Distribution vs. Contribution Encoding: Part 1

As television technology continues to improve, broadcasters want to ensure that viewers are getting a crisp, clear image. This is where special contribution encoders come into play, as distinct from the normal sort of distribution encoder, used to render images for end-user viewing.

The main difference between the two is how color, the essential attribute of a digital picture element or “pixel” is treated. There are two separate issues here. One issue is the number of bits used to denote the color of a pixel, generally referred to as “8-bit” color, “10-bit” color, and so on.

The other issue is the number of pixels that are retained in an encoded picture. The terminology used here is a bit more obscure. 4:4:4 encoding means that 4 out of every 4 (i.e., all) pixels are retained in the encoded image.  As a rule, encoders do not support this mode, since the essential function of an encoder is to reduce the number of pixels needed to reproduce an image. 4:2:2 means that 2 out of every 4 pixels are retained in the encoded image. As a rule, this mode is only supported by source encoders. Distribution encoders instead support 4:2:0 mode, in which only 1 pixel is retained out of every 4.

Perhaps surprisingly, retaining just a quarter of the pixels in an image is sufficient to allow the image to very accurately reconstructed during the decoding process; indeed, few people can detect any difference between a 4:4:4 image, a 4:2:2 image, and a 4:2:0 image. As a consequence, for purposes of viewing, the extra pixels retained in 4:4:4 and 4:2:0 can be regarded as simple overhead, better dispensed with in a distribution encoder, since the fewer the bits that need to be transmitted or stored, the lower the cost of digital video.

Source encoders, however, are not designed merely for viewing pictures, and so the rules for them are different than the rules for distribution encoders. In our next blog, we will consider this issue in more depth, along with the issue of “8-bit” vs. “10-bit” color.

Meet Telairity at the NAB Show

This week we’ll be exhibiting at the NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center and showcasing our new line of products. The NAB Show is the world’s largest electronic media show with over 93,000 attendees and over 1,550 exhibitors, covering everything from filmed entertainment as well as the development, management and delivery of content. In addition to the exhibits, the show offers an array of sessions, including workshops, speakers, and conference series.

Telairity will be located at booth SU11306 where we’ll be featuring our video processing solutions for the broadcasting, backhaul, mobile, government, and related markets. We offer a full range of H.264/AVC encoding solutions, the newest built on the next generation of our exclusive TVP video processor and direct-execution AVClairity compression software. We’ll also debut a new “Pegasus” product line of portable encoders at the show, so be sure to stop by our booth to catch up on all the latest developments.

For additional information about Telairity, visit our website and be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates on all the latest media industry news.

The Evolution of News Gathering: ENG, SNG, and Digital Broadcasting

When you turn on the TV to catch the local news, it’s easy to overlook all of the steps required to get the picture you’re seeing from the news truck to your TV.  These include initial video/audio capture, signal encoding, and transmission back to the station, decoding, editing, re-encoding and re-transmission to your set. Within the industry, this process is known as ENG or Electronic News Gathering (an industry term for the use of video technology to allow live reporting from remote field locations).

Closely associated with ENG is SNG (Satellite News Gathering). Whereas ENG typically relies on local microwave links to transmit audio/video data from regional field locations back to the studio, SNG makes use of satellite links to distribute data to distant locations. Between them, ENG and SNG allow local TV stations to provide live coverage of news events anywhere in the world.

Just as magnetic tape technologies replaced older film technologies in ENG news reporting, ENG no longer captures video data in analog form on magnetic tapes but in digital form as arrays of pixels. These can be compressed for file storage and transmission and decompressed for editing and viewing. While digital technology has many advantages over its analog predecessor, including the elimination of ghosting, snow, and other types of signal interference, the most significant difference is simple economics. Because digital data can be highly compressed, it is possible to transmit better pictures and sound using less bandwidth, and to store images and sound more compactly. The bottom line here is lower costs and higher quality – a double win that quickly made digital technology ubiquitous in the TV industry after its introduction in the late 1990s.

But the digital revolution that began in the last decade of the 20^th century is far from over in the second decade of the 21^st century. The drive to reduce costs and improve quality continues today with, if anything, increased urgency as traditional broadcasters compete with an ever-broadening range of audio/video services available to consumers on smart phones, tablets, notebooks, and other screens connected to a wide variety of wireless and wired networks. For example, many broadcasters are now aggressively moving to adopt inexpensive, universally available Ethernet technology for signal transmission over IP (Internet Protocol), replacing older dedicated broadcast network standards like SDI (Serial Digital Interface) and ASI (Asynchronous Serial Interface).

Telairity gear has been designed from the beginning to help broadcasters stay competitive by providing the industry’s most cost-effective equipment for digital video compression, transmission, transcoding and de-compression. From the beginning, Telairity encoders have provided not merely traditional SDI and ASI interfaces but also Ethernet outputs as standard features, so broadcasters could move to adopt IP technology whenever ready without either the expense or the disruption of replacing or upgrading existing equipment.  Most recently, in 2013, we added a built-in modulator to our ENG line of encoders, eliminating the need for a separate piece of gear to generate radio frequency signals for transmission over a microwave or satellite link – an integration that not only reduces costs for our customers but also saves space in a crowded ENG or SNG truck.

In 2014, there will be lots more improvements in Telairity gear designed to help broadcasters reduce costs and improve quality, ranging from incorporation of new compression standards like HEVC to new, portable form factors that reduce cost and lower power consumption. Be sure to check back for more discussion of industry trends, and hear about our latest insights and solutions.

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming – An Overview

In an age of rapidly increasing mobile computing, tablet use, and internet video streaming, adapting to user preferences relative to their current device and providing a great user experience on that device has become a chief objective within the technology community.  With the sharp increase in mobile use, wireless connectivity has been steadily improving, whether for mobile (LTE) or wireless internet (wifi and some other interesting protocols).  However, the problem with wireless connections and mobile usage, as many users know is that they are inconsistent.  With an inconsistent connection, a streamlined user experience becomes more difficult to attain.

The answer to this problem is adaptive bitrate streaming.  The basic premise is that the video is encoded at several different rates, and adjusts in real time to the quality of the user’s connection to change the quality or resolution of the stream, depending on the bandwidth available to the user at a given time.  The burden of this technological advance comes down on the encoders – it is a much more complex technology than previous fixed-rate streaming protocols.  However, the results for user experience make the technology much more desirable – so much so that there are several different adaptive protocols on the market, from Apple and Microsoft and other businesses that create proprietary solutions for their own products , as well as a new industry-standard protocol called MPEG_DASH (for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). 

Whether a universal standard is eventually adopted or not, adaptive bitrate streaming is an exciting and still-evolving topic of conversation that affects consumers and technology companies alike.  The task here for encoder manufacturers like Telairity here is not to dictate the standards that will be used by the industry to dynamically adapt video to fluctuations in bandwidth, but rather to support the standards that emerge for this purpose as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Short Life of the 3D TV Trend

A few years ago, it appeared that the next big trend in video technology would be 3D viewing.  The manufacturers and sellers of TVs were enthusiastically marketing new 3D-capable sets, while content providers were lining up to announce plans for 3D programming. However, continuing lackluster sales of 3D sets and recent announcements—like the one in June from ESPN, an early and prominent enthusiast for 3D technology, that it was going to discontinue its pioneering 24/7 3D channel—indicate that reality took a sharp left turn somewhere on its way to the promised future of 3D TV. What happened?

As is usually the case with new technologies, the failure of 3D TV to really take off is not the result of any one factor, but due to a combination of issues. The first issue is that adding 3D capability to a TV makes it more expensive to manufacture, which means it is not free, but a feature that consumers must pay extra to get. This, by itself, wouldn’t be an insurmountable issue, if the extra capability provided an obvious benefit (like HD over older SD technology), but some viewers find the 3D experience annoying,  uncomfortable, or even distressing, while the rest tend to regard it, at most, as suitable only for special occasions. So getting consumers to pay extra for a feature they believe will be rarely if ever used has proven to be a hard sell. This lack of everyday viewers, in turn, has translated to poor ratings for new 3D channels, resulting in announcements from the provider side of the TV equation like the recent one by ESPN discontinuing their service.

The combination of extra cost, limited usefulness, and little (but still declining) programming has conspired to perpetually maintain 3D TV in its status as a technology of the future. To be sure, there is some research being done to surmount the biggest obstacle keeping 3D TV from being an everyday technology, namely, the need to wear special glasses. Whatever the merits or demerits of different types of glasses (active or passive), by their mere existence, 3D glasses frustrate any semblance of normal TV viewing by preventing multi-tasking and hindering normal social interaction. Only if glasses can be entirely eliminated will it be time to reopen the discussion of the future of 3D TV on new and more promising grounds.

Pending that breakthrough, however, other newer technologies hold much more promise as a realistic future for TV. We’ll take some time in our next blogs to examine the particular advantages of 4K and UHD standards, and how Telairity fits into the adoption of those technologies.  Make sure you stop back here for more of the latest information on interesting trends within video technology – you won’t be disappointed!

The Translation of Video Transmission

The modes by which we receive and interact with video as a culture are undergoing a shift.  As internet streaming speeds improve, and a more á la carte approach to television increases, the broadcasting industry is experiencing a potentially radical shift.  Much like the music industry, subscription services are changing the way many consumers understand and enjoy video:  Youtube is ever increasing in popularity; businesses like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, and Hulu Plus are gaining more traction; and products like the Apple TV, Roku, and the new Chromecast are enabling this rising tide of video to easily reach your TV via the internet.

While some are quick to forecast the end of broadcast TV, the reality is that typical broadcast  services don’t quite overlap with what is available on the web.  There are still some things that subscription and streaming services can’t offer.  News is one example – the digital transmission of live events for a public audience is something uniquely offered by broadcasters.  Additionally, local programming, emergency alert systems, and other real-time services are staples of the broadcasting industry that can’t be as effectively disseminated by any other current method.

The staple of broadcasting is video, the rising tide that increasingly floats all internet boats. The pressing need of the internet age is not for established broadcasters to be replaced by new entrants, providing some analog of the news and other services now offered by today’s cable, satellite, and over-the-air broadcasters. Rather, the need is for broadcasters to fully embrace the internet’s potential as an interactive, world-wide delivery channel in order to adapt, expand, and enhance the services they already know how to provide uniquely well.

It is precisely at these exciting crossroads of change and evolution that businesses involved in  video technology must understand and analyze the shifting nature of today’s landscape in order to better provide their customers with what they want and need.  Though the method and markets for broadcast media are undoubtedly changing, you can be sure that our experts at Telairity are on top of the trends, and intent on providing broadcasters together with all other professional video providers the latest innovative technology to answer the demands of new media.

Living A Mobile Life: The future is now

Living a mobile life has quickly moved from what was once considered a luxury to become a basic every day necessity.  As each hour passes, another business or service is shifting their focus from brick and mortar to full scale mobile connectivity.  The numbers are staggering.  According to the latest report from the GSMA, total mobile ecosystem revenues account for 2.2% of global GDP or, to be more specific, a whopping $1.6 trillion.

Corporations are not only the only ones profiting from this seismic communications shift. Regular, everyday people from all across the globe and socio-economic spectrum are getting the opportunity to live a more mobile life, one that is not confined by class, caste, or even arbitrary borders.  

Over 3.2 billion people, nearly half the world’s total population, are now mobile subscribers. The GSMA expects this number to hit an overwhelming majority of about 80% among adults and teens by 2018.  That means 80% of the world will rely on mobile technology in their work, education and personal communication as well as a wide variety of business, informational, and entertainment needs.

This astronomical growth in usage, which includes the exponential rise in data traffic, creates an equal or greater need to improve on existing networks as well as to build newer, faster ones.  Phones, tablets, and computers will only function if they operate on reliable networks. This means products like mobile video encoders will need to offer even greater flexibility, strength, and affordability.  

The task ahead is in no way easy or even guaranteed. There will be numerous roadblocks along the way as mobile society evolves, some technical, some economic, some regulatory. It will take herculean efforts on the part of businesses and governments to make living a truly mobile life a sustainable reality for  the large majority of the world’s population.