Compression: Technology, Need Continue to Grow - Page 2 of 4

Making the Transition

While there are concrete reasons and obvious benefits for companies that make the transition to the latest compression technology, not many are doing it all at once, as many have made considerable investment in their current infrastructures. This means the suppliers have to offer equipment that can work with MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 at the same time. "It’s more than just compression. What we are seeing is the importance of having the products at the edge. It allows customers to take the AVC HD signal off satellite and transcode it to MPEG-2 to deliver into the existing infrastructure," says Braydon. "Our existing customers have such a big deployment of MPEG-2 set-top boxes and cannot jump easily to AVC anytime soon, so we still need to do delivery of MPEG-2 to their customers. HBO is trying to maximize use of their satellite transponders. Then when the signal is received at the cable headends it has to be delivered as MPEG-2. That’s where our transcoding [integrated receiver decoders] have played an important role."

The market expects SD channels to become extinct, but no one has a good idea on when this will happen, so until that day, technology providers need to make sure the equipment can work in all formats. "We are talking to customers who are going all HD but still need SD at receive locations, so they need to downconvert and create SD channels from HD channels," says Hobbs. "Everybody on the distribution side wants to move to an all-HD distribution platform, but the receive equipment has to handle HD and recreate SD, and we believe that will be true for many years to come. We are beginning to reach the point that if broadcasters want to add one or two HD channels they can find the capacity to do that. They maybe even can squeeze that out of existing platforms, but if broadcasters want to add many more, they generally have to go to an MPEG-4 platform. When HBO announced they were launching HD channels they talked about a total of 26, half at the end of 2007. The 13 new HD channels would take a significant amount of bandwidth in MPEG-2, so they really needed an efficient compression system to handle that, so they went with MPEG-4."

The deployment of HD has not yet met industry expectations, but officials across the board remain sure that adoption of the technology along the distribution chain will increase dramatically within the next few years. "We are starting to see quite a bit of talk about 1080p and 1080p60," says Braydon. "Some of the satellite players already are delivering 1080p24 content, which is good for movies but not for other uses where you need 1080p60. The compression technology is virtually there today. The major holdup in getting 1080p60 is the infrastructure. You need all these cameras and encoders. It’s a big, long, wide delivery chain. I see some niche players delivering this in the next year, but it will be quite a while before 1080p60 becomes mainstream.

The investments made by cable players in MPEG-2 infrastructure could give IPTV providers an advantage in terms of efficient use of bandwidth, as the new players are able to adopt the new technology more quickly, says Braydon. "The cable players have been slow to deploy AVC set-top boxes. It’s just a function of how quickly the MPEG-2 boxes will reach the end of life, and they have a significant life," he says. "The IPTV players are greenfields and have deployed AVC straight out of the box. There is no legacy to deal with. The can take advantage of the AVC capacity and that allows them to maximize their use of infrastructure. They need this to compete with the cable players and deliver multiple streams simultaneously. They can deliver multiple services as well as Internet, and the low bit rates of AVC technology is allowing them to do that. The cable players originally thought the IPTV players were not much of a threat, but it’s turning out to be a threat, and the cable players are taking notice."