Digital TV Technology Trends and Internet Convergence Farncombe Consulting Group Barry Flynn, Principal Consultant June 2009 – Digimedia 2009, Prague

© Copyright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009

Digital TV Technology Trends andInternet ConvergenceFarncombe Consulting GroupBarry Flynn, Principal ConsultantJune 2009 – Digimedia 2009, Prague

2© Coypright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009

Combination of different enablers and drivers is changing traditional DTV landscape

DIGITAL TV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Broadband return-path

Increased storage

Increased performance

More permanent storage as hard drives become cheaper More semi-permanent storage as Flash memory becomes cheaper

Increased broadband penetration driving hybridisation with traditional DVB-T, DVB-S Increased penetration of IPTV Increased penetration of DOCSIS on digital cable

More powerful chipsets as processing-power becomes cheaper More memory as RAM etc becomes cheaper

IP everywhere Video encapsulated in IP because more efficient

SDTV→ HDTV Enabled by increased performance, migration from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, DVB-S to DVB-S2 Driven by consumer take-up of HD-Ready flat-screens (Driven by DVD/games console quality versus over-compressed SD??)


Consumers expect more flexibility in content consumption in general and video in particular

IN PARALLEL, CHANGING CONSUMER TASTES

Expectation of ‘free’ content Experience of Internet music and availability of pirated video leading to expectation that

some premium video content should be ‘free’ at point of consumption

Linear → Non-linear consumption

Portability/mobility of devices Mobile phones, MP3 players/iPods, portable games consoles – all encourage requirement for

new devices able to deliver portable/mobile video content (although this may be a weaker trend than many have assumed)

In part because of Internet, but also because of increased penetration of PVRs, consumers increasingly understand/accustomed to/expect non-linear video consumption

Portability/mobility of content

STB no longer a dummy device used to decode digital video → in addition to integrating PVR, expectation that STB will enable them to get access to personal content stored on PC and other devices, including photos and videos, and their favourite content from the Internet

Video on the Internet As broadband penetration increases, consumers increasingly accustomed to consuming video

on the ‘open’ Internet, and via new CE devices with Internet connectivity


What happens when you marry these two sets of trends together?

TV/INTERNET CONVERGENCE?

TV TECHNOLOGY

ENABLERS ?

Confidential and Proprietary

CONSUMER DRIVERS

OVER-THE-TOP (OTT) VIDEO

+ ‘TRADITIONAL’

DTV


3

1 OVERVIEW OF THE FARNCOMBE GROUP

DIGITAL TV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

CHALLENGES OF DTV/OTT CONVERGENCE

2

AGENDA


HYBRIDISING DTV WITH OTT VIDEO: STB PERFORMANCE

STBS are more powerful today than they used to be, but…. Today’s STBs typically decode video with:

– dedicated hardware– limited range of “frozen” standards such as MPEG-2/

MPEG-4 A wide range of OTT video formats that generally demand:

– software-based decoding, and– higher level of processing-power than most STBs can deliver (even

today, after much progress)

This problem can be solved, but …. Requires spending much more per box This makes deployment prohibitive

Today’s STBs are still not powerful enough


HYBRIDISING DTV WITH OTT VIDEO: ARCHITECTURE

OTT video services change rapidly/are frequently upgraded Media players, Internet browsers used for OTT video playback frequently

upgraded Similar issues arise with Internet technologies such as DRM and HTML

A more fundamental difficulty: marrying a stable technology environment (DTV) with a highly dynamic one (the Internet)

Issue not so much technical as economic Even if engineers could adapt STBs to upgrade dynamically (like PCs), PCs

have scale – 1bn+ now installed around globe (Gartner, 2008) Vast majority are interoperable through use of Windows OS PC software developers can spread costs of codec/player/browser/plug-in

software development across large number of new PCs installed/yr Plus receive occasional upgrade fees from installed base This is not the case with STBs!


THE PROBLEM WITH STB ARCHITECTURESTBs do not enjoy economies of scale that PCs do, because DTV is highly fragmented

Interactive TV providers have tried over last 20 years to make ‘middleware’ platform-agnostic, e.g. using a Java ‘virtual machine’ (as in DVB-MHP)

But MHP generally acknowledged to have been a failure

MHP implementations have in practice been

– stripped-down and customised

– only nominally independent of platforms

ApplicationsHTML JAVA MHEG5 FLASH

Applications Manager

Middleware ServicesOS + Drivers

Hardware

CANetwork Provider Special Services

Source: Farncombe Consulting Group

Pay-TV providers generally use proprietary combinations of hardware and software tailored to their own needs/territorial standards


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Responses to PC/STB dilemma lie along a continuum, clustered at either end

Accept that STBs will never

be like PCs?

Demand that STBs be PCs by

any other name?OR


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Neither extreme of continuum offers satisfactory solution


be like PCs?

OTT decoding confined to a restricted range of

video types

Consumer not offered full range of OTT services

available over the Internet

Customers who expect full range of Web video

services may rebel against “walled-garden”

approach


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Neither extreme of continuum offers satisfactory solution


any other name?

Technical solution problematic: PC

architecture unlike STB’s

Implied power consumption levels run

risk of breaching new EU rules on ‘eco-STBs’

Even if possible for STB to migrate to PC

universal/flexible architecture, cost of ‘STB-

PCs’ prohibitive


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Connected TVs present an intermediate solution

‘Connected TVs’ with

limited HTML browser or

‘widget’


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?But limited services and potential non-upgradeability problematic

‘Connected TVs’ with limited

HTML browser or ‘widget’

Technologies not standard/complete,

upgradeable only if TV makers willing to pay

‘Widget’ does not offer PC/Internet functionality,

potential lack of upgrades implies limited

services

Risk of consumer hostility because ‘connected TV’ experience just another

‘walled garden’


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Responses to PC/STB dilemma lie along a continuum, clustered at either end


be like PCs?


any other name?OR


WHAT IS THE ANSWER?Rejecting PC/STB dilemma by using headend may lead to scalability problems

Traditional DTV

Transcoder

Set-top Box

MPEG

Headend Consumers

Traditional DTV codecs

Video, Audio

MPEG-4/MPEG-2 + OTT codecsStandard MPEG-4/MPEG-2 chipset

OTT video

Place transcoders at network headend Can convert Web video standards in real-time into (narrow) range of

formats supported by STB Solves issue of making STBs dynamically upgradeable But introduces additional, expensive infrastructure which might prove

difficult to scale


CONCLUSIONS

Clearly, the digital TV industry is at a turning-point:– Consumer expectations are changing– Customers with broadband are creating home networks,

leading to demand for OTT video (to the TV and PC) and to content-sharing between the TV and PC

– Video-capable devices are all being connected to IP/broadband

This represents a major challenge to both operators and equipment-providers

Properly managing CPE strategy is the key to success

(FARNCOMBE CAN HELP YOU WITH THIS!)

© Copyright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009

INTRODUCTION

For further information, please contact:

Barry FlynnPrincipal ConsultantFarncombe Consulting Group

E-mail: [email protected]: +44 1256 844161Mob: +44 7720 566585www.farncombe.eu

Thank you!


BBC IPLAYER AND VIRGIN MEDIAAn example of OTT viewing on the TV screen

Virgin Media, which offers the BBC OTT iPlayer service to its VOD cable homes, has reported that its cable network accounted for around a third of all BBC iPlayer views in May 2008

But the Virgin cable platform has a significantly smaller universe than the BBC’s online one

– Around 44% of Virgin’s 3.5m TV customers were regularly watching on-demand content at that time (1.5m)

– But the number of regular online iPlayer users was around 6m, on Farncombe estimates

This would mean viewers on the TV-based platform were each responsible for at least twice as many iPlayer views last May as those on the PC/online one

Documents

Digital TV Technology Trends and Internet Convergence Farncombe Consulting Group Barry Flynn, Principal Consultant June 2009 – Digimedia 2009, Prague