The decision of Brazil’s SBTVD Forum in July to recommend the ATSC 3.0 physical layer was trumpeted by ATSC as a major achievement—an understandable large feather in the cap for the organization that began work on the NextGen TV standard more than a decade ago.

But what does the accomplishment mean to U.S. broadcasters grappling with the myriad of challenges the voluntary transition to 3.0 has created? In other words, why does the SBTVD Forum’s decision matter to us?

I put that question to ATSC president Madeleine Noland and Skip Pizzi, chair of ATSC’s Brazil Implementation Team, recently. Noland enumerated three reasons. Pizzi agreed and offered a few more details.

First, the recommendation comes after the SBTVD Forum conducted “rigorous testing,” in Noland’s words. The Forum’s decision to recommend ATSC 3.0 over all other OTA broadcast physical layers —including the newer Advanced ISDB-T—should instill confidence in U.S. broadcasters. “If you are wondering whether you are using the very best standard in the world, you are,” she said.

Second, strength in numbers: There are 71.5 million TV households in Brazil where OTA TV is big—as many as 85% have a TV that receives broadcasts off air. “The majority watch over-the-air TV as their primary source of television—from 65% to 75% of people,” said Noland.

Those sorts of numbers give chip vendors, set-top box makers and TV manufacturers a big reason to support ATSC 3.0. The greater the market size and product runs, the greater the economies of scale—meaning U.S. consumers will have lower-cost NextGen TV products, and U.S. broadcasters bigger NextGen TV audiences, she said.

Third, Brazilian broadcasters have a head start on their U.S. counterparts when it comes to interactivity, mobile apps and advanced advertising thanks to their experience with the country’s TV 2.5 standard. However, they are not well-versed in datacasting. That sets up a future in which the two can help each other as Brazil deploys TV 3.0 and the U.S. grows its ATSC 3.0 presence.

“There’s going to be a very rich two-way street of information and business development between Brazilian broadcasters and U.S. broadcasters,” said Noland.

Pizzi, who spearheaded the ATSC efforts in Brazil, pointed out that unlike the U.S., Brazil currently only authorizes its educational broadcasters to transmit more than one service per 6MHz channel assignment.

“We think the regulators there may change these rules for TV 3.0, allowing all Brazilian TV broadcasters to provide both multicasting and datacasting for the first time,” he said.

After the interview, I came up with a fourth—but I will be the first to admit it may be wishful thinking.

My reason: Regulatory embarrassment. How embarrassing would it be here if regulators in Brazil take steps, such as modifying the nation’s multicasting and datacasting rule, to make TV 3.0 successful, while U.S. broadcasters continue to wait—more than a year at this point—for the public-private effort to bear fruit in removing obstacles to an ATSC 1.0 shutoff.

Add to that the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS). There’s “great interest” among Brazilian broadcasters and regulators in deploying BPS as a possible ancillary TV 3.0 application, said Pizzi.

How embarrassing will it be if Brazil beats the U.S. to the punch with BPS as a crucial complement/back-up for the Global Positioning System (GPS), especially given the national security and economic implications if there were a loss of accurate time and location data?

Phil Kurz is the Contributing Editor for TV Tech.

“Intelligence is knowing the right answer, but wisdom is asking the right question.” –Author, Unknown.

I have been thinking a lot about Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and media since conducting my interview with Diesel Labs founder and CEO Anjali Midha.

Her company assists M&E enterprises in the use of Generative AI and massive data sets to make better decisions about media content. The specifics will vary from client to client, but in general it’s safe to say that a lot of what the company does is to help media companies improve the likelihood that a specific piece of content will resonate with the public.

In one case, that might mean predicting which film is most likely to succeed so a studio knows where to focus its marketing budget. In another instance, it might mean offering insight on which story concept should actually proceed to production.

One day, her company’s Generative AI and massive data set sifting might even help news directors and assignment editors make some news judgments about which stories to pursue—at least in some instances.

Why not all news decisions? Why not every show to be green-lighted? Why not each marketing decision? Simple, there is a difference between intelligence—even artificial intelligence—and wisdom.

The unique quality humans bring to these and the thousands of other decisions that must be made daily in our industry is wisdom, forged in the kiln of life and professional experience, a broader view of the context in which decisions must be made and an understanding that the broader goals of an organization may dictate a particular choice is selected—even if it seems to be the wrong one on a micro level.

To be completely fair, Midha never posited that her company’s service and use of Generative AI should replace people in the M&E industry. Rather, she was quite clear about Diesel Labs’ offering being a tool to make better decisions, not a replacement for deciders.

Why? Because I suspect that bottling the wisdom factor humans bring to life is elusive and will be for the foreseeable future.

Click on the Image to Enlarge
New broadcast ecosystem
Click on the Image to Enlarge

We are witnessing demographic shifts in the age of linear TV viewers, with millennials and younger consuming more content online, and increasingly mobile; social media outstripping TV as the primary news source; Youtube showing the Champions League and Europa Cup Finals, Twitter streaming the NFL, and Facebook Live. The broadcast industry has gone from seeing social media in particular as having only marginal impact to something far more threatening. This potential threat was neatly encapsulated in a recent Royal Television Society (RTS) event ‘Social media muscles in on TV’ which had Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on the panel. However, the panel members emphasized that they:

• operated distribution platforms, that enabled content makers to publish their content, and were not content makers themselves; and
• already had established partnerships with existing broadcasters, rights and content owners

The implication is that social media may offer more opportunities for content owners or producers rather than threatening their existence.

ERA OF COMPETITION

Traditional linear broadcast

This is not the first time that disruption has caused concerns for linear TV broadcasters. The deregulation of TV in the 1980s and 90s focused on increasing competition through program quotas and licensing more channel capacity.

The most significant impact came from digital thematic channels at the time more TV capacity was seen as heralding an era of competition, greater consumer choice and where Public Service Broadcasters would no longer be relevant. Of course, this did not happen in that way. These new channels needed content—but high-quality, and well produced high-quality content costs money—which most thematic channels operators did not have . The winners from that deregulation were actually the people who were predicted to be the biggest losers —the producer-broadcasters. They were the only ones with the talent, resources and budgets to produce high-quality content. It is only many years later that the successful thematic channels could afford to commission originated content.

The intent was to broaden the market (as shown in the diagram in red) and deliver niche segmentation rather than diminish the existing players.

With hundreds of channels, the thematic genre-based broadcasting model was an effective means of providing more choice. The impact on production was more mixed. Program quotas opened the market for independents and there was a demand for more content but there was not the same increase in budgets, which were stretched further. The ‘atomization’ of production—the ability for smaller new entrants to compete—did increase. This was enabled by lower cost file-based HD cameras, but it did not radically alter the cost or process for making content.

SOCIALISM

So what will be the impact of social media?

The first impact of social media has been to massively increase ‘atomization’ of viewers to the point of ‘hyper-segmentation,’ where it is now affordable to serve segments that are very small. So the first effect may be to generate even more revenue for existing content producers, just as the multi-channel model generated a new wave of revenue in the 80s and 90s. This reinforces the conclusion that the producer-broadcasters are content owners rather than just broadcasters.

But there are threats. This time social media coincides with the dramatic fall in the cost of production of technically high quality content. Whilst smartphones and consumer video cameras may not meet the UHD (or even HD) standards of traditional broadcasters, this is not an issue for social media.

New formats, such as AR, VR and 360 may bypass broadcasters altogether. This enables far greater democratization of the production market and the minimum equipment investment for a production company making high quality content has never been lower, and importantly the route to viewers is no longer bound to broadcasters. But is this good news for production companies? The growth in demand for content on social media may well fuel demand for their services, but the pressure on cost is also likely to increase, and so yet again they face a world of “more for less, please”.

STAYING RELEVANT

For broadcast technology vendors, the market for specialist hardware is only going one way—down. Whilst not yet a ‘meteorite’ moment, it will be essential for traditional broadcast technology vendors to embrace cloud technologies if they want to stay relevant.

We are moving inexorably towards a binary market in ‘broadcasting’—we will have the known high-end world of premium content commissioned by big broadcasters and global OTT providers, where production values remain high and technology innovation will be expected to drive operational and infrastructure costs down.

At the other end, we will have the chaotic and brave new world of atomized markets and production processes—where it’s all about personalization, mobile, on-demand, produced by commoditized tools and systems. For those willing to adapt and embrace the change this is a compelling opportunity.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TV Technology Global. 

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.—As the adoption of IP across broadcast workflows continues and broadcasters realize its value, there are areas within the studio environment—outside broadcast and post production—where it has already made its mark. The main attraction of using IP is that it is ubiquitous, cost-effective and is based on common standards. It is also a mature technology, used by other industries who have already overcome adoption challenges and other issues, which means the broadcast industry can benefit from this experience when it comes to their own adoption.

Jamie Shepperd

For broadcast, IP is already used in a networking sense to transport signals around facilities. It is also used to a smaller degree in distribution, an area that will only increase in the future. But the area where it has really proved itself is in switching and extension—via keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) technology. IP-based high performance KVM removes the limitations of traditional AV equipment and brings real-time, accurate video operation to users. The technology allows operators to switch between machines that are sometimes located a great distance away, from a single workstation using just one keyboard and mouse.

CONTROL ROOMS
In the outside broadcast (OB) arena, traditionally an expensive and equipment intensive endeavour, KVM can be used to bring efficiency, cost-effectiveness and reliability to these mini control rooms. KVM allows operators to easily switch between and manage streams—giving them the ability to efficiently control multiple sources from a single input. The right KVM solution can ensure that this extension and switching of video signals is done without loss of quality or performance.

Moving into the studio control room, KVM allows the physical machines to be located outside of the room, freeing up space and removing the excess heat and noise from the environment. This also has benefits for the computers as they are more often than not rack mounted in a server room that is both temperature controlled, which can extend the lives of the machines, and access controlled for enhanced security. Operators can access the machines required by using their keyboard and mouse and due to the high performance of the KVM solution, there is no loss of quality or latency when working on that content.

In addition, switching is crucial, especially in a live environment with the editor being able to move effortlessly between shots and content to create a smooth flow. When using a standard IP network to deliver KVM solutions, the reliability of the network is crucial. For pixel-perfect operation, as would be needed in an area such as post production, 1GbE networking is required, however, even with 10Mbps remote keyboard and mouse control can still be achieved.

POST PRODUCTION
Beyond the gallery in the post production suite, KVM makes the working environment more comfortable by extending the machines to a server room. Again, just as in the gallery environment, the server room can be access controlled, which means there’s an added security layer because only operators and staff with the right credentials are able to gain access. USB access on the desk-based KVM receiver can also be controlled and monitored providing greater security assurance.

KVM also allows the creation of an edit suite based on specific customer requirements by enabling different clients to seamlessly switch between different pre-sets and resources. Editing suites can be easily configured with little effort, increasing the uptime of each room with no need for technical staff applying patches or making changes.

IP-based KVM is an excellent proof point for the wider adoption of IP throughout the broadcast workflow. It is a cost-effective technology that delivers a good return on investment and delivers benefits to operators and broadcasters from the OB truck and studio environment all the way through to the post suite.