We have just reached the tipping point in the migration towards a more IT and more IP-based television infrastructure that will prompt a rapid increase in virtualization of software functions like encoding and transcoding onto shared commodity computing platforms. That is the view of Ian Trow, Senior Director, Emerging Technology & Strategy at Harmonic, who also expects smaller channel owners, plus major broadcasters who are thinking about their smaller channels, to lead the the march towards an all-ABR (adaptive bit rate streaming) future. In this all-ABR world, what we currently think of as ‘traditional’ television, meaning high bit-rate linear broadcast programming, will be streamed using the same headends and infrastructure as multiscreen/OTT services.
Harmonic has been outlining its vision for the future of TV delivery and has encapsulated the idea of all-ABR migration in the term IPTV 2.0. It has been outlining its IPTV 2.0 solution, which is a video delivery framework to underpin a unified broadcast and multiscreen headend for live and on-demand services. Technology components include the Harmonic ProStream with ACE broadcast/multiscreen transcoder, ProMedia Live real-time multiscreen transcoder and ProMedia Origin multiscreen packager and streaming video server.
Harmonic is also working to help customers and other operators migrate their video processing to a more virtualized scenario. Virtualization means separating the software that today runs on dedicated broadcast-centric hardware (like encoder software running in its own chassis) and putting software onto commodity IT processing platforms, like an HP blade server.
That processing resource can be shared by other software and it could be located within the operator facilities or even beyond. As Trow explains, “You make use of a common platform and you collapse the separate platforms into a unified headend where more and more functionality is abstracted into one place.â€
Harmonic and Tata Communications already offer a private cloud-based video transcoding and delivery solution that makes use of Harmonic’s ProMedia file-based transcoding technology. It uses Tata’s network and datacentre infrastructure to deliver multi-format video to broadcasters, for example.
Harmonic provides a whole range of video processing solutions ranging from MPEG-2 to HEVC encoding to multiscreen transcoding, with a familiar product family that includes the Electra broadcast video encoder. The company is creating a migration path for taking the functionality these ‘traditional’ platforms provide into the virtualized headend or into the cloud.
Trow says the broadcast industry has taken the ‘low hanging fruit’ of the IP and IT world and harnessed data-centric infrastructure for routers, switchers and storage, for example. Now the industry is ready for the next step. Obviously this is a migration so will not happen overnight and some video processing will remain on dedicated hardware while some is virtualized. Broadcaster and platform operators will first move services where there is no expectation for one-to-one redundancy, he predicts. Security concerns could determine whether broadcasters allow their best content to be encoded anywhere but on their own premises, for example.
This could mean that the ‘crown jewel’ channels stay on dedicated hardware while others, including ‘long tail’ channels, migrate. After multiscreen channels, Trow expects to see standard definition broadcast channels being encoded on shared computing resources. “People are making business decisions right now about what services they are willing to migrate,†he reveals.
Trow says the abstraction of software from dedicated hardware is driven by Opex savings as well as the desire to reduce Capex. Commonality in operations reduces training and maintenance costs.
In the midst of all this advanced technology, there are some very down-to-earth benefits for operators who harness powerful new computing resources. Trow notes that virtualized encoding is not just about HEVC and Ultra HD but will also enable improvements in MPEG-2 encoding (still used on a large swathe of ‘legacy’ services) as well as AVC/H.264.
He says that on the one hand, sharing compute resources can deliver the sheer processing horsepower needed to deliver the ultimate quality UHD using HEVC. On the other hand, it can help to squeeze more SD channels into a satellite multiplex. The trend is towards channels and platform operators judging HD video processing on its performance and SD encoding/transcoding more on density, he says.
Harmonic sees the virtualization of video processing and other broadcast functions as a parallel development to the increasing use of ABR streaming for video. If the industry starts to use ABR for all video, including high bit rate HD television that is broadcast today, it enables the use of common headends and infrastructure for all services. Again, we will live in a hybrid world during the migration, with some channels like premium sports staying on traditional broadcast systems for longer than others.
Trow argues that it is possible to deliver minimum bit rates with ABR, and so guarantee the Quality of Experience for channels using streaming. He says the challenge with ABR streaming is to optimize bandwidth usage and maximize the number of channels you can get into a home, rather than achieving quality thresholds. All streaming gets easier as broadband networks improve, of course. The move to virtualized video processing has a role to play in making ABR more reliable, too, because more powerful processing platforms can enable more pre-processing and therefore better encoding, for example.
