Distributing Rich Media Is Not Like HDTV Broadcasting
Delivering or distributing rich media is far different from broadcasting DTV and HDTV, because TV is typically one-way, while rich media is often two-way and interactive. "TV distribution is full-time," says Skimmons. "Rich media can have heavy requirements during the workday that fall off at night. TV distribution has channels dedicated to a transponder that may not involve active management. Rich media, on the other hand, can involve platforms and bandwidth with a number of customers whose time and use have to be coordinated and supported," says Skimmons.
In addition, quality assurance in TV distribution focuses primarily on satellite availability in terms of transponder power and bandwidth, whereas distribution of rich media content typically involves an end-to-end service level agreements that specify quality and performance across the network, according to Skimmons. Satellite resources will vary depending on the number of sites and quality of service requirements. "Satellite network operators need to proactively monitor traffic and adjust the requested bandwidth of their customers to efficiently meet the increased needs of rich media," he says. "Committed information rates need to be developed and understood at the start of network implementation and adjusted based on traffic flows. Also, there is a greater need to apply [quality of service], or application prioritization capabilities, to customer traffic."
Global satellite coverage and advanced IP hubs are essential for delivering rich media, says Skimmons. Skynet offers both. "Rich media requires highly robust and secure networks. Skynet has the customer support capabilities and encryption methods to meet the security and support needs of our customers around the world," he says. "Skynet provides [service level agreements] and [quality of service] metrics based on customer requirements that cost-effectively support and optimize the delivery of rich media content."
Satellite IP-based networks offer powerful advantages in providing a flexible, robust and interactive platform; consumer-oriented broadcast networks such as DTV or HDTV have completely different requirements, according to Ramaswami. Among other things, enterprises demand a high degree of control over all facets of their media distribution networks. "Because of the influence on shoppers, for example, a wrong or improperly timed message or poor image quality can result in an unintended negative experience. In addition, the enterprise may use the same private media network for internal applications, such as staff training and business TV," he says. "There are advantages to satellite delivery of media rich content: ubiquity and the multicast/broadcast nature of the technology. These attributes enable satellite to uniformly deliver high-quality content cost-effectively, continent-wide, independent of distance."
If anything, rich media is going to become even richer with time - higher resolution, more colorful and increasingly multidimensional - resulting in ever larger files and a greater dependency on compression, which is absolutely necessary to make the economics of rich media work, according to Scott Calder, president and CEO of Utah-based Mainstream Data Inc. "The other edge of the compression sword is that losses of relatively small amounts of data result in useless files. This has necessitated some of the more robust error correction coding that Mainstream employs, as well as hybrid distribution architectures whereby damaged or missing data blocks can be recovered using the terrestrial IP infrastructure," he says.
One of Mainstream's clients is Technicolor Digital Cinema, which uses Mainstream's technology for delivery of digital cinema products to movie theaters across North America. "We are currently distributing very large (multi-gigabyte) high-quality video files as an essential part of Technicolor's Skyarc digital satellite network to theaters. The files we send today include movie trailers and pre-show advertising, and we expect to begin transmitting feature films shortly," says Calder.
For NTN Buzztime Inc.'s 4000-site network of restaurants and bars, Mainstream delivers a combination of feature video and advertising as well as system metadata to control and schedule local playback of that content. In addition, approximately 2,000 of the NTN sites use two-way VSATs to facilitate IP connectivity for credit card verification, communication of point-of-service information, interactive distance learning and Internet connectivity.
Mainstream Data has been distribution technology agnostic since its founding and currently builds at least as many terrestrial and hybrid systems as satellite-only networks. Mainstream has also seen the demand for bandwidth - a proxy for increasingly rich media content - growing at a rate of at least 50 percent per year, for the last 20 years, according to Calder. "And we are smart enough not to bet against history; the growth will absolutely continue," he says. "We see the hybrid satellite-Internetwork as the optimal distribution modality of the future."
Rich Media Gains Momentum
Because satellite service providers can now offer one-stop, turnkey managed services, including the total network infrastructure plus in-store equipment such as plasma screens, applications software, installation and maintenance, Ramaswami sees plenty of opportunities ahead. HNS network operations centers can host customer ads or business-related content on high-performance, redundant servers, operating with sophisticated software that allows for directing selected files to selected sites on a pre-programmed basis. "Of course, there is a high degree of network security, including multiple levels of encryption and other safeguards. The overall architecture of satellite delivery is highly robust, secure and lends itself to a single, managed [service level agreements]. HNS, for example offers a comprehensive, fully managed private media network service that assumes responsibility for end-to-end operation, ranging from content ingest/formatting to control of the remote displays, all centrally controlled," says Ramaswami. "The enterprise can then focus on the messaging and application aspects of rich media, rather than the operational aspects."
Among the areas of improvement that Ramaswami and others point to, the need for improved algorithms that can more efficiently integrate rich media with lower rate data and IP traffic. Making rich media and interactive services more responsive through further refinements in the use of IP spoofing over satellite and the local caching of content, while at the same time, ensuring that evolving video technology, such as high-quality encoding and compression, is quickly integrated into network operations, are also key areas of concern.
The process is by no means complete, while the enthusiasm for rich media keeps building.
Peter Brown is Via Satellite's senior Multimedia and Homeland Security editor.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
