Telairity is Celebrating 15 years Serving the Broadcast Industry

In 2016, Telairity is celebrating its 15^th anniversary as a market leader in the broadcast industry.  Since 2001, we have been designing, manufacturing and marketing video processing solutions for broadcast and professional video applications.  We produce next generation encoding solutions made in Silicon Valley, USA, and used around the world.  Our experience and history of providing solutions for video processing over these last 15 years is a big part of the advantage that we bring to each new project.

The broadcast industry has undergone massive changes over the last 15 years, moving from analog to all-digital technology, from SD to HD and UHD, from 2D to 3D, from CRT displays to flat panel displays, from time-bound to on-demand viewing, from large fixed screens in living rooms and bedrooms to small on-the-go mobile screens—to name just some of the more notable shifts. Telairity has continually produced innovative products and solutions to meet broadcaster’s demands within rapidly changing technologies.  The advanced video compression systems we provide uniquely fast start-up times and combine low latency with low bitrates during operation.  This makes them an ideal choice for both remote and field broadcast applications, which require top-of-the-line real-time performance, and for IPTV and other applications, that require the lowest achievable bitrates.

Today, Telairity systems are deployed in over 50 countries around the world for tasks that include electronic news gathering, in-stadium replay, remote learning, outreach programs, event streaming, and more—wherever video must be moved reliably, economically, and efficiently in real time.  As one of the few companies that controls all its key technologies, from video processor development through system enclosure design, Telairity is also uniquely able to customize systems to meet specific needs.  Whether it’s simply a new combination of existing capabilities, or a requirement for capabilities not yet offered on any standard product, we will work with you to find the right solution to your encoding needs.

Over our 15 years, Telairity has designed and manufactured numerous products that have met the new technology needs of the broadcasting industry.  Due to our investment in technology, we offer encoding platforms that are powerful, fast and reliable and are always working to meet the latest demands of the industry.  It has been a pleasure to serve our customers over the last 15 years, and we look forward to providing next-generation encoding solutions for our customers for years to come.

Telairity Clients Now Include Sri Lanka

Telairity Inc. is proud to expand its global reach by providing encoding technology in Sri Lanka.  In a partnership with systems integrator Mitter International Pvt. Ltd.; Telairity has sold 9000 series SD encoders and 5000 series IRDs as the compression/decompression engines for an IPTV video network that is being installed across Sri Lanka.  This new live IPTV broadcasting system is being installed by Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), on behalf of one of their major clients, and will initially link together locations in Colombo, Depanama, Mount Olephant, and Union Place.

SLT is Sri Lanka’s leading broadband and backbone infrastructure service provider, with over 6 million customers, including small and large corporations, public sector clients, and retail businesses.  With this new installation, Sri Lanka joins a list of Telairity clients that now includes nearly every country in Asia Pacific, as the region continues its transition from traditional analog to digital television services. 

Whether providers need to add new video services, like SLT, or expanding existing operations, like China Telecom, Telairity’s line of affordable, quality products and solutions for remote and field live broadcasting, live streaming, IPTV, transcoding, and more—including auto-switching low-latency or high-compression HD and SD H.264/AVC encoders, and a line of full-featured professional IRDs to fit every need and budget—have made it a leading brand for encoders and IRDs for companies all across Asia Pacific. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for company updates and industry news. 

Telairity Provides Encoding for the XV Pacific Games

The start of the XV Pacific Games is just under a week away and we’re excited to announce that Telairity will be providing encoder and decoder lines to the Games. Our equipment will be provided by MiseOpoint, an Oceania-based systems provider.

The multinational games will feature athletes from 22 island nations and will take place in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea from July 4-18, 2015. The games were created in 1962 to foster friendship among the Pacific Islands by bringing together different cultures, ideas and interests all united under sport. Held every four years the Pacific Games has a wide selection of sports, including track and field, swimming, lawn bowling, and “va’a” or boat races. Some of the participating nations are American Samoa, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Australia, and New Zealand.

More than 3,000 men and women athletes will compete in 28 different sports in nine separate venues throughout Port Moresby and the Games are viewed by attending athletes as a warm up for 2016’s Olympic Games in Brazil.

Telairity will be providing our BE7100 and BE8100 encoder lines as well as our popular BE5502 Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) to the nine different venues to ensure a multi-format, low-latency transmission path for the live game coverage. The IRD is a full-featured professional 4:2:0 MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC (MPEG-4) HD/SD integrated receiver and decoder for broadcasters, cable operators, and telecoms. The BE7100 encoder is scalable, fully programmable, low latency broadcast quality encoder for standard definition format. For HD video compression in real time we offer our 8000 series encoders.

Viewers around the world will watch the Pacific Games via the LiveStream Internet video service while Oceania Broadcasters will downlink a 4 channel multiplex from Intelsat 19. All signals will be transmitted via IP to the International Broadcast Center (IBC), and redistributed over the Pacific by satellite for video and Internet viewing. All broadcasts will be available in French and English. IBC will provide the English broadcast and the French-language feed will be from France Televisions to French-language territories.

To learn more about Telairity and our products and solutions, visit our website. We also post more broadcast news and company updates on our Twitter and LinkedIn.

Wither HEVC Part 3

In our previous blog, we raised the problem of the relative rates of:

1. bitrate reduction, due to new generations of compression technology

vs.

2. bitrate proliferation, due to the introduction of higher-resolution broadcast standards

We can easily quantify this problem with a little simple math. Let’s start in 1994, with the introduction of MPEG-2, the original digital compression standard developed for broadcast technology. Let’s set 1994 MPEG-2 compression technology to 1 and, likewise, set 1994 720 x 480 SD resolution formats at 1. For present purposes, we can assume these two forces are roughly balanced: that is to say, MPEG-2 compression technology successfully reduces the bits generated by digital 720 x 480 SD formats to manageable levels for practical purposes of transmission and storage.

Given this 1 to 1 parity between SD formats and MPEG-2 compression, as long as SD formats continued to dominate TV broadcasting, there was no great practical urgency about developing better encoding technology. And, in fact, although better H.264/AVC (MPEG-4) compression technology became available as early as 2003, there was little interest among broadcasters in the new technology over the next several years – despite its ability to cut SD bitrates in half.

Widespread interest in better H.264/MPEG-4 compression technology only began to develop among broadcasters after 2007, when the replacement of 720 x 480 SD formats by 6X larger 1920 x 1080 HD formats first become common. But, while the flood of bits generated by HD formats made the inefficiency of older MPEG-2 compression patently obvious, even after broadcasters switched to next-generation H.264 compression, the bottom line was not a return to the old 1 to 1 (SD to MPEG-2) parity of 1994. Instead, with a 6X increase in bits due to new HD formats, balanced by a 2X reduction in bitrates from H.264 compression, the new HD to MPEG-4 parity level was reestablished at 3 to 1.

The industry now faces the prospect of a second transition to a new 2X better level of compression technology with H.265/HEVC (MPEG-5).  Although adoption of MPEG-5 for HD formats would practically restore the old 1994 parity level (1.5 to 1 vs 1 to 1), just as adoption of MPEG-4 technology waited on the spread of new, higher resolution HD picture formats, significant take-up of MPEG-5 compression is likely to wait on widespread adoption of the new 4X larger 3940 x 2160 4K picture format. With 4K formats, the bottom line will not be something closer to 1994 parity levels, but rather something substantially worse than current levels, with a 6 to 1 ratio of 4K bits to MPEG-5 compression capabilities.

Future developments seem more likely to continue this progressively worsening trend than to succeed in reversing or even slowing it. Projecting forward to a new 2X better level of compression technology with a future H.266/MPEG-6 step, this advance in bitrate reduction seems certain to be more than offset by a yet another 4X larger resolution step: the 7880 x 4320 8K picture format.   In the 2020s, then, the bottom line is likely to be a 12 to 1 ratio of bits to compression capabilities, measured by 1994 standards.

Is this decade-by-decade slide in bit ratio, from 1 to 1 in the 1990s, to 3 to 1 in the 2000s, to 6 to 1 in the 2010s, to 12 to 1 in the 2020s, a worry? And if it is not something we should worry about, then why not? That will be the subject of our next blog.