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Pre-NAB 2018 thoughts and questions

Although my first NAB was over 15 years ago, I’m still keen to get out to Vegas this year - OK not for Vegas the place, which gives me the creeps, but to catch up with the people, the trends and the tech. It remains one of my favorite conferences despite its gargantuan scale. Here are some of the questions I'll be looking to shed light on this year.

UHD

When I can get time off the Ultra HD Forum booth that I’ll be busy on, I’ll be looking into how the first generation of mature UHD technologies are doing. The debate as to whether 4K resolution was needed for a true UHD experience was all the rage just after the trailblazers were deploying UHD around 2014. Now that the paint has dried on the static metadata-based HDR solutions (HDR10/PQ and HLG), the battle seems over. Proponents of 1080p/HDR are grinning and claim they have won this round: we are already seeing some such content appearing on Netflix… For me the jury is still out, but I’ll be nosing around on people’s true intentions here.

But what’s next for UHD? I’ll be gaging the readiness of the next set of technologies, and as my friend Ian Nock says, how they might be deployed without breaking what’s already there. In the dynamic metadata space, Dolby Vision is already out there. Does there have to be a winner and a loser with HDR10+ or is there room in the market for both? As an audiophile I’ll be keen to find Next Gen Audio demos and here again fathom whether the existence of several standards (Dolby Atmos, MPEG-H, DTS:X, …) is holding things back.

Encoding

If one of my friends from the encoding space is kind enough to explain to me what's going on, I'll try to catch up on the encoding wars which have confused me with too many competing stakeholders to understand on my own. HEVC was supposed to be represent smooth transition from H264, now I don't know who to believe. The moving parts range from imploding patent pools, to Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft without forgetting the streaming people like DASH, H26x, disruptive start-ups, etc. Thierry, help! Decode it for me, tell me what's going on.

VR360

Having just published an eBook on VR360, that doesn’t predict 2018 is the year of lift-off but does explain why it’s the year to get involved, I’ll be eagerly looking how much we got right and if the hype has finally hit bottom, so we can now start to start to do business … I’ll do my best to get to the VR-IF masterclass on day 1 and if I'm lucky get an update from Rob Koenen.

Streaming Delay

I’ve been commissioned to do some work on OTT streaming delay, under the assumption that operators really care about reducing It. I’ve been very surprised that in my investigations so far, this is not the case. Sure, they’d like to reduce delay, but it’s low down their priority list. It’s got me wondering, as OTT streaming becomes more prevalent if the “norm” might, quite a few years from now become a 10-20s delay, where whatever broadcast is left, gets delayed so as to be synced with the crowd … probably science fiction but I’ll test out the idea.

Driven by Data, at last?

When I joined France Telecom (now Orange) in 2001, I remember a meeting where it was explained to me that our unique access to amazing data on subscribers and what they did, meant we would become the kings of data driven UX, data-driven decision making and data-driven just about everything … That vision of analytics was spot on, just too early and focussed on the wrong kind of operator. The Silicon Valley giants now dominate the world with Data and AI (which we didn’t see coming back then). So, have we truly entered the data era where other operators can get some of the pie? The recent Facebook/election scandals seem to say so. I’ll be looking around at vendors in the ecosystem are on the holy data grail. Is the market taking off for real or is it still vendor fantasy?

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360 Video eBook – available for download

360 Degrees of Video Opportunity

An Operator Gateway into Virtual Reality

 


Billions of dollars are being invested by the consumer tech giants. SuperData Research projects VR revenue to total almost $30B by 2020—15 times what it was in 2016*.

But how do we cross the chasm to fulfilling the VR360 promise?

How can we deliver premium video experiences?


In this eBook discover the VR360 opportunity, including:

  • The immersive promise and premium VR360
  • Monetizing the premium content experience —VR360 use cases and examples of operators experimenting with VR360
  • What hurdles are holding VR360 back?
  • The VR360 workflow elements for delivering premium video experiences, plus new techniques to address latency, bandwidth, processing and storage
  • The VO and Harmonic end-to-end solution

Authored by Ben Schwarz, sponsored by Harmonic Inc. and Viacces-Orca.

*The Virtual Consumer, 2017. SuperData Research.

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Presentation: Delivering live Video 360 in 2018

Virtual Reality is here to stay, in gaming at least. But what about video 360?

We're at top of the hype cycle, so you'll hear more and more slack, resist!

  • No money yet, just another living room 3D, gloom, gloom , gloom, …
  • Users want a pro to point the camera, …
  • Current V360 quality (resolution) is still sub-par

... but it's improving so fast and with a great UX already available in the labs it can be with users within a year or two.

However much bandwidth it ends up needing (10-1000Mbps), live V360 will leverage the best networks.

Video 360 will add something, be-it small or large, to operators' product portfolio and differentiation.

Even if it were to stay on the sidelines, VR and Video 360 will affect how we think of user experience, and may well influence content production.

The video tiling technique offers a scalable solution to delivering video 360 at a fraction of the bandwidth. Download this presentation to learn more, and stay tuned for the eBook due before EOY 2017.

Please complete the Email feild to view or download the presentation by Ben Schwarz on Live Video 360 delivery from November 2017

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My 10 does-the-emperor-have-any-clothes-on questions for IBC17

To get the most out of my annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam, I’ve sat down and had think about the big questions I don't believe we have answers on in late 2017.

I came up with 10, which only represent what I've been working on not necessarily the complete picture. Clearly we need to take ourselves less seriously sometimes. I for one would never trust an expert who has straightforward answers to all these questions, because the honest truth is that we don't know.

From new to old topics:

1.   What will mainstream HDR look like in 2018?

Continue reading My 10 does-the-emperor-have-any-clothes-on questions for IBC17