Russell Trafford-Jones, Author at The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Breaking Barriers – How can the TV industry encourage more women into technology jobs?

Posted on 14th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

To mark the launch, today, of a new section of The Broadcast Knowledge highlighting what the industry is doing to promote a better gender balance in the broadcast industry, we have a panel discussion from the RTS about that very topic.

I’ve said it before, and again I implore everyone to take it upon yourself to do just one thing to improve diversity in gender, little or small. The numbers are clear that in technology, there is a large imbalance and, according to Rise director Carrie Wootten, Research shows that “having a more gender balanced structure leads to additional ideas, creativity, business development and crucially income generation.”

With experienced voices, from UK TV, TeenTech, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, NEP Sound engineer Anna Patching and the deputy chair of Women in Film and Television, we hear questions and answers about how companies can find female candidates, and how individuals can advance their careers.

The message is that there are things people throughout a company can do to address gender balance, so watch to find out more.

Watch now!

Speakers

	Chair: Maggie Philbin CEO, Teen Tech
	Sinead Greenaway Chief Technology and Operations Officer, UKTV
	Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Space Scientist, Science Educator & Presenter
	Anna Patching Sound Engineer & STEM ambassador NEP
	Sara Putt Deputy Chair, Women in Film & Television (UK)

Webinar: Talking to the TV: Transforming the viewing experience with voice control

Posted on 13th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Thursday 16th May 2019, 16:00 BST / 11am EDT / 8am PDT

Controlling services by voice is on the rise. Recently we have seen Google move all their Nest hardware control into Google Assistant and the abilities of Alexa and Siri continue to grow. All of these smart speakers and voice-controlled AI assistants have seen rapid adoption in homes, the UK being the biggest adopter with voice assistant devices now used in more than a quarter of all households.

With a shift away from the on-screen EPG and clunky remote controls to a world where any content is a voice command away, who owns the voice interface with the consumer and the vast amount of valuable data it creates? Does this put more power in the hands of the Silicon Valley tech giants as their voice assistants and AI algorithms become a new gatekeeper? And how should content owners respond?

This webinar explores the value of voice control for content, and finds the best strategies for broadcasters and platform operators to develop voice interfaces and maintain control of the user experience.

Register now!

Speakers

	Patrick Byrden Senior Director of Customer Solutions, TiVo
	Ashley Grossman Senior Manager, Personalisation & Discovery, Liberty Global
	Morvarid Kashanipour Head of Product Design, Com Hem

Video: Sub-Second Live Streaming: Changing How Online Audiences Experience Live Events

Posted on 10th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

There are two main modern approaches to low-latency live streaming, one is CMAF which used fragmented MP4s to allow frame by frame delivery of chunks of data. Similar to HLS, this is becoming a common ‘next step’ for companies already using HLS. Keeping the chunk size down reduces latency, but it remains doubtful if sub-second streaming is practical in real world situations.

Steve Miller Jones from Limelight explains the WebRTC solution to this problem. Being a protocol which is streamed from the source to the destination, this is capable of sub-second latency, too, and seems a better fit. Limelight differentiate themselves on offering a scalable WebRTC streaming service with Adaptive Bitrate (ABR). ABR is traditionally not available with WebRTC and Steve Miller Jones uses this as an example of where Limelight is helping this technology achieve its true potential.

Comparing and contrasting Limelight’s solution with HLS and CMAF, we can see the benefit of WebRTC and that it’s equally capable of supporting features like encryption, Geoblocking and the like.

Ultimately, the importance of latency and the scalability you require may be the biggest factor in deciding which way to go with your sub-second live streaming.

Watch now!

Speakers

Steve Miller-Jones
VP Product Strategy,
Limelight Networks

Video: Securing NMOS Apps

Posted on 9th May 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The still-growing NMOS suite of specifications from AMWA defines ways in which your IP network can find and register new devices plugged in to it (e.g. camera, microphone etc.), manage their connections and control them. They fit neatly along side the SMPTE ST 2110 suite of standards which define the way that the essences (video, audio, metadata) are sent over networks intended for professional media.

As such, they are core to a network and as the market for uncompressed media products matures, the attention is on the details such as whether they scale and security.

In this talk, Simon Rankine from BBC R&D starts by explaining the objectives which means looking at the different aspects of security which is split into three; securing data transfer, ensuring data goes to the right place, ensuring only authorised people can act.

TLS, standing for Transport Layer Security, is the same protocol used for secure websites; those which start with https://. It is also referred to by the name of the protocol it replaced, SSL. Given the NMOS APIs are sent over HTTP, TLS is a perfect match for the use case. TLS provides not only the ability to encrypt the connection but also provides the basis for certificate exchange which allows us trust that the data is being sent to the right place. Simon then covers ciphers and TLS versions before talking about certificate management.

This talk was given at the IP Showcase at NAB 2019.

Watch now!

Speaker