Webcasting as a replacement for traditional broadcasting (was Re: Wackie 'ol Friday)

I was at an incentive auction discussion earlier in the week where it
was suggested that the broadcasters see a rosy future with ATSC
beaming to mobile, but there is still work to be done.

They might wish, after many years there has been little take up of the
various systems created to do this (we've spent quite some time working
on the standards). Nobody wanted to pay for it to be in handsets, other
features were seen as more important uses of the space/power.

The next try is LTE Broadcast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMBMS

brandon

I was at an incentive auction discussion earlier in the week where it
was suggested that the broadcasters see a rosy future with ATSC
beaming to mobile, but there is still work to be done.

They might wish, after many years there has been little take up of the
various systems created to do this (we've spent quite some time working
on the standards). Nobody wanted to pay for it to be in handsets, other
features were seen as more important uses of the space/power.

The next try is LTE Broadcast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMBMS

Without going into painful detail on the policy, technology or
economics, i really don't see EMBMS being widely deployed and
successful

Not to say some folks won't try to make pigs fly. Vendors make a lot
of money at the "pigs flying" BU.

I do imagine the invisible hand of tariffs guiding users to better use
broadcast TV and Radio for live events.

CB

Japan has been doing this exact thing for close to 10 years.. Why is it hard to do? Buffer the video 30 seconds or use a codec that doesn't blow? I use my phone via "4G"and stream media constantly. If you take a look at Charlie Ergen's behavior lately, there won't need to be a lte tv.. Lightsquared is about to be murdered for breaking the Gps and dish will take over as largest provider in the US. Now taking bets.

Japan has been doing this exact thing for close to 10 years.. Why is it hard

Japan has been doing what exactly? Can you cite it? I am pretty sure
by "exact thing" you do not mean EMBMS.

to do? Buffer the video 30 seconds or use a codec that doesn't blow? I use
my phone via "4G"and stream media constantly. If you take a look at Charlie

Yes, and by "streaming", you mean downloading discrete video chunks
with http. That is the state of the industry today video over unicast
TCP / HTTP. It is not EMBMS

A very large percentage of mobile data traffic today is video via HTTP
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-520862.html

I do not know of any EMBMS deployments.

CB

Isn't it a shame that the fix was in when ATSC was locked as 8VSB, instead
of the much easier to receive while mobile COFDM... which would have cost
broadcasters more because it's average transmit power is higher?

So anything that costs broadcasters more to do to serve mobile users, I'm
fine with, as long as they don't try to charge us for it.

Cheers,
-- jra

The view from my side, as both a broadcaster and a consumer of both
broadcast and 'webcast' content:

From what I've been led to understand in my time in broadcast*, the

decision wasn't made because of power costs but because they (the Grand
Alliance and the FCC) believed that 8VSB would work better over the US both
due to terrain and propagation differences and due to our markets of
television transmitters and need to place co-channel (same frequency)
transmitters relatively nearby with minimal interference. Some argue that
(C)OFDM would have been a better choice even taking those things into
account. Which should have been chosen based on what criteria is a long
discussion in and of itself but we've got 8VSB (at least for now).

As for the mobile thing, I don't know if anyone had thought that far
ahead. It seems silly now since I had a 2" rear-projection portable NTSC
TV that was made in the mid-to-late 1980s (Sony Watchman) and now they are
trying to 'solve' the mobile delivery 'problem'. ATSC M/H adds a lot of
error correction as well as 'training data' to make the M/H stream 'easy'
to detect and decode, even with Doppler and multipath effects (see ATSC
A/153 part 2 for detail) - this reduces the data rate available for the
'main' (A/53) data significantly and does not create nearly as much
available for the M/H (A/153) data. This sounds even sillier when you
realize that ATSC standard A/49, first published in 1993, was a "Ghost
Canceling Reference Signal for NTSC" (ghosting on NTSC is a symptom of
multipath).

As for 'webcasting' replacing RF broadcasting, I think we're a ways out if
it will even ever happen in the general case yet alone every case. RF
broadcast is very efficient, as previously mentioned. As a broadcaster, I
push 19.393 Mbps of content 'into the air' for everyone around to receive
at once. As a consumer, I have four tuners attached to what amounts to a
few pieces of wire and I can receive roughly 80 Mbit of non-blocking data
'through the air'. My ISP provides me a downlink speed of roughly 10
Mbps. If I were in a larger market, I'd be able to receive even more data
(non-blocking with more tuners or blocking from my POV if I didn't have
enough tuners for every channel); even if the ISP provided downlink speeds
scaled up similarly, there would be much more data available 'through the
air'. The people who live near me have the opportunity to receive that
same 80 Mbit of data without any transit costs.
Can CDNs replace some of what is now broadcast? Likely. By reducing data
rates (with better compression technologies as well as simply compressing
more) and providing content that viewers want, they could (Netflix and
others are already doing this with some content). There is, of course, a
lingering societal question about "shared viewing experiences" for shows
having set delivery schedules by broadcast. Live content and local
content, however, will still be (in my opinion) best served by RF broadcast
for some time to come due to both the inherent efficiencies in the system
and the ease of localization for end-users.

* The ATSC Digital Television Standard (A/53) was developed, documented,
and formalized from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s (A/53 Part 1,
Annex A describes the history). I wasn't working in television until 2000
or so and I wasn't doing television broadcast-related work until 2008.

- Eric

Eric Adler
Broadcast Engineer

Qualcomm is working on adding "broadcast" capabilities to LTE (this was
from recent at a conference (Telecom Summit in Toronto), so I suspect
they would implement as multicast).

Right now, there is negative incentive for large ISPs to deploy
multicasting on their ISP service because the large ISPs are also legacy
TV distributors (aka: cable TV) and that business is highly profitable
and they aren't about to help lower cost competitors eat into their
cable TV business.

However, once internet distribution realy takes off, you'll find the
motivation to deploy multicasting will grow because ISPs will want to
cut their costs (and that may also be the big incentive to really move
to IPv6).

But when you think about it, the only time multicast becomes useful is
for live broadcasts (sports, sometimes news). For the rest, the world is
moving to on-demand viewing where multicast does not provide any advantage.

And something to consider: while legacy TV is on /24/365, there is not
enough programming to fill all the time, hence the many reruns. Same
with infotainment networks like CNN who reruns their stories multiple
times per hour throughout the day.

In an on demand world, the bandwidth will be relative to the amount of
content actually being produced, not the number of hours per day. If you
have already seen a CNN reprt on its web site, you're not going to watch
it again 5 times during the day.

But if you are watching CNN on linear TV, you have to keep watching just
in case there is something new that is shown.

I predict big changes in viewing habits. And this would have
implications on how your guys architect your networks.

What used to be TV Networks with stations in every city is likely to
become cache servers distributed in every city. (some would call them
CDNs :slight_smile:

Eric Adler wrote:

The view from my side, as both a broadcaster and a consumer of both
broadcast and 'webcast' content:
[snip]

Thank you Eric...your comments are very much appreciated.
--Michael

From: "Eric Adler" <eaptech@gmail.com>

The view from my side, as both a broadcaster and a consumer of both
broadcast and 'webcast' content:

My own comments were, and are, from the outside, following along
cause I'll have to deal with it after they make the choices.

From what I've been led to understand in my time in broadcast*, the
decision wasn't made because of power costs but because they (the Grand
Alliance and the FCC) believed that 8VSB would work better over the US
both due to terrain and propagation differences and due to our markets of
television transmitters and need to place co-channel (same frequency)
transmitters relatively nearby with minimal interference.

Indeed.

The impression I acquired at the time was that that was the publicly promulgated
reason, but the real one was that the people who had to pay the power
bills were putting their foot down.

                                                          Some argue
the (C)OFDM would have been a better choice even taking those things into
account. Which should have been chosen based on what criteria is a
long discussion in and of itself but we've got 8VSB (at least for now).

As for the mobile thing, I don't know if anyone had thought that far
ahead.

Yup. There was a substantial amount of screaming from the engineering
community, *precisely on this point*: 8VSB was *substantially* harder to
receive, enough so that it wouldn't be practical to receive it mobil-ly at
all, while COFDM wasn't bad at on on mobile receivers.

As has been the case in nearly every such argument I can remember in the
last 40 years, the engineers lost to the money men, and now all we can
do is say "I toldja so". But they were, in fact, told so. TTBOMK.

        It seems silly now since I had a 2" rear-projection portable NTSC
TV that was made in the mid-to-late 1980s (Sony Watchman) and now they
are trying to 'solve' the mobile delivery 'problem'. ATSC M/H adds a lot
of error correction as well as 'training data' to make the M/H stream
'easy' to detect and decode, even with Doppler and multipath effects (see
ATSC A/153 part 2 for detail) - this reduces the data rate available for
the 'main' (A/53) data significantly and does not create nearly as much
available for the M/H (A/153) data. This sounds even sillier when you
realize that ATSC standard A/49, first published in 1993, was a "Ghost
Canceling Reference Signal for NTSC" (ghosting on NTSC is a symptom of
multipath).

Yeah.

As for 'webcasting' replacing RF broadcasting, I think we're a ways out if
it will even ever happen in the general case yet alone every case. RF
broadcast is very efficient, as previously mentioned. As a broadcaster, I
push 19.393 Mbps of content 'into the air' for everyone around to receive
at once. As a consumer, I have four tuners attached to what amounts to
a few pieces of wire and I can receive roughly 80 Mbit of non-blocking
data 'through the air'. My ISP provides me a downlink speed of roughly 10
Mbps. If I were in a larger market, I'd be able to receive even more
data (non-blocking with more tuners or blocking from my POV if I didn't
have enough tuners for every channel); even if the ISP provided downlink
speeds scaled up similarly, there would be much more data available 'through
the air'. The people who live near me have the opportunity to receive that
same 80 Mbit of data without any transit costs.

Yupperoni.

Can CDNs replace some of what is now broadcast? Likely. By reducing data
rates (with better compression technologies as well as simply compressing
more) and providing content that viewers want, they could (Netflix and
others are already doing this with some content). There is, of course,
a lingering societal question about "shared viewing experiences" for
shows having set delivery schedules by broadcast.

And, quite aside from broadcast networks protecting the ad revenues
of their contracted affiliates -- the primary reason for most of the
(from an engineering standpoint) stupidity surrounding the intersection
of broadcasting and new technology -- social networking is beginning
to drive this aspect, to the point where the Golden Globes stopped
tape-delaying the west coast broadcast so those viewers didn't get
spoiled on twitter.

                                                   Live content and local
content, however, will still be (in my opinion) best served by RF broadcast
for some time to come due to both the inherent efficiencies in the
system and the ease of localization for end-users.

You bet.

* The ATSC Digital Television Standard (A/53) was developed, documented,
and formalized from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s (A/53 Part 1,
Annex A describes the history). I wasn't working in television until
2000 or so and I wasn't doing television broadcast-related work until 2008.

My production history started in 1983, though with a few years exception,
I didn't have much direct connection with the transport; I was merely an
(informed) observer.

Thanks for your views, Eric.

Cheers,
-- jra

Jay Ashworth wrote:
sniip

And, quite aside from broadcast networks protecting the ad revenues
of their contracted affiliates -- the primary reason for most of the
(from an engineering standpoint) stupidity surrounding the intersection
of broadcasting and new technology -- social networking is beginning
to drive this aspect, to the point where the Golden Globes stopped
tape-delaying the west coast broadcast so those viewers didn't get
spoiled on twitter.
Thanks for your views, Eric.

Cheers,
-- jra

The Sportsbar I deal with has purchased every one of the Ultimate Fighting Championships PPV events (161).
Now, after UFC's deal with FOX, the prelims for any fight on FUEL are only shown on...FACEBOOK.

Bad Craziness as Hunter Thompson would have said.

Thanks for everyone's comments.
--Michael

This is very interesting and insightful.

While the broadcasting would seem more efficient (and cheaper in many respect) than webcasting for the live content, the former can't quite serve multiple devices with varying form-factors with the same efficiency. The latter can. Isn't that a key differentiation?

Cheers,
Rajiv