ENENSYS Archives – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Embracing a Native IP Media Distribution Format as a Next Generation Broadcast Solution

Posted on 4th June 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The shift to IP hasn’t gone unnoticed in the transmission part of the broadcast chain. ATSC 3.0 is a shift to 100% IP delivery over RF and seamless integration with internet-delivered programming. So, too, has DVB seen this change which they describe as a move from thinking of distribution to thinking about a service. Merging broadcast RF delivery with internet delivery is an aspiration not only to merge broadband and broadcast, but to unify what we now see as fragmentation of services.

DVB’s Emily Dubs highlights some of the standards which form this native-IP strategy such as DVB-MABR, DVB-TA and DVB-I all of which have been featured here on The Broadcast Knowledge.

Thomas Wrede from the DVB CM-S group takes a look at the use cases motivating this work. Connected devices are now ubiquitous like smart TVs, phones and tablets and the stats show that viewers want to access both linear and non-linear content on all their devices. Indeed, Thomas outlines some statistics showing that consumption of linear TV remains high. So given this, Richard Lhermitte from ENENSYS explains that they’re interested in solving a problem for customers with low bandwidth broadband. The work in the CM-S group involves satellite rather than terrestrial RF transmission so the solutions use a gateway device. Looking at business-to-business applications Richard envisions feeding 5G cell towers by delivering video services over satellite, feeding wifi routers in schools, public buildings, malls etc. and delivery to aeroplanes, boats and similar.

Delivering to consumers, we see is envisaged as bringing the satellite and/or terrestrial RF into a demodulator then a gateway device which would deliver into a wifi router where it’s delivered alongside broadband. The internet feed can also be used as a return path for DRM and other signalling. Using this method, only one headend is needed for both the OTT and broadcast feeds a change which AWS noted recently brings around cost savings and was what drove several features in AWS MediaConnect. Another similar use case is to do the same but without the return path. This is more difficult but is part of the work being undertaken. Richard also highlights the ability to deliver parts of a programme, say extra languages, via broadband but using broadcast to deliver the main parts that everyone will want access to. Similarly, using MPEG LCEVC or similar scalable codecs, the HD video can be delivered over the air with the UHD enhancement layer delivered over broadband.

Lastly, Jean-Claude Sachot from Broadpeak briefly talks about the work done with Malaysian pay-TV broadcaster Astro SINI who have been working to extend their proposition with successful tests delivering via satellite into wifi hotspots in public places. This works well as not only does it improve Astro’s proposition to the viewers, but it increases their time spent in the locations where they can watch for free over Wi-Fi rather than having to use their mobile minutes. This is a benefit to the businesses working with Astro to provide the service and for them, the added infrastructure is very low cost as this plugs into their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure.

The video concludes with a Q&A which is summarised here and the main slides can be downloaded here

Watch now!
Speakers

	Jean-Claude Sachot Business Development Director, Broadpeak
	Richard Lhermitte CTO, VP Solutions, New Market development ENENSYS
	Thomas Wrede DVB CM-S Chair SES
	Moderator: Emily Dubs Head of Technology, DVB Project

Video: Implementing standards-based Targeted Advertising on broadcast television

Posted on 14th May 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Last month, we featured DVB’s Targeted Advertising solution called DVB-TA. In that article, we saw the motivations to move to targeted advertising and how it was in use in Spain’s Artresmedia. Today’s video follows on from that introduction to DVB-TA with a range of speakers talking about implementation methods, interoperability and benefits to standardisation.

DVB’s Emily Dubs introduces the presenters starting with Nicolas Guyot from ENENSYS who speaks on the subject of the media value chain and TV’s reach. In Europe, the weekly reach of broadcast TV is still high at around 77% meaning the medium has still got strength. In terms of getting targeted ads on there, however, only a subset of devices can be used. In France, 36% of homes have a smart TV. Whilst this is a minority, it still equates to ten million TV sets. We hear about how France TV trialled targeted advertising for HbbTV where they collected consent and data which they used to segment people into four categories. The categories were finance, health, family and weather which they used to place ads in front of the viewer. With a view to scaling this out, the view was that standardisation was important to ensure ad placement was well understood by all equipment as well as measurement metrics.

Angelo Pettazzi from Mediaset makes a case next for standardisation. For Mediaset, moving to Targeted Advertising is a strategic move and mirrors the points made in the first video focusing on the need to keep TV advertising in line with what advertisers are looking for. In short, TA will maintain the relative value of their advertising slots. There are other benefits, however, such as more readily opening up advertising slots to local businesses and SMEs by providing availability of lower-cost slots.

Standards feature heavily for Mediaset. They have 4 million HbbTVs active monthly on their platform which simply wouldn’t have been possible without the HbbTV 2.0 standard in the first place. Using these devices they had previously tried a proprietary TA technology based on HTML5 but they found it didn’t always work well and the switching time could vary. They see the TA spec as a move towards more confidence in products along with the ability to substitute only single ads, a whole contiguous block or multiple substitutions in the same break.

Joe Winograd from Verance talks next about the use of Watermarking for targeted advertising. Advert timing and other signalling are usually carried separately to the media as SCTE-104, -25 or -224. However, there are times when a distribution chain is not yet compatible with this separate signalling. Linear advert substitution is usually done on the device, though, so by embedding this same signalling information within the audio and/or video feeds themselves, the receiving box is able to decode the embedded data and insert the ads as desired. Modifying video/audio data to carry messages is called watermarking and usually refers to the practice of marking a feed to uniquely identify it for the purposes of crime prevention. This method, however, is designed to carry dynamic data and is defined by the ATSC un their standards A/334, A/335 and A/336.

Pascal Jezequel from Harmonic speaks next about Dynamic Ad insertion interoperability. His main point is that if we’re to be inserting ads in a world of linear and OTT and streaming we should have one standard which covers them all. We need a detailed standard that allows precise, frame-accurate timing with smooth transitions. DVB-TA and HbbTV-TA initially focussed only on broadcast but is now being extended to cover streaming services provided over broadband. This interoperability will be a boost for operators and broadcasters.

Last in the video is Unified Streaming’s Rufael Mekuria who briefly explains the work that DVB is doing within the DBB-TA work but also within DVB-DASH. Having DVB involved helps with liaisons which is proving critical in ensuring that SCTE-35 is compatible with DVB-DASH. This work is in progress. Additionally, DVB is working with MPEG on CMAF and DVB is also liaising with DASH-IF.

The panel ends with a Q&A.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Nicolas Guyot Product Manager, ENENSYS Technologies
	Dror Mangel Product Manager, Viaccess-Orca
	Angelo Pettazzi Consultant, Mediaset Group
	Joe Winograd CTO, Verance
	Pascal Jezequel DTV Global Solution Architect, Harmonic
	Rufael Mekuria Head of Reasearch & Stanardisation, Unified Streaming
	Emily Dubs Head of Technology, DVB Project

Video: Making a case for DVB-MABR

Posted on 27th October 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Multicast ABR (mABR) is a way of delivering traditional HTTP-based streams like HLS and DASH over multicast. On a managed telco network, the services are multicast to thousands of homes and only within the home itself does the stream gets converted back unicast HTTP. Devices in the home then access streaming services in exactly the same way as they would Netflix or iPlayer over the internet, but the content is served locally. Streaming is a point-to-point service so each device takes its own stream. If you have 3 devices in the home watching a service, you’ll be sending 3 streams out to them. With mABR, the core network only ever sees one stream to the home and the linear scaling is done internally. Not only does this help remove peaks in traffic, but it significantly reduces the load on the upstream networks, the origin servers and smooths out the bandwidth use.

This video from DVB lays out the business cases which are enabled by mABR. mABR has approved the specification which is now going for standardisation within ETSI. It’s already gained some traction with deployments in the field, so this talk looks at what the projects that drive the continued growth in mABR may look like.

Williams Tovar starts first by making the case for OTT over satellite. With OTT services continuing to take viewing time away from traditional broadcast services, satellite providers are working to ensure they retain relevance and offer value. Delivering these OTT services is, thus, clearly beneficial, but why would you want to? On top of the mABR benefits briefly outlined above, this business case recognises that not everyone is served by a good internet connection. Distributing OTT by satellite can provide high bitrate, OTT experiences to areas with bad broadband and could also be an efficient way to deliver to large public places such as hotels and ships.

Julian Lemotheux from Orange presents a business case for next-generation IPTV. The idea here is to bring down the cost of STBs by replacing CA security with DRM and replacing the chipset with a cheaper one which is less specialised. As DASH and HLS streaming are cpu-based tasks and well understood, general, mass-produced chipsets can be used which are cheaper and removing CA removes some hardware from the box. Also to be considered is that the OTT ecosystem is continually seeing innovation so delivering services in the same format allows providers to keep their offerings up to date without custom development in the IPTV software stack.

Xavier Leclercq from Broadpeak looks, next, at Scaling ABR Delivery. This business case is a consideration of what the ultimate situation will be regarding MPEG2 TSes and ABR. Why don’t we provide all services as Netflix-style ABR streams? One reason is that the scale is enormous with one connection per device, CDNs and national networks would still not be able to cope. Another is that the QoS for MPEG2 transport streams is very good and, whilst it is possible to have bad reception, there is little else that causes interruption to the stream.

mABR can address both of these challenges. By delivering one stream to each home and having the local gateway do the scaling, mass delivery of streamed content becomes both predictable and practical. Whilst there is still a lot of bandwidth involved, the predictable load on the CDNs is much more controlled and with lower peaks, the CDN cost is reduced as this is normally based on the maximum throughput. mABR can also be delivered with a higher QoS than public internet traffic which allows it to benefit from better reliability which could move it in the realm of the traditional transport-stream based serviced. Xavier explains that if you put the gateway within a TV, you are able to deliver a set-top-box-less service whilst if you want to address all devices in you home, you can provide a separate gateway.

Before the video finishes with a Q&A session, Williams delivers the business case for Backhauling over Satellite for CDNs and IP backhaul for 5G Networks. The use case for both has similarities. The CDN backhauling example looks at using satellite to efficiently deliver directly to CDN PoPs in hard to reach areas which may have limited internet links. The Satellite could deliver a high bandwidth set of streams to many PoPs. A similar issue presents itself as there is so much bandwidth available, there is a concern about getting enough into the transmitter. Whether by satellite or IP Multicast, mABR could be used for CDN backhauling to 5G networks delivering into a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) cache. A further benefit in doing this is avoiding issues with CDN and core network scalability where, again, keeping the individual requests and streams away from the CDN and the network is a big benefit.

Watch now!
Download the slides from this video
Speakers

	Williams Tovar Soultion Pre-sales manager, ENENSYS Technologies
	Julien Lemotheux Standardisation Expert, Orange Labs
	Xavier Leclercq VP Business Development, Broadpeak
	Moderator: Christophe Berdinat Chairman CM-I MABR, DVB Innovation and Standardisation Manager, ENENSYS

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