Questions Remain
Clearly, progress has been made in content management over satellite, but questions still remain about the products aimed at this market.
Scalability is one issue. As demands increase on centralcasters for more data, more sessions, and faster downloads, one has to wonder where is the ceiling? Granted, advances in data compression, forward error correction and receiver technology continue to occur, but surely there has to be a limit to how much data can be pushed through a certain amount of bandwidth. Where that limit is - or is not - will affect how products are devised and deployed.
A second issue is mobility. Serving content to users with shifting locations adds an extra layer of complexity to centralcasting. One solution is for mobile devices to signal their positions through periodic uplinks; unfortunately, it is an approach that forces centralcasters to track users on a real-time basis.
Maturity is the third issue that concerns content managers. Are today's solutions sufficiently advanced to justify wholesale adoption? Or should content managers take an incremental approach to implementing solutions until they are sure that what is available commercially truly meets all of their needs?
There are no fast and quick answers to these questions because each business has unique dynamics and different needs.
Conclusion
As the demand for centralcast video and data increase, content management will grow in importance for content providers. How well they deal with this issue and how well suppliers devise solutions to help them in their tasks will have a definite impact on their bottom lines.
James Careless is senior contributing writer to Via Satellie magazine.
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