Compression: Technology, Need Continue to Grow - Page 3 of 4

Non-Traditional Drivers

Along with traditional broadcasting, compression technologies are enabling growth in other areas where delivery of time sensitive information is crucial such as: newsgathering, emergency response and assessment, military, and telemedicine as well as any application for which video is delivered over low-data-rate satellite connections and where last-mile networks are inferior, says Bob Hildeman, chairman and CEO of Streambox. "The biggest need for compression is in applications that don’t have decent bandwidth. Prime examples are newsgathering, emergency response/assessment or special forces operations," he says. "For each of these applications, video is often streamed from remote areas or areas where networks other than satellite networks are unavailable."

A demand for more HD news is driving a new group of users to look at upgrading their compression technology, says Damon Semprebon, director of product management for Comtech TV. "That tends to be MPEG-4 and DVB-S2, with the objective being that it makes the transition easy because they can keep the same satellite plan. If they are running 4-megabit slots in the same slot they used to do MPEG-2 DVB-S SD, they can now do MPEG-4 HD DVB-S2 with fairly comparable quality. This allows them to upgrade amplifiers, dishes, etc. It’s the same truck. This is an early-stage growth area, but clearly everyone is thinking about it and talking about it with the next year being a big growth year."

Another place seeing a lot of interest is multi-camera backhaul, which allows smaller organizations to provide more complete coverage of sports and other live special events, says Semprebon. "Today, for a football game, you might do MPEG-2 DVB-S right around 40 megabits in a full transponder. If you take MPEG-4, you can do 80 megabits on the same transponder, which allows you to do six or seven HD cameras or a few HD cameras and then SD cameras and backhaul the entire sporting event to the facility. You are not rolling out a big production truck, just cameras and a small truck."

Comtech helped a local news station in Denver produce coverage of the Democratic National Convention in August, and the compression technology enabled the station to use three HD cameras and three SD cameras to cover the convention floor and the station’s anchors. Rather than putting a switching facility and backhauling a single channel, Comtech’s technology allowed the station to run all six cameras robotically."

The fundamental driving force throughout the TV industry is cutting the workforce, especially replacing highly trained engineers with technology that can be operated by a single person or even by automation, says Semprebon. "Engineers are expensive, and the movement is to make trucks simpler to operate or remotely operable so you don’t need a satellite engineer, just a cameraman to drive the truck and push two or three buttons. This has great resonance within the broadcasting community, which is looking to trim cost, and the biggest cost is expensive people. People are starting to do this, but it’s a new investment in infrastructure. If you are looking at a new way of doing business you have to redo your facility, but you only have to do it once. Then the economics are there for years."

Scopus also sees a market developing in upgrading satellite newsgathering trucks and other mobile units to handle HD feeds. "Customers like to see HD, but the current bandwidth doesn’t allow it," says Garniek. "The reason is the transition from 16:9 SD, which can be seen on HD screens, and the gradual transition because of customer requirements on one hand and bandwidth constraints on the other hand. The next step is to move to H.264 compression in terms of newsgathering so you can transmit true HD back to the studios on the same kind of limited bandwidth. Growth is a combination of compression and transmission, taking the H.264 stream or MPEG-2 stream and taking advantage of the evolving technology. Instead of 8-bit at H.264, you can now do 6-bit or 5-bit, depending on how compression advances. Another element is transmission. It can be very limited on microwave transmission, but if you utilize an IP backbone you are less constrained and don’t have to wait until compression gets down to 5 megabits. You can stream at 7 over IP.