Broadcast television in an IP world

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Once ISPs became able to provide sufficient speeds to end users, video
over the internet became a thing.

This week, the FCC approved the ATSC3 standard.

What if instead of moving to ATSC3, TV stations that broadcast OTA
became OTT instead? Could the Internet handle the load?

Since TV stations that are OTA are "local", wouldn't this create an
instant CDN service for networks such as CBS/ABC/NBS/FOX/PBS since these
networks have local presence and can feed ISPs locally?

And while a small ISP serving Plattsburg NY would have no problem
peering with the WPTZ server in Plattsburg, would the big guys like
Comcast/Verizon be amenable to peering with TV stations in small markets?

Some of them would also be selling transit to the TV station (for
instance, to serve its Canadian audience, WPTZ would need transit to go
outside of Comcast/Frontier and reach canadian IP networks).

But a local TV station whose footprint is served by the local ISPs may
not need any transit.

The PAY TV servives, if HBO is any indication will also move OTT, but be
served in the more traditional way, with a central feed of content going
to a CDN which has presence that is local to large ISPs (or inside ISPs).

We the traditional BDU (canada) MVPD (USA) is abandonned by the public
and TV stations , PAY TV services and SVOD services such as Netflix are
all on the Internet, would this represent a huge change in load, or
just incremental growth, especially if local TV stations are served locally?

Just curious to see if the current OTA and Cable distribution models
will/could morph into IP based services, eliminating the "cable TV" service.

2

Bit of background, I used to work for a mid-market commercial TV station in Illinois, both in IT/Broadcast Engineering and eventually in production.

I'm not to the point in my career where I can speak intelligently about content delivery, but from a technology perspective this does sound like a solved problem. That said, I don't think this is a technology problem.

The biggest issue we ran into at my former employer with new tech and new ideas was both with budget and the corporate bureaucracy. Without significant buy-in -- both corporate politics-wise and financially -- from the station parent company, something like this would be cost-prohibitive for a non-large station to undertake by themselves, if they were even allowed to. Generally speaking, where station IT was concerned we were left to fend for ourselves, from aging, non-virtualized Server 2003 domain controllers in 2012. This wasn't much better on the broadcast engineering side, as I remember our broadcast engineers running a new digital subchannel for a while off of an aging A/V router from the 90's/early aughts.

I don't recall offhand exact numbers on circuit speeds or anything, but the best label I can use to describe both our WAN connectivity to our parent org and standard internet circuits would be "woefully insufficient." Definitely easier to overcome these days, as plenty of broadcast providers in the cable/satellite TV arena co-located with us a tad, which might offer an option to piggy back off of any connectivity they might have, but I'd argue a station out in the boonies might run into issues with sufficient upload speeds to serve content with. Cost of content storage is likely much less of a concern, depending on how much content you actually store and for how long, but it's also something worth considering.

I suppose the biggest takeaway is that, like I mentioned, in the States you aren't just dealing with the big networks. You're also dealing with the corporate hegemony of the various station owners. While networks can force a lot of standards, policies, and procedures on the broadcast groups/stations out there as part of the contract that allows them to carry network content, the cost of implementing something will generally fall on the owners and the stations.

That's not even mentioning regulatory requirements like EAS and other public obligations that come with running an OTA TV transmitter state-side.

Casey Schoonover
Network Engineer II
Duluth Trading Company
170 Countryside Dr
Belleville, WI 53508
cschoonover@duluthtrading.com

3

Once ISPs became able to provide sufficient speeds to end users, video
over the internet became a thing.

This week, the FCC approved the ATSC3 standard.

What if instead of moving to ATSC3, TV stations that broadcast OTA
became OTT instead? Could the Internet handle the load?

Much live programming could be done without significant additional burden if the community could agree on multicast delivery standards.

With YouTube's commercial offering on top of Netflix, Hulu, etc. and cable IPTV we're probably pretty close to the tipping point now.

Since TV stations that are OTA are "local", wouldn't this create an
instant CDN service for networks such as CBS/ABC/NBS/FOX/PBS since these
networks have local presence and can feed ISPs locally?

And while a small ISP serving Plattsburg NY would have no problem
peering with the WPTZ server in Plattsburg, would the big guys like
Comcast/Verizon be amenable to peering with TV stations in small markets?

This is already the case in many markets. It may not be IP peering, but there have been several recent instances where a broadcast TV transmitter is off the air due to some kind of failure and their cable feed keeps on chugging. Obviously there is some form of connection between the TV station and the cable company that doesn't rely on OTA.

4

> And while a small ISP serving Plattsburg NY would have no problem
> peering with the WPTZ server in Plattsburg, would the big guys like
> Comcast/Verizon be amenable to peering with TV stations in small markets?

This is already the case in many markets. It may not be IP peering, but
there have been several recent instances where a broadcast TV
transmitter is off the air due to some kind of failure and their cable
feed keeps on chugging. Obviously there is some form of connection
between the TV station and the cable company that doesn't rely on OTA.

Hell, even STL links these days are often packet based. (It's often a
lot simpler and cheaper than trying to operate a microwave feed.) So
if you've already done the encoding, the OTA setup is simply one
branch among several possible paths.

-Wayne

5

Have you seen what the OTA guys charge for retrans rights? They don't want to do this, I'd also bet their end game is to stop offering their feeds OTA in the end. Our retrans is going up 50% starting the 1st of the year which is just insane.

I can also state that one of them specifically mentions alternative ways to receive their signals which I can assure you isn't related to quality. We have fiber to 1 OTA broadcaster, but also have to pay to get there since we're not near their studio.

So while everyone is hell bent on blaming the cable companies for pricing, the only ones to blame are the programmers who continue to increase their rates. On top of that OTT is a pain requiring separate apps for every channel, awful buggy apps at that.

Luke Guillory
Vice President – Technology and Innovation

Tel: 985.536.1212
Fax: 985.536.0300
Email: lguillory@reservetele.com

Reserve Telecommunications
100 RTC Dr
Reserve, LA 70084

6

Fair point. Coming from Canada, OTA stations, because are freely
available, can't charge distributors (BDUs (MVPDs in USA) so their
revenues are purely from advertising.

So that changes the equation. If going OTT allows them to shut down
their OTA transmitters (and not pay for conversion to ATSC3) it could
result in lower operating costs.

In canada, BDU subsriptions are down and if the trend continues, NOT
making programming available on the net means you miss the boat.

In the USA, perhaps OTA stations could go to subscription model pn
Internet to replace the MVPDs revenues and end retrans disputes.?

7

In the US certain channels have the *must Carry* designation. Which puts a retransmitter in a poor negotiating position, essentially the provider can charge whatever they want.

8

We have 1 channel out of 15 or so that's still a must carry, the others dropped that once they knew cable ops needed them so they went with the "well charge instead of requiring you to carry us" route.

Luke Guillory
Vice President – Technology and Innovation

Tel: 985.536.1212
Fax: 985.536.0300
Email: lguillory@reservetele.com

Reserve Telecommunications
100 RTC Dr
Reserve, LA 70084

9

This use to be the case.

While it might lower OPX that surely won't result in lower retrans, will just be more profit for them.

We're down as well on video subs, this is 99% due to rising prices.

This is where it's heading for sure, in the end it will cost more as well since each will be charging more than the per sub rates we're getting charge. They'll have to in order to keep revenue the same.

When ESPN offers an OTT product I have no doubt it will be near the $20 per month, for 5 channels or so?

Luke Guillory
Vice President – Technology and Innovation

Tel: 985.536.1212
Fax: 985.536.0300
Email: lguillory@reservetele.com

Reserve Telecommunications
100 RTC Dr
Reserve, LA 70084

10

Besides Netflix, does anyone else offer CDN boxes for their services?

I'm also guessing that most content won't benefit from multicast to homes
too much?

I can see where multicast benefits sports and news (and probably catching
commercials for people). But in a world where I'm more than happy to pay
Amazon $25-40 a show/season to avoid commercials, I'm guessing
live/broadcast TV will get even less popular (I get news via YouTube - so
that's not even live for me anymore).

11

Google, Akamai and others.

12

Much live programming could be done without significant additional burden
if the community could agree on multicast delivery standards.

Does multicast have any future? Netflix, YouTube, et al does not use it.
People want instant replay and a catalogue to select from. Except for sport
events, live TV has no advantage so why even try to optimize for it?

13

Because local OTA channels are probably most of what people want live outside of sporting events.

14

This is where local TV stations are different as they are already
present in the market they serve. They can connect locally, transit-free
to the local ISPs.

(and buy transit only for those outside of the local ISP's footprint).

Of course, when CBS sells rights to a local TV station based on its
antenna footprint, going OTT changes that as it allows a Burlington VT
station to serve people in California in another affiliate's exclusive
territory for that network.

Which is why the TV stations might require "working" geolocation to be
able to serve a Comcast customer in Burlington VT but not a Comcast
customer in Wilmington Delaware (assuming COmcast serves both for sake
of discussion).

Without this, we'll see CBS offer a nationwide SVOD service (oh wait,
they already do), and leave local TV station to have web based
newscasts since other programming will be through CBS All Access (which,
being a national service uses CDN services to get near to people).

Either way, I see TV content moving to the web which means the numebvr
of hours currently spent watching via OTA or Cable are moving to IP
networks.

An IPTV service such as Bell's already pushes that "cable TV" content
through its last mile IP infrastructure, so the main difference is loss
of multicast when programming originates outside the "BDU/MVPD"
environment. But with more and more people watching TV "on demand", the
advantages of multicast dimisnish (except for sports) because mroe a d
more programmin is watched withg unicast, at which point no different
from Netflix, Youtube etc.

15

It does for delivering live content. Local programming, news, sports, C-SPAN, etc. Canned program content such as TV series, not so much. On-demand not at all.

16

I can think of a few other good uses (semi- to non-topical):

1. Multi-party video conferencing. Audio is applicable, too, but the bandwidth requirements are low enough you can just unicast it all.

2. Platform upgrades for extremely popular consumer devices. Think a rolling multicast stream at a few bitrates for e.g. the latest iOS, Windows, flagship Android handset, etc. upgrades. This might or might not work better than CDN'ing the bejeezus out of it depending on your network topology.

17

Does multicast have any future?

Nope. We have a couple of gigs of multicast traffic on our network. Its pretty easy. You can't pay me enough to troubleshoot multicast between different ISP's.

Multicast network look different from the Internet. One would have to change. On top of that any packet loss is a show stopper. It has no facility for retransmission. Multicast is good because its not much load on the routers. Even thinking about pushing it over WiFi makes me jump right to a server with a TCP stack or similar.

So those NetFlix servers seem about as good a long term strategy as any. Save the loud fans. Video is just another application.

18

For live streaming video, you mask the loss and keep on chugging just like you do with VoIP. The same thing happens with OTA with signal fading or a burst of RF noise or interference. The OTA broadcast transmitter doesn't retransmit when one or more receivers lose data.

If the endgame is to replace OTA live TV with a packet based solution, IMHO there's a place for multicast. It's basically the same model as OTA, one transmitter and many receivers.

19

Under must-carry a station cannot charge the cable companies a fee. But the
station can waive must-carry and then can negotiate fees. The cable company
can decline to carry under those circumstances, if they don't want to pay
the fee.

20

It does for delivering live content. Local programming, news, sports,
C-SPAN, etc. Canned program content such as TV series, not so much.
On-demand not at all.

Our network carries a lot of streaming content. We have no multicast
because we offer no TV. But the customers will occasionally stream live TV
directly from broadcasters.

Why would I implement multicast? Does it even save me any money when the
network has to be dimensioned to handle a day with no major live event with
everyone just doing the usual streaming? A person watching live TV is
usually not watching on demand at the same time.

The same argument goes for the broadcasters. They need a CDN that will
handle peak load at a time were most are watching on demand. The same CDN
server can handle the times were most viewers are watching live TV.

Right now we probably have TV broadcasters that only do live TV. I do not
see that as being the future. And in any case I would not front the bill
for them by implementing multicast in my network just so they can save a
little on the CDN.