The rapid evolution of the media industry means broadcasters and content producers are striving to deliver more content, rich viewing experiences, stunning images and access across all screens. As a result, we have a situation whereas in some instances, broadcasters’ revenues are growing more slowly than their costs. Against this background, the big question facing all broadcasters today is how to create more first-class content more efficiently.

Timescales to market are also compressing; from conception to launch for new services is now weeks or a few months, compared to the years it would have taken in the past. Services today must also evolve very rapidly to keep pace with their core audience demands and need to be able to spin-down as fast as they are spun up.

On an operational level, a vast amount of content is now being produced, ingested and managed. Entrenched models and traditional broadcast architectures can no longer be relied on to take on the challenges of this new mediascape that requires high levels of scalability and adaptability.

LOOKING BEYOND VIRTUALIZATION

The media industry needs technology and commercial models that can support highly nimble operations and today, vendors must deliver platforms that can be deployed at speed and rapidly evolved. Looking ahead, broadcasters are going to need to be more agile than they’ve ever been, delivering services that can stay ahead of the shifting needs of the consumers.

The move from CAPEX to OPEX and workflows virtualized on commodity hardware are steps in the right direction, giving broadcasters the flexibility to add and pay for additional capability and capacity as needed. 

A cloud-native, or microservices, approach is the next logical evolution to the virtualized software-based approach, enabling broadcasters to make the necessary step change. Microservices separate processes into smaller, more autonomous functions, allowing multiple services to be combined to deliver specific applications in an ultra-agile way.

Not only do microservices add greater degrees of inherent flexibility to existing IT infrastructure, they deliver the inherent nimbleness and flexibility needed to shape successful media businesses for the future. This approach also opens up new ways to build, maintain and operate services and provides the capacity to scale these services—up or down—in a very compressed time frame. 

LIVE HARNESSES THE TRUE POWER OF MICROSERVICES

While new technologies always create a buzz, the challenge for the broadcast industry is not to get sidetracked into replicating old workflows or business models; shoehorning an existing approach into a new paradigm means you miss all the benefits that new technology brings. It’s critical to look at where these technologies can make the biggest impact. For example, while playout is technically the easiest thing to implement in a cloud environment, it’s typically a 24/7 service, running with very high utilization of the underlying infrastructure. This doesn’t make the best use of the nimbleness that microservices deliver. 

Live production—and particularly live sports—is where the power of microservices has the potential to really come into its own. Furthermore, they are willing to pay for this type of content—PWC estimates that over 90% of sports fans subscribe to services for access to live games. 

Rapidly spinning up temporary, subscription services like a pay-per-view event or targeted, seasonal sports packages—all New England Patriots games for instance—fast and cost effectively is hugely valuable to broadcasters. Leveraging microservices, capabilities can be fired up just before a game then be turned off after the final post-game analysis wraps up. In short, you are only paying while the infrastructure is in use.

As the technology matures, we can expect microservices to be central to delivering transitory, live services, where very “bursty” capacity is needed. On a technical level, live is undoubtedly more challenging to do due to the time constraints, but it’s certainly solvable and we’ll see solutions hitting the market this year. 

THE ROLE OF VENDORS

The onus is now on the vendor community to develop applications that use microservices, rather than taking our existing products and reshaping them for the changing market. While broadcasters have a real need for solutions that underpin new business and operational models, our customers tell us they want technology adoption to be largely hidden from them. The applications and operation should be familiar and work as they need to.  

As customers face real-time pressure and need to rapidly change business models, we, as technology providers, need to create technology to facilitate that for them. Just as broadcasters will have to rapidly conceptualize and deliver new services, vendors have to increase innovation velocity, delivering fast iterations of microservices architectures, that help customers to keep running successful, agile businesses.

The internet has really shaken up the broadcast industry, shaping the way consumers access content and throwing down the gauntlet to traditional broadcast models. While this has presented a challenge for the vendor community, at the same time it’s provided the solution. Here at Grass Valley, we can now put our unique intellectual property and expertise in media and live production on internet platforms. Furthermore, we can now leverage technologies that allow us to exploit our intellectual properties in a way that just wasn’t possible before. 

We’re seeing long-held beliefs about what a broadcast facility looks like, or how content is created and delivered, really opening the industry up to new possibilities. Our customers need partners that can understand the shifting dynamic and deliver solutions—regardless of technology—that allow them to adapt and scale at speed.

Neil Maycock is senior vice president, strategic marketing and playout for Grass Valley.

WASHINGTON—Netflix and some of its longtime subscribers are coming to a parting of the ways as the streaming service has seen some big changes this year in regards to price and the content it offers.

A report from the Kill the Cable Bill blog, which partnered with a third-party data analytics firm to complete its survey, details how 2019 has been a challenging year for the streaming giant, which has seen slowing subscriber growth and isn’t retaining its U.S. customers at its usual rate.

Of those surveyed that had recently canceled Netflix, 63% had been Netflix subscribers for more than a year. The next closest were subscribers that had been signed up for 7-12 months (14%). Those who had been signed up for six months or less were under 10% each, including those who had signed up for a one-month free trial (7%). And of those who canceled, 25% said they do not plan to subscribe to Netflix again; 58% were unsure and 17% said they would.

The two most cited reasons for canceling Netflix among respondents were price increases and a lack of interesting content. Netflix issued a price increase to its services in May, raising its standard offering from $10.99 to $12.99 and its premium plan, which offers 4K streaming, from $13.99 to $15.99. Nearly half (49.4%) cited these prices increases as the key factor in their decision to cancel.

Lack of interesting content was second at 42%. Some of this may stem from Netflix losing the rights to popular content like “Friends,” “The Office” and many Disney properties as new streaming services from WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal and Disney have or prepare to enter the market. In fact, other streaming services was the third most popular response for leaving at 40%.

Disney+ and Apple TV+ are the two latest streaming services to enter the market and both with a lower price than Netflix—$6.99 and $4.99, respectively. Reports on the first few days of Disney+ put the new streamer at more than 10 million subscribers.

Kill the Cable Bill points out the Netflix’s international subscriber growth is still strong, helping to bring its total subscriber count to 158 million across 190 countries.

“[Netflix] cannot afford to ignore the increased domestic churn it’s facing domestically as more competitors with appealing, lower-priced offerings attempt to win over customers in the coming quarters,” the blog reads.

However, despite the numbers from Kill the Cable Bill’s report, multiple outlets have reported that Netflix is not being increasingly impacted by the launch of Disney+ in terms of its subscriber loss or stock value.

Audiences are gobbling up TV shows at staggering speeds. That’s thanks to the ever-multiplying number of screens in their homes, the explosive growth of OTT video services and the proliferation of devices that allow on-demand access to streaming content. These viewers—so hungry for content that they’ve earned the moniker “binge-watchers”—aren’t letting up in their desire for fresh shows. As a result, the pressure is heavy on TV production houses to churn out blockbuster-caliber series.

The pace of original content is already light-years ahead of where it was even a decade ago. In 2018, FX networks put the number of original, scripted series across the industry at nearly 500. That number has climbed every year for nearly a decade, and will likely continue to balloon with the entrance of Disney, Apple and WarnerMedia into the streaming game.

If this growth stalls or plateaus, it’s not because budgets are shrinking. In 2018, Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content, according to Variety, and is projected to spend $15 billion this year. If there is a limiting factor in scaling original content output to match audiences’ appetites, it’s the outdated technology and processes used by production houses. Complex and costly on-premise servers, bottlenecks in the editing workflow and global distribution challenges strain budgets and create long gaps between seasons. These challenges will inevitably ratchet up the pressure from both audiences and networks.

However, a solution exists—if production houses are willing to re-think the way they define studios and the processes that drive them. The future of production is a “studio in the cloud,” where many of the traditional post-production activities exist in a decentralized, streamlined environment. Resource-heavy tasks like editing, color grading, sound sweetening and mixing can all begin immediately, and in some cases concurrently, with cloud-based studios that allow for immediate uploading of footage. Further, cloud-based platforms can speed up the packaging of final products for distribution, streamlining processes like region-specific versioning and adding subtitles. The ultimate result is a significant reduction in server costs, improved download/upload speeds and a greatly reduced timeline to global distribution.

THE ADVANTAGES OF A CLOUD-BASED STUDIO

Today’s TV blockbusters have taken on a life of their own. Take "Game of Thrones." No matter how divided opinions may have been on the final season, there’s no denying the series’ pursuit of technical perfection (except for that rogue coffee cup). However, the labor of love from the show’s creators and crew often riled die-hard fans—there was a span of 18 months between seasons 7 and 8. The production was so ambitious that it warranted a behind-the-scenes documentary created with more than 950 hours of on-set footage. Much of this inside look revealed the pain points faced by modern production houses, as well as opportunities for cloud-based studios to help bring "Game of Thrones"-size epics to the screen more efficiently.

● Streamlined workflows

Cloud-based studios are the “breaker of chains” for any professional who works in an editing bay. Cloud platforms can serve up footage from the set to post-production teams around the world, allowing tasks to be completed simultaneously and eliminating the need for many complicated and expensive on-premise servers. Systems like these can also make the handoff of content between teams much more seamless, giving everyone involved peace of mind that they are working on the most current versions of the footage.

● Reduction in cost

Storing and sharing the massive amount of footage needed to produce modern TV series isn’t just a pain point in the workflow process—it also creates a strain on budget. Migrating footage and workflows to the cloud can significantly reduce technical costs in post-production. Because the cloud allows work to be done anywhere in the world, travel and logistics costs for editing shrink, while the talent pool grows—globally accessible footage means top professionals from every continent can become part of the team without having to be on set.

HOW CLOUD-NATIVE TECHNOLOGIES ARE REDUCING PRODUCTION COSTS

While a completely cloud-based production operation is still being realized, technology solutions are already reducing the time between a director declaring a wrap and a viewer tapping “play” on a new episode.

Component-based workflows through innovative packaging formats like the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) are helping accelerate distribution timelines. IMF helps speed up global distribution by reducing the number of files needed to compile region-specific releases, prepare existing content for a larger release and optimize releases for multiple channel partners.

IMF also eliminates the need for an individual media file for each channel or geographic location—it allows for a single master file package to be adapted to a variety of needs. Within this package exists the audio, subtitles, packaging data and more—combined as a composition playlist (CPL) that allows content distributors to make changes to individual components without altering the master file. This means fewer errors and more flexible versioning at a lower cost.

More players in the streaming space means the never-ending hunger for original content will give a competitive advantage to the production houses who can capitalize on quick, quality turnaround of original content. Production houses that rethink their concept of the studio, and invest in technology to make this vision a reality, will reduce costs and speed the time of their content to release. A “studio in the cloud” unlocks a future where post-production is less focused on logistics and IT and more time pursuing perfection in the creative elements of work.

Dan Goman is the CEO of Ownzones.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C.

Short-form content app and VOD service Flix Snip has announced a major distribution partnership with multinational telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Flix Snip’s premium, short form content is now available to Huawei mobile phone users across Spain and Italy as part of the Huawei Video SVOD service. This announcement builds upon the momentum of Flix Snip’s recent launch in Russia on the MegaFon and Rostelecom telecoms services.Huawei Video delivers a wide selection of regularly updated international, European, and local content. Subscribers in Spain and Italy can now access Flix Snip’s diverse catalogue of high-quality, short format premium entertainment content, which has a running time of 20 minutes or less. Flix Snip offers a range of genres including: drama, animation, children, family, comedy, science-fiction and horror. Compiled from top productions and filmmakers around the globe, content is localized and dubbed in Spanish and Italian.“Flix Snip is a perfect fit for our Huawei Video service because it lets subscribers access high-quality, short-form content conveniently on the go,” says Jaime Gonzalo, VP of Huawei Mobile Services in Europe,. “Our users want compelling short movies and series that they can dip in and out of. The Flix Snip service provides a huge range of content in a number of genres that meet the viewing requirements of our expanding mobile video platform.”Sebastien Perioche, Founder & CEO, Flix Snip adds, “The way in which we consume content has changed dramatically. Viewers are more often watching video on their mobile devices and they want to access curated, premium content that’s congruent with their busy lifestyles at  the touch of a finger. We are delighted to partner with Huawei and we look forward to announcing more content distribution deals around the world in the near future.”

New York City, NY - November 28, 2018 - Global content marketplace Pond5 today released the latest evolution of its industry-leading AI-powered Visual Search for video, with the addition of Color Similarity to its growing suite of proprietary Visual Search tools. The new update adds the ability to search for video based on the color palette of selected imagery, in addition to the composition of the image.

As media professionals increasingly face the challenge of putting visual concepts into words to find content that matches the vision for their projects, Visual Search simplifies the process by taking words out of the equation. Users can search based on the composition or color palette of other video clips from the Pond5 collection; by uploading any video or image from their own computer; or even by taking a photo from their mobile device to search based on what they see in real time.

“Content creators know what they want when they see it, but it is not always possible to express it in a handful of words. Visual Search tools like Color Similarity help them find what they need more intuitively, and evolving these tools is a natural next step for Pond5’s AI-powered search capabilities,” said Jason Teichman, Pond5 CEO. “Additionally, we pride ourselves on having the most comprehensive collection of royalty-free media assets, and our data tells us that people using our Visual Search tools are four times more likely to quickly find the exact content they’re looking for.”

As part of the update, Pond5 Visual Search tools now include two options: Composition Search, which was released in April at NAB 2018, and new Color Search. Using Composition Search, Pond5 produces search results based on the actual objects in the video being used to perform a search. Color Search provides an alternative path, producing results that are visually similar based on the color palette of the video frame.

Stock footage is increasingly serving the dual purposes of creative inspiration and complementing original footage in projects at every level, and the addition of color search to Pond5’s discovery toolset is crucial to helping customers find content that will match the look and feel of their projects. Pond5’s powerful Visual Search tools, combined with keyword searches and dozens of other available filters enable customers to narrow their search results down from the tens of thousands to a select few of the highest quality and best fit.

“By investing in this forward-thinking technology, we’re giving Pond5 customers the tools they need to find better content faster, enabling them to work more efficiently and focus on their craft,” said Teichman. “As the world becomes more visual, our customers can remain assured that Pond5 tools are keeping pace with emerging technologies.”

To learn more about Pond5’s Visual Search tools or to schedule a one-on-one briefing with an AI search expert, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com to schedule a briefing.

About Pond5

Pond5 is the world’s largest, most vibrant video-first content marketplace, providing filmmakers, creators, and producers of all kinds with the content, inspiration, and tools they need to improve their projects. As the only content marketplace that meaningfully shares licensing revenue with its contributing artists, Pond5 is driven by a commitment to its passionate and growing global community of more than 60,000 professional visual and audio creators, providing a platform where their creative work can flourish, and helping them to make a sustainable living. With groundbreaking features like the visual search for video and integrations into all major video-editing software, Pond5 is innovating daily, making it easier to find and use the content that creatives need to bring their vision to life. Pond5 is a venture-backed company funded by Accel Partners and Stripes Group with offices in New York, Dublin, Prague, London, and LA.

For more information, please visit https://www.pond5.com.

Press Contact:

Megan Linebarger

Zazil Media Group

(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

OTTAWA—A year ago, the CBS TV network announced that it was producing the all-new “Star Trek: Discovery” (aka, in Star Trek parlance, “DIS”) series to anchor its pay-per-view “CBS All Access” streaming media website. “The new program will be the first original series developed specifically for U.S. audiences for CBS All Access,” CBS said at the time.

The fact that the network is producing a broadcast-quality TV series for online pay-per-distribution speaks to how seriously CBS sees streaming as an important future money-maker for broadcasters. At the same time, taking the plunge into streaming as a revenue source puts the network in the crosshairs of pirates who want to steal its content for free. This is why CBS, Netflix and all other online providers who charge for their content are relying more than ever on DRM (Digital Right Management) to protect their revenue streams.

‘TO BOLDLY GO’
In the world of catch-up TV and online on-demand services, unrestricted redistribution of content matters significantly. Online services need to limit all forms of piracy for two reasons—to protect their bottom line and to honor commitments made when licensing copyrighted content for online distribution. If subscribers can view this content without paying, content producers such as CBS make less money. Too much piracy, and they might not sell enough views to recoup their costs; let alone make a profit.

Hence, by deciding to take DIS to CBS All Access, the network has truly decided “to boldly go” where no U.S. broadcaster has gone before. That is why the network will need the very best DRM protection money can buy.

Steve Christian, senior vice president of marketing for Verimatrix Simply put, DRM is the arsenal of tools online (and cable/satellite TV) content distributors use to protect their moneymaking content. The DRM arsenal encompasses everything from conditional access password protection and public/private key encryption (where the paying customer purchases the private key to unlock the public key’s encryption of the content) to “digital watermarking” where the content’s origination point data is hidden within the feed; and open to deciphering by DRM analysts examining pirated content.

“Because DRM is designed to protect content producers and service providers from digital theft, it falls under what we refer to as ‘revenue security’,” said Steve Christian, senior vice president of marketing for Verimatrix, a San Diego-based developer of revenue security systems such as Video Content Authority System (VCAS) Ultra, which protects 4K/UHD pay streams in compliance with MovieLabs’ standards. “The key is to stay one step ahead of pirates by using a mix of software, hardware and digital watermarking tools, such as those built into VCAS Ultra to deter piracy attempts and to quickly identify and shut down those that are successful.”

WHAC-A-MOLE
The problem for online content providers is that DRM is just their side of a never-ending dance with piracy; one in which the “bad guys” are always finding new ways to game the system as existing loopholes are closed.

“Anti-piracy is a continuous arms race,” said Avni Rambhia, Digital Transformation Industry Principal with the growth consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “As content distribution becomes more unmanaged and on-demand viewing grows, there are so many more ways for hackers to steal content and divert revenue. Consequently, service providers are constantly having to refresh, expand and adapt their DRM solutions to protect their content and revenue streams.”

Unfortunately, hacking is just one of many ways that content producers can have their content stolen. Password-sharing, where one person buys an online subscription and then shares their password around with numerous non-paying friends and family, is another.

A third, faster growing issue is the theft of online service credentials and their sale on the black market, allowing en masse piracy without collusion from the subscriber. (In July 2016, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that password-sharing passwords is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.)

Avni Rambhia, Digital Transformation Industry Principal, Frost & Sullivan There are many other ways for pirates to siphon off premium content, including analog recapture via camcorders, use of stream recorders to capture playback streams, or directly hacking secure clients. “Forensics and traitor tracing play important roles in their own right, as they allow sources of leaked content to be identified and shut down—often in real time,” Rambhia said. “At the same time, new forms of revenue theft are arising, such as embedding of legitimate streams in counterfeit web pages to divert advertising revenue to the pirate.”

Additional sources of risk to content include intentional theft or inadvertent error by content provider employees, and the relentless pressure of organized piracy outfits whose products include hardware set-top boxes with fully developed user interfaces and massive content libraries. Hackers continue to be motivated by profit, bragging rights, or both, and content providers have their hands full making sure that their shows still earn enough revenue to justify the investment.

In deploying their DRM arsenal to fight these and other threats, “service providers have to walk the fine line between maintaining subscriber satisfaction while also controlling revenues” said Rambhia. “DRM tools can allow service providers to track shared passwords and potentially monetize this through tiered subscriptions that allow a higher number of concurrent streams, or alternatively notify the user that sharing has been detected and offer options for remediation.”

VENDORS PLAY IT SMART
The ever-evolving nature of piracy threats is why DRM software is constantly changing, and why Elemental Technologies and Imagine Communications both take a “black box” approach to incorporating third-party DRM into their playout systems.

“We are agnostic in supporting DRM software in our systems, because new providers are constantly coming to market with newer and better solutions,” said Lionel Bringuier, director of product management for Elemental Technologies in Portland, Ore. “You just never know what new threats are going to emerge and what new DRM solutions will arise to combat them,” added Yuval Fisher, MVPD CTO for Imagine Communications in Dallas. “This is why our playout packages are capable of adding these DRM solutions as they arise.”

Time will tell if CBS All Access will fend off the pirates successfully enough to fairly reap the benefits of “Star Trek: Discovery.” In the real world of online piracy, this threat is far worse than anything the Klingons could pose to Star Trek’s rights holder.

MONTGOMERY, ALA.—Raycom Media and The E.W. Scripps Company are putting their heads together as part of a new partnership to develop new and original programming for their broadcast and digital operations.

The partnership between the companies will see these programs reach 29 percent of U.S. households, including 12 markets in the top 40 DMAs, according to the press release. The two companies are currently moving toward production on multiple projects, with an anticipated launch date of 2017. The companies say they welcome other local broadcasters and/or media companies to join in the venture.

Raycom, Scripps and Cox Media Group have a separate development agreement for syndication of the viral video series “Right This Minute.” 

BURLINGTON, MASS. – Volicon has introduced a new accelerated VOD/OTT content generation workflow based on the Capture and Share applications for the company’s Observer Media Intelligence Platform. Broadcasters can use these applications to establish efficient content repurposing workflows, with frame accurate closed captioning support that serve both social and digital media platforms, as well as content management systems and online video platforms that support VOD/OTT services.

The Observer Media Intelligence Platform allows broadcasters to capture media in real-time from any source and with any metadata, such as closed captioning. The Capture and Share applications offer three ways to create content to provide a fast and simple edit workflow.

The first is a rapid manual approach, in which the user can review and edit content as it is captured using mark in and mark out controls to generate clips. In semi-automated and fully automated approaches, the platform uses program-related keywords and ad insertion signals to identify and clip all segments of an episode; these clips can then be combined into a single clip for VOD/OTT distribution. The Observer can also clip and push content directly to an edit or MAM system.

Distribution of the finished product is then sped up by the Observer Media Intelligence Platform with single-button publishing profiles to ensure programming is delivered in the appropriate format.

Volicon is a provider of media intelligence, monitoring and compliance logging technology for broadcasters, networks, cable and IPTV operators.

The Groucho Club in London provided an exclusive setting for the debate

LONDON—Sitting down a group of broadcasting experts and asking them to deliver their advice on ultra HD guarantees plenty of passion and some controversy, and yet there was a strong sense of consensus by the end of the session. Chris Forrester moderated the roundtable discussion, hosted by Marquis Media Partners in conjunction with TVBEurope, during which panellists shared their views on 4K/ultra HD, when we might see transmission, and whether over-the-top will be the dominating driver for 4K availability.

The BBC’s Andy Baker summed up the industry challenges, saying: “Today, we have 4KTVs on every retailers shelves but there’s very little 4K content to display on them. The 4K content is being made but it’s certainly not being delivered except by one or two well known OTT suppliers.”

The IABM’s John Ive expressed the view that consumers had very little choice when buying into 4K. “They can choose a size but, as we saw with HDTV when after a while it was very difficult to get a standard definition set, I think the same is happening to 4K.”

The panel agreed that 4K in retail stores was now near ubiquitous, and that the price premium for (so-called) 4K sets was no longer a disincentive. But there was considerable discussion as to the capability of those displays to handle ‘true’ 4K, let alone cope with today’s fast-moving developments in higher frame rates, higher dynamic range and the ‘better pixel’ arguments likely from wider color gamut images.

BT’s Mark Wilson-Dunn said, in his view: “The material I have seen in 4K from the likes of Netflix is less than perfect. The danger for all of us is that people will buy into Netflix and think that’s as good as 4K can be, and it certainly is not. It could really backfire on all of us, given that they are buying panels at a huge rate and those panels really are not ready for what we all know as Ultra HD. And this isn’t helped by the fact that there’s no content out there. The other question that we all recognize is to ask how many of these buyers will be viewing 4K at the optimal viewing distance. There’s also the problem of the current crop of highly fashionable curved sets which, in my view, don’t help matters at all.”

The EBU’s Simon Fell argued that people were already making 4K ‘programming’ from their own smartphones.

“The end results are quite spectacular,” he said. “It is the same with still images. In other words, it’s very easy for consumers to be impressed by 4K displays but I think we are seeing something of an ‘emperor’s new clothes’ in that the display will look good to them, and their neighbors, no matter how close or far they are sitting from the screen. We would argue, of course, that we want improved frame rates and better resolution, but I can tell you the viewer is happy with what’s out there already.”

ITV’s Mark Smith said that the complete content delivery system needs to change.

“There’s storage for a start, than compression, and I can see us ending up with bandwidth for 4K not being that far off from today’s HD. However, while we can all agree that three years from now the technology will have improved, we still need to make that transition,” he said.

BT’s Wilson-Dunn reminded panelists that while agonizing over what might happen, there were broadcasters who had already made the switch. “There is a broadcasters who is running 4K today to a whole nation, and that’s Star TV in India, who started their service on the back of the ICC cricket earlier this year. BT carried the signals from Australia, running for eleven and a half hours a day in 4K and HD across two continents through to their set-top boxes. It can be done right now. We bolted four decoders together and ran the signals over our existing infrastructure. It coped. Add on HEVC and it would have coped even better. We have done football, rugby, golf, and now cricket. I have to say they all require different filming techniques to get the best out of 4K.

“The biggest issue we have, in my view, is that everyone is talking about high dynamic range and wider color gamut, instead of talking about how we can launch 4K and getting on with it. I think we risk confusing the message. The U.S. is having a problem getting over the ‘final mile’ of getting a signal into the home because of technical challenges. Meanwhile, a couple of Indian operators have just gotten on with it. We have to encourage the industry to get on with it otherwise we will all be waiting forever.”

NBC-Universal’s Tim Bertiloi said there was little interest from the U.S.’s main broadcast networks. “It is the usual challenge: where is the money coming from?”

His comments were echoed by Viacom’s Rod Fairweather, and not helped by his company’s focus on kids and music programming. “And even with the high-quality MTV Music Awards, I doubt whether you’ll see much 4K action for some time. We’re not going to lead this revolution.”

Globecast’s Francis Rolland said he expected France’s Canal+ and Orange to be leading the change to 4K, and as far as contribution and distribution services were concerned, Globecast was ready with extra bandwidth.

Asked to say when U.K. services would start, the panel agreed that certainly as far as the U.K. was concerned, within six months consumers would see lots of 4K channels. They unanimously expeted Sky to lead the charge.