included in its FCC “proof-of-performance” documentation. Under careful examination, a number of defects and shortcomings are evident including telecine camera tube shading issues, less than perfect scan linearity and sweep adjustments and a slide that’s quite dirty. However, the station obviously prided itself as offering a “broadcast quality” signal to viewers.

After hearing the presentation, I’ve been pondering the paper’s implications, especially the statement in its abstract that “‘broadcast quality’ used to be a meaningful standard for communicating a quality level sufficient to satisfy the broadest range of requirements.”

Now I’ve been involved in the broadcasting business one way or another since I was a teenager (a long time ago), and the term “broadcast quality” was one of the first things (if not the first) that I tucked away in my ever-growing list of “buzz words.” It was drilled into me by upper management, as I’m sure it was you, that our product always had to be of “broadcast quality.” (And no, this wasn’t a reference to bleeping any of George Carlin’s forbidden words.)

NICE BUT VAGUE

So what really defines “broadcast quality” and has such a thing ever really existed?

Well, when you think it over, it’s right up there with such terms as “ample” or “adequate.” They sound nice, but are vague and their meaning can vary with circumstances. Yes, the FCC had its set of rules and regulations governing TV and radio station technical quality, transporters of network signals such as AT&T. Long Lines had their own system operating standards, and I recall (not so fondly) more than once conducting the lengthy SSOG (Satellite Systems Operating Guide) satellite path “proof of performance” to ensure that everything met spec. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against standards and specifications. No industry could exist without them. However, as evidenced by lots of practical experience, nothing is really set in stone.

In the 1960s, if you asked a radio station listener about “broadcast quality,” he or she might tell you that the station’s music sounded better than their phonograph records at home. There was probably a measure of truth here, as larger stations obtain multiple copies of the “top hits” from record pluggers and promptly replaced any disks that were beginning to sound worn or had gotten scratched. (Also the station may have added just a little “processing” in their audio chain.) However, if you asked the owner of some expensive “hi-fi” gear (something of a status symbol in the 60s), that person would likely have an entirely different (and not particularly flattering) definition of “broadcast quality.” They would likely point out that the limited audio passband, turntable rumble, and residual noise and distortion in the transmission process resulted in audio that was inferior to what their upper-end home hi-fi systems could deliver.

Ditto video. When affordable video cameras and home recording finally became available, folks were thrilled that they could preserve their children’s christenings, birthday parties, graduation ceremonies and the like for posterity, or record their favorite network television shows for future viewing. To hear owners of this technology talk, the video quality delivered by these devices was really wonderful, and curiously (or maybe not), the majority of consumers bought into the format that produced the poorest-quality video. On the other hand, we smug broadcasters looked down our nose disdainfully at the so-called “VHS quality.” We had “broadcast quality” quad and 1-inch video recorders. Anything else was, well, not worthy of consideration. We didn’t really talk much about 3/ 4-inch U-matic video recording, with 300-line or so resolution and really horrible color performance (remember those “plastic faces” that you saw on just about every newscast?) However, U-matic machines were sold as “broadcast” VTRs by several companies and were used by most broadcasters for ENG until something better came along.

A REALISTIC AND UNDERSTANDING FCC

Some of us may remember too the FCC’s crackdown on stations for violating established blanking intervals when U-matic machines began to be deployed in large numbers as the ENG movement took off in the 1970s. (It wasn’t exactly “broadcast quality” according to FCC regs, but there were few viewer complaints).

After handing out a lot of “pink slips,” the Commission finally backed off, saying “we are persuaded that the strict enforcement of our blanking interval standards tends to work a severe hardship on station licenses and, to some extent, deprives the public of some otherwise valuable programming.”

Translated, this meant that “even though you’re supposed to be maintaining ‘broadcast quality’ signals, we’ll look the other way, as it’s more important to get local news video on the air than to quibble about a line or two of vertical blanking or a few microseconds of horizontal.”

It’s true; neither stations nor the Commission caught any flack for airing slightly-less-than “broadcast quality signals.”

In the final part of this two-part series, we’ll look at how new and emerging monitoring technologies have altered the meaning of “broadcast quality” in the 21st century.

James O'Neal is a retired broadcast engineer who worked in that field for some 37 years before joiningRadio World’ssister publication,TV Technology, where he served as technology editor for nearly a decade. He is a regular contributor to both publications, as well as a number of others. He can be reached via TV Technology.