tvbe aug p1, 3, 4, 8, 10 news v2 29/7/09 14:00 page 8 ...€¦ · cabling: the superiority of...

By Guy Elliott, managing director, ATG BroadcastThe transition from SD into HD iscurrently progressing in many coun-tries, part of the global switchoverfrom analogue to digital transmis-sion. Like many new technologies,HD was a classic case of the chicken-and-the-egg: why broadcast in HD ifno one is equipped to view the out-put? That has now turned on itshead with 1080-line rapidly becom-ing the native display resolution fordomestic television receivers.

Given a respectable transmis-sion bit rate, digitally delivered1080i viewed on a 1080-nativescreen is nothing short of breath-taking. Almost every broadcastercurrently delivering an SD service islooking to upgrade to HD whenmarket conditions are right. Marketconditions are dictated not just bythe availability of funding but byaudience expectations and pressurefrom competitor channels.

For ATG Broadcast, HD haseffectively become the new SD.Most state broadcasters worldwidehave made a firm commitment toHD both for new infrastructure andin their upgrade plans for existingstudio, post production and playoutfacilities. High-quality HD cam-corders are now compact andaffordable, allowing programme-makers on even the tightest budgetsto future-proof their productions.

Technical issuesIt would be wrong to describeHD as a technical minefield butthere are important issues to

keep in mind. I will tackle themin priority.

Cabling: The superiority of opti-cal fibre networking in comparisonwith traditional copper cabling waswidely recognised even before thetransition from analogue to digitalSD. The high bit rates inherent withHD-SDI make copper a safe optiononly for cable runs of less than 80m.Optical fibre allows much longerlengths without need for mid-wayreclocking and takes up less ductspace than the copper equivalent.Space issues still arise at the routerI/O ports where a large number ofbulky copper cables have to beaccommodated within the finitedimensions of rackroom cabinets.

Data compression: No broadcast-ers yet transmit native uncompressedHD, nor do they need to if thesource signal quality is high andintermediate post production is handled transparently. Severely com-pressed origination formats such asHDV should be used sparingly,preferably only where portability oroperator-security are issues.

Audio/video timing: Maintaining

synchronisation between audio andvideo signal feeds is essential in anysystem. HD requires particular careas the video processing durationscan be relatively long. Lip-syncerrors are even more visible whenseen in HD than in SD unless the lipmotion has itself been blurred byexcessive compression. HD-SDInetworking has the advantage ofkeeping audio and video together interms of timing as well as distribu-tion.

Signal formats: SD embraced atediously large number of variantnative signal ‘standards’. HD haseven more, including subsets of720p, 1080i and 1080p. Each has tobe discussed at the start of any pro-posed new HD studio installationand usually accommodated at leastas an ingest format. Signal storage isnowadays largely file-based, ingest-ing from HD digital video or fromfile-based capture devices such asPanasonic’s P2.

Picture monitoring: DiscreteCRT-screen monitors have largelydisappeared from master controlrooms and presentation suites,

replaced by multiscreen LCD panelsand the newer very high quality LEDscreens. HD-native monitoring isobviously important and we do notadvocate reduced-resolution picturemonitoring even by CRT devotees.

Signal monitoring: Rasterisersare becoming increasingly popularfor HD signal monitoring both inbroadcast and post productionenvironments. Compact instru-ments such as the TektronixWVR7120 handle dual link, HD-SDI, and SD-SDI as well asembedded and discreet AES audio,Dolby Digital and Dolby E, in asingle unit with a user-definablemultiscreen display.

HD projectsOne of the earliest HD projects we worked on was at NationalGeographic Channel, providingexpanded HD resources at the net-work’s European post productioncentre in London. The projectextends the capabilities of the HDpost production and playout systeminstalled by ATG Broadcast prior tothe channel’s commencement of1080i transmissions last summer. It

includes additional Sony HDCAM-SR multi-format recording andplayback facilities in the audio postproduction suite. These are used inconjunction with an existing AvidAdrenaline video editing system.The Adrenaline itself was enhancedwith Dolby Audio Tools, AvidProTools LE audio editing soft-ware, additional Dolby E multi-channel sound encoding, decodingand monitoring and RosendahlMIDI timecode interfaces.

At TV4, Sweden’s largest inde-pendent television channel, weinstalled an HD routing system. Thisincluded a 3Gbps-native 576 x 576Pro-Bel Cygnus HD routing frameequipped as a 324 x 312 matrix withdual redundant power supplies, dualredundant controllers and four mon-itoring outputs. It followed on fromthe addition of Harris NEO HD-SDI/SD-SDI video routing switch-ers. One of the first applications ofthe Cygnus was to process HD feedsfrom the 2008 UEFA EuropeanFootball Championship hosted byAustria and Switzerland.

We also equipped new edit suitesfor Red Bee Media, Britain’s largestplayout and channel managementservice-provider. The largest of thesefacilities is an HD video edit suitecentred on a Quantel eQ workstationwith external FC Dylan disc storageattached to the existing server system.

Content archives as well as broadcasters are upgrading to HD.We recently completed a technicalupgrade commission for the ImperialWar Museum. This contract involvedexpanded resources for the VideoRoom at the museum’s aviationbranch in Duxford, Cambridge,including the supply and installationof a high definition video recorderwith supporting infrastructure.

separated again by the glasses,” heexplains. “This is no problem in a controlled environment like a cinema, but in the home viewerswithout glasses will be discriminatedagainst since the double signalsuperimposed on the image ren-ders a 3D polarised broadcastredundant for viewers in 2D.”

He adds, “It was always clear tome that a successful 3D televisionsystem is one that doesn’t discrimi-nate against any viewer which iswhy our system can be viewed withthe Telcast 3D glasses in 3D or with-out glasses perfectly in 2D.”

Instead of superimposing thetwo individual perspectives andbroadcasting them at the same time,Telcast broadcasts with a delay of

one field, exactly 1/50th or 1/60th of asecond. Doing so means the doublelines, which would blur a 3D stereoimage viewed in 2D, are negligible.Telcast’s patented 3D glasses in con-nection with its 3D shootingmethod merge the two perspectivesinto a three-dimensional image inthe brain of the viewer.

It also means capturing at 50individual fields (50 or 60i, not 25por 30p although 50p is possible).Telcast uses a single HD cameraand standard lens, modified withthe firm’s patented ‘special sauce’contained in a black box attachedto the camera, the detail of whichHohenacker isn’t revealing.

Telcast doesn’t just license thetechnology but the camera opera-tor as well, believing that the suc-cess of a 3D production is just as reliant on craft skills. MartinWinkler, the producer-cameramanfor True Academy Fantasia has 15years experience under his belt andclaims not to need a monitor (eventhough one is hooked to his

Steadicam) when shooting, but tojudge the 3D effect by instinct.

The signal output from thecamera, or recorded to tape, is pro-duced and transmitted normally.“No other equipment or post pro-duction intervention is required,”Hohenacker says. “That’s the bigadvantage for broadcasters whodon’t have to change or invest inany hardware.” Edits will tend tobe held a little longer and slow-motion, unless shot at 150fps,destroys the necessary frame ratio.

The special 3D glasses, usuallycardboard framed and distrib-uted free with programme pro-motion (in this case with thecable customer’s magazine) con-tain patented film that “insteadof filtering individual coloursfrom the superimposed image likered-green anaglyph glasses, cre-ates a time delay in perception.”

For Winkler, the key to prepar-ing the shoot is to look for scenarioswith a foreground, mid-ground andbackground and if an element isn’t

present, to shift his position or thatof an object around accordingly.

“It’s about the choreography ofthe camera, people or objects,” hesays. “The opening sequence of thisshow will be straightforward sincethere are 12 contestants which we can frame at different distances.The concert stage has also been re-designed for 3D (in terms of place-ment of a band, the stage width hasalso been extended to allow Winklermore room to move) but somerooms of the house can look flat(such as a bedroom with row of 10beds) so I’ve shifted tables, plants orlambs to the foreground.”

Telcast transported over a mil-lion 3D glasses to Bangkok —weighing over 4,400 kg. A symbolappears on screen alerting viewersto wear them for the next scene.“Each 3D section, such as a song, isaround 3-4 minutes long althoughwe can go up to 45 minutes in 3D,”explains Winkler. “Much morethan that and any 3D system startsto feel uncomfortable.”

Telcast has signed a deal withJordanian broadcaster ATV toproduce a 10x5min series on thevenues for the 2010 World Cup.Although it won’t be producinglive action from South Africa,Telcast has done sports in the pastincluding Sydney 2000 Olympicsand French league soccer for TF1.

“Polarised systems are great forthe cinema where everyone has apair of glasses but when you moveto mass market broadcast our sys-tem is definitely the only way,”Hohenacker says. “There is no alter-native without swapping out hard-ware for consumer and broadcaster.

“We have a track record ofincreasing ratings of shows filmedin 3D by 50%,” he claims. Telcastholds the record for TF1 ratings forits 3D production of Miss World adecade ago. Perhaps that’s not sosuprising, but the Thai exampleshows that even reality shows canbenefit. “Even on long-runningseries where we’ve inserted 3D ele-ments, ratings have gone up 80%.”

TVBEUROPE HD EUROPE

Continued on page 10

8 www.tvbeurope.com AUGUST 2009

High-Def broadcasting in context: The systems integration viewpoint

At TV4 Sweden, ATG installed a 3Gbps-native 576 x 576 Pro-Bel

Cygnus high definition routing frame equipped as a 324 x 312 matrix

Guy Elliott: Almost every broadcaster

currently delivering an SD service is

looking to upgrade to HD when

market conditions are right

Key elements of HD infrastructure

A 3D realitybreakthrough

Continued from page 1

HD Systems

TVBE Aug P1, 3, 4, 8, 10 News v2 29/7/09 14:00 Page 8

With some 20 channels and a hugenumber of programmes to promote,Sky had a big problem delivering allthe Now, Next, Later and other promos it wanted to. So it didn’t. Itconcentrated on just a few channels,or specific programmes, and its staffspent hours in edit suites creatinglots of different versions.

Now, much of this is automated,and staff have the ability to makechanges just moments before a pro-mo goes on air. This is largely due to a significant investment in PixelPower’s Clarity 3000, which wasused to deliver a re-brand of itsmain entertainment channels, SkyOne, Two and Three last year, and a move its PixelPromo Live forautomated promo creation, which is being used for stage two of itschannel rebrand.

Before the Pixel Power installa-tion, Sky didn’t have the ability toair on-screen graphics for promos.“The infrastructure was more about

channels than presentation,” saysAndy Purkiss, Sky’s head of pro-duction and operations. “We werebehind the competition. If we didwant to do anything promotionalon screen, it was labour-intensiveand had to be hand edited.”

It was able to do squeeze back orDVE moves only on certain (live)channels (Sky News, Sky Sports andSky One), and needed to find a sys-tem to help. As the majority of rivalchannels were using Pixel Power’sClarity, this was one of the systemsit looked at, as well as seeking tenders from its existing suppliers ofstudio graphics systems.

“We wanted more graphics on air,and wanted promos in programmesrather than just in breaks. But we did-n’t want to use any more resources.We particularly needed to improvethe effectiveness of on-screen brand-ing on Sky One, Two and Three.” Ithelped that Pixel Power was alreadyHD, and was developing its 3Dgraphics capability, something Skyalso wanted to do (and has nowbecome the first broadcaster to usethe system for 3D).

It was particularly interested inPixelPromo Live, because it couldread the schedule and put up promosautomatically, using templates. Now50-70% of promos on the variouschannels go through PixelPromoLive, including services like HDAnytime (which pushes selected programmes to the set-top boxes)and its download service, Sky Player.

It mainly uses Clarity for morebespoke static promos, such as pro-

gramme launches, with PixelPromodoing the dynamic promos. Some in-programme promos include videofrom the database, and some are onlygraphics. It now has some 20 chan-nels that benefit from this, with up to500 Clarity events per week, and upto 70% of those from PixelPromo.

Sky uses a BSS scheduling sys-tem, and the IT department had to make sure it worked withPixelPromo. But once that wasdone “it was easy to add secondaryevents, such as promos, with a singleline specifying now, next and laterpromos with video. We can alsochoose a graphic look with a fourcharacter code,” explains Purkiss.

“We used to do this in editsuites and audio suites, with extraproblems for 5.1. Each DVEwould take at least an hour to dodue to 5.1.” Also, its creative peo-ple “found all the versioningtedious.” Having moved toPixelPromo, he calculates that thedepartment has been able torelease about 100 hours of edittime per month to other parts ofSky — which has been the biggestgain from the move.

“The same people who used todo this manually on one channel arenow doing this across 20 channels.”A day’s worth of promo events canbe set up in minutes, and promos can

be done “practically live”, if neces-sary. The system compiles a sequenceseconds before going on air.

“Clarity had been built from aTV presentation perspective, where-as the other systems we looked atseemed to be coming more from agallery outlook. We didn’t needanother high-end graphics device,and some of the other devices hadmore power but not playout capabil-ities,” he says. So far the move hasbeen primarily visual-focused, “sowe haven’t really explored theClarity’s audio capabilities.”

Purkiss is now looking atupgrades, including better automat-ing of video clip ingest, so that it isquicker and easier to get clips fromprogrammes to build the promos.He also wants smarter asset man-agement, so that it will automaticallydelete files when they are no longerneeded — as well as better qualitycontrol, so that anyone on any PC on the network can checkspelling, graphic position and compliance. Sky now has some 35to 40 Clarity units, with about 25 ofthose used in the transmission andcreative departments.

The IWM’s archived contentis frequently used by televisiondocumentary producers, many

of whom are now working in1080i HD. The film transferoperation was augmented with ahigh resolution 2k scannerwhich will produce files foringest into a digital data store.These are then forwarded to mir-rored servers in Imperial WarMuseum Duxford and ImperialWar Museum London.

On a much larger scale, wecompleted a comprehensiverebuild of Astro’s All AsiaBroadcast Centre (AABC) inKuala Lumpur, Malaysia, includ-ing HD infrastructure. A suite ofoperational areas was installed andthe station architecture re-engi-neered to provide resilience pluseasy future expansion capabilities.The new system architecture isbuilt around GVG Trinix routersunder Omnibus control. The entireproject took place while the stationwas on-air, transmitting 100 direct-to-home channels to subscribers inMalaysia and Indonesia.

Looking aheadThe increasing popularity of 1080-native displays and Blu-Ray highdefinition video discs will continueto motivate broadcasters intoupgrading their services to HD,just surely as 405-line mono-chrome was succeeded by 625-linecolour. An additional motivatingfactor is the need for mainstreambroadcasters to stay ahead ofinternet-based channels.

Competitive pressure is alsoencouraging broadcasters toexplore 3D HD as a vehicle forpremium channels though I can-not see the viewing publicaccepting anything short of per-fect autostereoscopic (direct-view) display devices. Philips’decision to pull out of itsWOWvx lenticular-display proj-ect earlier this year looks puz-zling given that the 3D display isa market which will be led by thedigital signage sector. Philips’competitors will appreciate thebreathing space.

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Key elements ofHD infrastructure


Creative differences: Clarity users have escaped hours of reversioning tedium

Andy Purkiss: “Other systems we

looked at seemed to be coming

more from a gallery outlook”

Sky improves its promotion prospectsPixel Power has provided Clarity for Sky promos. David Fox reports from West London

TVBE Aug P1, 3, 4, 8, 10 News v2 29/7/09 15:24 Page 10

Danielle Nagler, Head of BBCHD, propelled this year’s confer-ence off to a rousing start with aconfident keynote appraisal ofHDTV’s prospects. With sales ofHD-ready TV sets booming, HDis poised to become the newmainstream. “HD is the way weneed to make TV, because that’sthe way viewers want it,” shedeclared, confirming the commit-ment that 70% of BBC pro-grammes will be HD by 2012.

In April the BBC startedincluding HD content on BBCiPlayer, the internet-based catch-up service that is also available on Virgin cable TV networks, andthe UK now boasts some 33 HDchannels via cable and satellite.However a “stratospheric growth”in both content and viewershipwas imminent with the launch of

Freeview HD by the end of thisyear, said Nagler, as it will givedigital terrestrial television(DTT) viewers access to HD pro-gramming for the first time.

Throughout this year the BBCwill produce more than 300 hoursof HD programming, taking careto cover a range of genres to create what she called “HD foreveryone.” Given that this impliesa range of production stylesbeyond the carefully controlledconfines of a studio, theCorporation has been triallingsmall EX-1 and EX-3 camerasfrom Sony over the last twomonths, intercut with contentfrom Sony HDCAM. Light-weight Panasonic shouldermount cameras will also be put tothe test later this year.

“We decided against the easyoptions of producing limitedcontent or up-converting SDmaterial, as we don’t believe thiswill adequately grow the market,”she said, later hinting that thetop-rated (and exports-earning)

Top Gear could start producing inHD soon, perhaps in time for thenew series next Spring.

In Nagler’s view HD’s true‘coming of age’ will be marked by the 2012 London Olympics,combining as it does a majorinternational sporting event withthe near-completion of digitalswitchover (DSO) for UK DTT,although she added that ‘HDSO’— in other words the correspon-ding switchover from SD to HD— was “probably still some wayoff.” — Richard Dean

Industry status: Who’s doing what, where?Unique HD Masters insight intothe status of introductions andmarket acceptance at interntionallevel, along with specific examplesfrom France, Poland, Sweden andthe US.

Declaring that HDTV serviceswere either in operation, beingplanned, or being trialled acrossmost of the world, European

HD Forum co-Chair DavidWood opened the first session bypinpointed key developments for the future — scalable videocoding (SVC), stereoscopic TV(also known as 3D TV), andhybrid broadcast-broadband TV(HBB TV).

SVC uses segments to build picture quality according to thecapabilities of the receiver, soavoiding the wasteful process ofsimulcasting. The concept hasbeen successfully tested by trans-mitting SDTV plus a ‘top up’signal to create HD, but the bit ratereduction compared to sendingeach separately was just 5%.However the tests used MPEG-2

pictures, and MPEG-4 may be ableto do better. If so, SVC could be anice idea for the painless evolutionof 720p (progressive scan) or 1080i(interlace) to 1080p, he suggested.

On the much-vaunted topic of3D TV, Wood pointed out thatonly the time-honoured anaglyphcolour separation 3D TV is com-patible with existing displays.Indeed time appeared to havestood still as he brandished a picture of a 1939 card viewer,followed by a virtually identical ifmarginally cleaner one manufac-tured some 60 years later.

If 3D TV is to take off — andWood didn’t sound desperatelyconvinced that it would — othertechnologies would prevail, suchas polarised glasses, active shut-tered glasses or an autostereo-scopic (no spectacles) lenticularscreen. Popular for novelty cereal-packet animation cards in the lateFifties, lenticular screens havealready been incorporated in digital signage displays from LGand others, using thousands ofprismatic vertical strips to directthe correct image to the left andright eye. However the embryonicindustry was presently mired in a multiplicity of systems anduncertainty over channel, STB anddisplay compatibility, said Wood.

Regarding HBB TV, Woodshowed a slide of a Samsung TVin Japan where information from

MediaGeniX

Scheduling & content lifecyclefor linear & VOD broadcasters,

Telco’s & Platform OperatorsThere are many ways

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growHall 3

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Now an established fixture in the broadcast conference calendar, this year’stwo-day HD Masters 2009 event seemed to generate more questions,answers, news and ideas than ever before. Richard Dean and David Fox sift through the HD highlights

Industry status: Who’s doing what? Page 12Window of opportunity for 1080p/50 Page 19Audio: Overcoming challenges, complexities Page 20Production: New techniques, processes Page 22Regulation: Spectrum usage and strategies Page 25Special Feature: Super Hi-Vision Page 26Consumer perspective: New services and 3D 2

Conference contents

The tag-line for this year’s HDMasters conference was ‘MakingHigh Definition Work’; and we wouldlike to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the sponsors whomade the event work for all of us in2009. With thanks to Gold SponsorsDolby, Hamlet, NTT Electronics,Panasonic and Phabrix; and SilverSponsors Digital Rapids, Evertz, EVS, For-A, Harris Broadcast, ScreenSubtitling Systems and Sony. Specialmention also to David Ward andKristy Weir of Chyron for supplyingwonderful HD graphics throughoutthe event — and of course to ourindefatigable ConferenceProgramme Director John Ive.Thanks again to our supportingorganisations, Digital TV Group, FKTand UK Screen. As ever, the eventwas organised by TVBEurope inpartnership with SMPTE and BKSTS.– Fergal Ringrose

Sponsors whomade HD Work

Daniella Nagler: “We decided against producing limited content or

up-converting SD material, as this won’t adequately grow the market”

Adam Brodziak: Telewizja Polsat

became the first to transmit HDTV

with the 2008 World Cup football

tournament in Germany and Austria

Making high definition work

TVBE Aug P12-34 HD v2 29/7/09 14:12 Page 12

a custom website was rendered asan interactive menu alongside (or overlaid onto) an HD picture.With connections to both abroadcast feed and the internet(via wi-fi, mobile phone dongle orLAN), the set’s gallery offered anumber of web-assisted selectionsincluding VoD. “Could this spellthe end of interactive TV as weknow it?” mused Wood. Otherslater told TVBEurope that open-internet spam and virus attacksremained a concern.

Wood had his own ideas aboutinoculating broadcasts fromunwanted effects, but applied to the more basic issue of HD picture integrity. Calling for‘Delivery Quality Immunisation’(DQI), he urged broadcasters toprovide higher quality pictures toovercome what he regarded as the“inevitably sub-optimal set-up”of substantial numbers of TVsets, whilst also future-proofing

against new formats. Film hadalready proved the value of suchadded headroom, he said, as35mm footage from the 1960s isstill suitable for today’s then-unimagined HD formats.

“Audio is already capable ofdelivering more than the neces-sary 15kHz or so threshold band-width, to make it difficult to mess

up the sound,” said Wood. “Isthere a case for video to do thesame?” The ultimate answer wasto produce and broadcast pictures in the 1080p format, heconcluded, which offers a muchmore robust level of DQI than720p or 1080i. After broadcastcompression, 1080p consumes25% more bandwidth and double

the set-top box (STB) memory of720p pictures, but uses the samebit rate as an equivalent 1080isequence or perhaps less as inter-lace coding is not required, heclaimed. “If STB costs are thesame, it’s not a bad bargain togive viewers the world’s finest television quality with 1080p,”he exclaimed.

Ably fielding the traditionalstats-fest conference segment wasVincent Létang, senior analyst atthe Screen Digest consultancy.After three years, HD broadcastsare available everywhere inEurope, he said, and by the end oflast year the number of undupli-cated HD channels in westernEurope was nearly 100 — a sharprise from 35 the year before.

Of 166 million TV householdsin Western Europe, 55 million havean HD-ready set, while 4.2 millionare HD enabled, equating to just2.5%. However the average per-centage of those actually watchingHD is rather misleading, as a ‘Taleof Two Europes’ has emerged.France leads the pack with morethan 6%, followed by Nordic coun-tries with about 4.7% and the UKwith just over 4%. States in south-ern Europe including Germany,Italy and especially Spain, are alllagging below the average.

Spain and Germany areexpected to start catching up asearly as this year — Spanish pub-lic service broadcaster TVE is dueto introduce HD DTT in 2009/10,and after digital switchover (DSO)in April next year, existing DTTchannels will be given spectrum togo HD. There’ll also be a French-style HD tuner obligation for allTV sets with screens above 53cm.

Thomson’s Dietrich Westerkamp,who is also HD TV Manager at DIGITALEUROPE (renamedfrom EICTA, the European

By David FoxMediaset has started work on athree-year backbone project, totake care of its HD productionand distribution. It is installingmore than 6,000km of dark fibrein one pipe (called M-Tube), tolink all of its outposts through-out Italy. This will run at20Gbps between Milan andRome, and 10Gbps elsewhere. Itwill be “the pivot of [Mediaset’s]future TV business development,”Marco Pellegrinato, DeputyDirector, R&E, VideotimeMediaset Group, told the HDMasters conference.

He predicts that the multi-million Euro investment willhave “huge economic value,with a deep strategic impact for Mediaset” and “representthe infrastructural foundationfor the modern multideliveringand multiplatform operation”that will be crucial for all ofits production and broadcast-ing areas.

It is currently building aNorthern Loop, which should be finished by September andworking a few months later.Production, corporate and engi-neering will have separate IP networks on M-Tube, in additionto the reserved space for contribu-tion and distribution. “Each ofthe five parts of M-Tube is separate, so no one can overridethe bandwidth of the others,”explained Pellegrinato. It will link17 regional offices with three met-ropolitan fibre rings (one in Rome,two around Milan — one isalready in place in each city) andthree larger regional rings cover-ing most of Italy.

At the moment, Mediaset hasfour HD services, three upcon-verted free-to-air channels andone genuine, premium HD chan-nel. It hopes to defend its ana-logue frequencies by replacingthem with digital HD servicesrather than lose the frequenciesduring the analogue switch off

(which already covers 30% of thepopulation). It aims to have 35%of its service genuine HD by 2011(rather than upconverted), with60% genuine HD in primetime.

“The changeover to HD isreally a negative for broadcast-ers,” said Pellegrinato, especiallyas it is just one of several con-

current migrations (analogue todigital, 4:3 to 16:9, video to file,and broadcast to push VoD), allof which seem to be happeningwhile trying to maintain previ-ous systems and deal with all thevariables (MPEG-2, MPEG-4,different production standards,and various audio choices).

Mediaset set on M-Tube



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Scheduling & content lifecyclefor linear & VOD broadcasters,

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Hall 3

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Making highdefinition work


Sissela Andrén: “Whatever happened to 1080p/50? We should get

high definition right, before getting distracted by 3D TV”

John Luff: A mobile TV service is due to start in the US on

17 February next year using Qualcomm MediaFLO

Marco Pellegrinato: “The changeover to HD is a negative for broadcasters”


Information & CommunicationsTechnology Industry Associationin May) and Chairman of theGerman HDTV Working Group,later admitted that Germany’scurrent four HD channels offerlimited choice, but confirmed thata major re-launch of HDTV willbegin from the end of this year.

RTL and Vox are due tolaunch HD simulcasts thisautumn, with ARD/ZDF launch-ing HD next February after a‘showcase’ service later this year.RTL has also signed up to satel-lite fleet operator Astra’s impend-ing ‘HD+’ platform using Nagraconditional access but free-to-airvia the ‘no STB’ CommonInterface Plus (CI+), while newSky Deutschland (formerlyPremiere) owner BSkyB hasannounced plans for five new HDchannels. However debate onwhat to include on CI+ and evensome details of the standard itselfwas not over, leading to ongoinguncertainty about HDTV onlarge cable networks.

Meanwhile Adam Brodziak,technical director at TelewizjaPolsat, told delegates that terres-trial TV viewing in Poland hadseen a steady decline since 1996.

As Poland’s first commercial TVstation, the company became thefirst to transmit HDTV with the2008 World Cup football tourna-ment in Germany and Austria,and is currently the second largestbroadcaster with 17% of thePolish TV market — now splitfairly evenly between satellite,cable and terrestrial plus about1% telco IPTV. Most cable net-works are still analogue with just500,000 on digital, but with 13 HDchannels on satellite, Poland waspunching above its weight in theEuropean TV market, he claimed.

By 2013 the number of HD-enabled households in western

Europe is predicted to growmore than tenfold to 45 million,said Létang, with Benelux coun-tries boasting more than 45% ofhomes, closely followed by theNordic region, while the UKand France will be level-peggingat about 37%, all above the newaverage of 27%. At this timemore than half (52%) of allSTBs sold will be HD-capable,compared to 30% last year.

Interestingly, Létang claimedthat while IPTV generated mostof the initial demand for HDSTBs, the market is becoming saturated. Consequently futuregrowth in pay HD is expected tocome from legacy satellite andcable subscribers upgrading. PayTV will remain the principal driver of HDTV for the foresee-able future, dominated by satellitedirect to home (DTH) delivery.However DTT is expected to startcatching up after DSO.

Not surprisingly in the light ofits format victory over HD DVD,the Blu-ray Disc (BD) format isexpected to gradually replaceDVD, accounting for more thanhalf of video disc sales in WesternEurope by 2013. By this timesome 16 million BD devices, halfas standalone players, will exist inthe UK alone.

On the promising but uncer-tain question of 3D TV, Létangclaimed that its success willdepend on a unified delivery stan-dard, which could see 401 million

3D sets worldwide by 2015 (16%).However a prolonged and frag-mented standardisation processcould slash this expectation to85m, a mere 3% of all TV sets.

Sissela Andrén, HD Co-ordinator, Swedish TelevisionSVT, voiced concerns over main-taining quality. While pay TVmust achieve high standards forobvious commercial reasons,there was a risk of a two-tierHDTV world emerging if publicservice broadcasters cut cornerson cost grounds, either by usingcheaper cameras, using lower bitrate archives to reduce storagecosts, or up-converting SD.

“Whatever happened to1080p/50? We should get HDright before getting distractedby 3D TV,” asserted Andrén,citing a ribald version of‘garbage in, garbage out’. Shewas not convinced by the Blu-ray Disc format in the longterm, as the next generationwants to download — for whichthe industry must urgentlydevelop new business models.

While HDTV offers an idealentertainment medium in terms ofresolution and shape, conveying the‘film look’ is difficult for digital TVsaid Andrén, as coding randomgrain consumes valuable bandwidth.Later BBC Head of TechnologyAndy Quested confirmed this pointwith the definitive statement, “TheBBC does not transmit grain.” IfTV fails to deliver HD quality ondramas and sitcoms, HD may bereduced to a sports and concert format, she warned.

Since Swedish HDTV broad-casts began in 2006, only 5% ofviewers have taken it. Howeverlater this year will see a royal wed-ding in Sweden — the first to beshot and broadcast in HD —which seems likely to boost salesof HD iDTVs and STBs.

According to Jean-PierreLacotte, chairman of the HDForum in France, strong regula-tion had given the French marketa firm direction while fosteringhealthy competition. From 1 Dec-ember 2008, the governmentmandated that all HD-ready setsmust incorporate an HD tuner.From December, this will apply toall TV sets with a screen sizeabove 66cm, and from December2012 to all TV sets and STBs.

The average screen size issteadily rising, said Lacotte,predicting that the average pro-jected size of 86cm this year willincrease to 94cm by the end of2010. Within the ‘strategic seg-ment’ of main household sets heexpected corresponding averagesizes of 101cm and 109cmrespectively. Ten HD channelswere already available onCanal+ satellite, 12 over cable,and five DTT simulcasts com-prising three TF1 HD channelsplus France 2 HD and M6 HD.Broadcasters have committed to75% HD content by 2010, whileLacotte also revealed that all six French internet serviceproviders — who currently have6.2 million SD subscribers —


IBC 2009Stand 10.F28 NEWNEW

Chris Johns: “If you can compress in a more efficient way, you can

put more channels on a multiplex and recoup the costs”




Networking opportunity: Buffet lunch was sponsored by Sony and the evening drinks reception was hosted by IBC

Luk Overmeire: “We do think

[1080p/50] is the best of both

worlds and will become the standard”


plan to launch HD broadcastand VoD services over IPTV.

On the technical front, allFrench DTT channels are com-pressed with the MPEG-4 AVCstandard and already use statis-tical multiplexing (statmux)from 4-15Mbps within a totalpool bit rate 21.9Mbps plus 64QAM modulation — both fea-tures destined for Freeview HDin the UK. Pictures are shown inboth 1080i/25 x 1920 (16:9) and1080i/25 x 1440 (4:3), while thebit stream uses a dynamic andhierarchical Group of Pictures(GoP) structure of 32 frames inlength, each containing four ‘P’(predictive) images. The audioformat for HD is either 5.1Dolby Digital Plus or 2.0 DolbyDigital Plus.

Television Technology Con-sultant and SMPTE Fellow JohnLuff commented that while somemay see HDTV promotion asbeing largely the duty of the consumer electronics supplychain, a huge impact had comefrom broadcasters competing forwhat he called ‘bragging rights’about all the great HD pro-grammes they were showing. Thiscaused a virtuous circle, as thesubsequent increase in viewerpopulation then seeded genuinemarket growth.

At the other end of the scale,Luff revealed that a mobile TVservice is due to start in the USon 17 February next year usingthe Qualcomm MediaFLO system, with the contract due tobe finalised in November. —Richard Dean

Window of opportunity for 1080p/50 productionDream or reality? If broadcastersare to move to 1080p/50 produc-tion, they should start installingthe necessary infrastructure now.

EBU Project Manager HansHoffman believes that broadcast-ers need to invest now as “thewindow of opportunity is clos-ing,” because once the currentround of upgrades to HD are fin-ished, investment cycles meanthat it could be some time beforethere is an opportunity toupgrade further, particularly asthe most important considerationis making the core infrastructure3Gbps-capable.

As yet, very few Europeanbroadcasters have moved to all-HD production. In a surveylast month by the EBU of 53broadcasters, just one of 37 whoanswered the question stated thatit had migrated its productionfacility to HDTV. A further 20(54%) have partially migrated,while 12 (32%) plan to start in thenext couple of years, and four(11%) currently have no plans,which means that there is still the

opportunity to move direct to a1080p/50 infrastructure.

Of the 29 that answered thequestion: “What production for-mat do you use today forHDTV?”, only 1 uses 1080p/50for programme production; 22use 1080i/25, 12 use 720p/50 and six use 1080p/24 or 25 forfilm-style production (obviouslysome broadcasters use more thanone format).

Two broadcasters are currentlyconsidering using 1080p/50 astheir HD distribution format; 12use or plan to use 1080i/25, and16 use or plan to use 720p/50 (theformat currently recommended asgiving the best quality for the low-est bit rate by the EBU).

“The production and emissionformats do not have to be cou-pled,” said Hoffman. 1080p/50production works very well with720p/50 or 1080i/25 transmission.

It will mean just one format tohandle for production, and it canbe easily down-converted to deliv-er multiple variations. If 1080p/50is used for transmission it “pro-vides better quality at reasonablebit rates. You do not need higherbit rates than 1080i,” he stated.Indeed EBU testing has shownthat you could get the same per-ceived quality at lower bit rates.

BSkyB already has some1080p/50-ready infrastructure,but it is still complex technology,said Chris Johns, chief engineer,Broadcast Strategy, BSkyB and amember of the DTG group look-ing at 1080p/50.

Besides the demands of high-er data rates, there are “very fewpieces of high-end kit that canbe utilised now.” However, pro-vided the costs of suitableequipment aren’t too high, hefeels it might pay for itself. “If

you can compress in a more effi-cient way, you can put morechannels on a transponder ormultiplex and recoup the coststhat way.” Merely not having toproduce in interlaced and thende-interlace and re-interlace willmake it easier to deliver cleanpictures to encoding.

He wondered if companieswill be willing to tear out theirexisting copper infrastructureand replace it with fibre. “I thinknot, until they have to.” Besides,“copper is still viable, but youhave to look at reducing the num-ber of interconnects and cableruns. In SD we can get 300m, with3G it is 140m.” Because cablelengths can be so critical, he recommends reducing the num-ber of patch panels and goingmore directly between devices.However, “it starts to get a loteasier once you’ve done the acqui-sition”, thanks to being able to donon-realtime file transfers and the

use of compression for contribu-tion and distribution.

“1080p/50 means there is noneed for debate over which format is better for sport or dra-ma. The tricky bit is how youmake the business case for it,”said David Carr, OperationsDirector, Peel Media, which iscurrently building Media CityUK in Manchester, where theBBC will have its main centreoutside London.

“We do think [1080p/50] is thebest of both worlds and willbecome the standard, but it is not a priority yet,” said LukOvermeire, Technology Expert,VRT MediaLab, which has chosen 720p/50 as its preferredformat, but also uses 1080i/25.

The main technological barri-ers to moving quickly to 1080p/50are the lack of suitable sensors onaffordable cameras, issues with

www.tvbeurope.com AUGUST 2009 19

David Roth: Some 80% of all problems have been audio-related

since the start of high definition broadcasting on 1 December 2007


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Karl Slavik: Surround sound is now accepted as ‘the prime sound at prime time’


Dolby E, switching, and synchro-nisation and timing (which a jointEBU/SMPTE taskforce has beenset up to resolve).

But, “the most worrying thingis the IT chain,” said Hoffman,where he believes that advance-ments like Panasonic’s AVC-Ultra could have a big impact, asthere needs to be a 200+ Mbps I-frame codec in place to enablemainstream IT-based production.“We have too many compressionformats, and we would like to seea limit,” maybe to two or three.There are also issues about the bitrate needed for contribution linksand a need for suitable codecs.

However, demand for 3Gequipment is rising. About 30%of what Gennum sells now isalready 3G. “All of our customersare very committed to 1080p/50and are making a 1080p versionof everything they make,” saidNigel Seth-Smith, Gennum’sproject definition specialist.

Of course, there are also eco-nomic issues. “The price tag forany systems proposed has to beright,” said Hoffman, otherwise1080p/50 will have a negligibleimpact. Also, getting consumersto pay to upgrade for 1080p/50transmission might be a problem.“It has to look a lot better for theconsumer to buy it,” said Johns.

“If it is well made and if youhave a big screen [at least 47inches diagonal], you can defi-nitely show a difference, even at4H distance,” said Hoffman, but

it will need a new set top box orreceiver. He believes that theadvent of 3-D TV services couldalso drive adoption of 1080p/50.— David Fox

Audio: Overcoming challenges and complexitiesInsight into what makes for goodprogramme audio and explorationof how well the industry is copingwith the additional complexity oftime constraints and limited budgets.

Karl Slavik, Senior Consultant atAustrian audio consultancyArtecast and Dolby training part-ner, opened up the audio debateby declaring that surround soundis now accepted as the ‘primesound at prime time’. For thatmatter he believed that the reso-lution of today’s HD pictures wasabout right. “The work on ultrahigh definition TV is very impres-sive, but perhaps the screens big

enough for viewers to perceive 4kor 8k horizontal resolution maybe too much in a 20sqm apart-ment,” he quipped.

However some 88 years sincefilm pioneers found a way to synchronise sound with movingpictures, the broadcasting indus-try had become all too adept atmaking one lag behind the other,leading to what he described as a“heavily disappointing experienceat home.” Indeed along with

sudden jumps in loudness, asyn-chronous audio was the mostcommon viewer complaint. Theproblem is of course due to theincreasingly intensive — and inparticular separate — processingof video and audio signals, butthe first task was to define accept-able limits.

According to EBU TechnicalRecommendation R37, the maxi-mum deviation of audio duringproduction is a mere 5ms ahead

of video and 15ms behind, saidSlavik, noting that nature hasconditioned humans to morereadily accept sound delay. Forcontribution, EBU Tech 3311specifies up to 40ms lead and60ms lag, while according toITU-R BT.1359, the worst casefor viewers at home should notexceed 90ms ahead or 185msdelay. Typical display latencywhen not driven in native format(matched pixel-to-pixel withoutimage processing) is between 90to 180ms.

The trick was to embed audiowith video and/or match process-ing delays of one with the other.Special care must be taken whenconverting from 50Hz to 60Hzformats, he added, as both

embedded AES/EBU audio andDolby E are organised in units ofone 40ms picture frame. JasonPower, director of BroadcastSystems at Dolby, later assureddelegates that plug-ins were nowavailable to simplify conversion.

David Roth, engineering man-ager at HD Suisse, recalled whenan announcement added to thecentre channel at the start of aDolby Digital 5.1 sequence wasmysteriously missing from thebroadcast at home, despite all theequipment apparently workingperfectly. He then realised that thefirst two seconds after a transitionfrom stereo are lost as the AVreceiver switches on the addition-al speaker amplifiers.

The moral of the story wasdon’t put anything important onsurround channels just after thetransition — or in the case of HDSuisse, start designing a newstate-of-the-art digital audio con-trol and automation system thatallows 5.1 to be used all the time,even when the programme isstereo. This is not a trivial task, asat -18dB, the level of MPEGAudio is different from Dolby’sdialogue normalisation (dial-norm) reference level of -31dB —more than twice as loud in fact.

The obligation to support the three main languages ofSwitzerland confronted HDSuisse with further audio com-plexity. Indeed perhaps unsur-prisingly, Roth revealed that some80% of all problems had beenaudio-related since the start ofHD broadcasting on 1 December2007. He described how Dolby E,the system for conveying multi-channel audio across a stereopair, can be used to carry multi-lingual stereo soundtracks withGerman on channels 1&2, Frenchon 3&4, Italian on 5&6 and theoriginal language (eg English) orambience carried on 7&8.

Running full 5.1 soundtracksfor each language howeverrequires at least 24 channelsunless the ‘0.1’ LFE (low fre-quency effects) track is derivedfrom others, while adding a stereodownmix brings the total to some32 channels of audio — all ofwhich further justified investmentin the company’s new digitalaudio system.

Cross-fading two streams ofDolby E can also be problematic,as an unacceptable step change involume occurs at the switchoverbetween the two dialnorm levels.The new system at HD Suisse willprevent this by measuring the dia-logue level at ingest, and central-ising all Dolby metadata with acommon reference of -31dB.Coupled with ‘brick wall’ limitersto suppress peaks, rigorous level-matching and even the tailoringof dynamic range according toprogramme genre, Roth was con-vinced that the new system willdeliver the sound worthy of HDwith no nasty surprises for view-ers, or indeed listeners.





Sara Hill of blue post: All the major genres discussed current installations

and methods of maintaining production quality

In Daniella Nagler’s view HD’s true ‘coming ofage’ will be marked by the 2012 LondonOlympics, combining a major international sporting event with the near-completion of digital switchover (DSO) for UK DTT


Dolby’s Jason Power addedthat in the file-based world,metadata can be put aside duringediting and then re-applied to a.wav file. Just as careful design ofsystems and workflows was essen-tial to prevent loss of lip-sync,care must also be taken to keepmetadata in step, as otherwisetransitions to or from 5.1 and 2.0(stereo) could come early or late.“Broadcasters need to definedefault system behaviour if themetadata is lost,” said Power, lat-er revealing that there’s actually aBill before the US Congress tooutlaw sudden level changes inTV audio.

Candidly admitting thatupgrading SD equipment couldonly be afforded within normalreplacement cycles, Roth wasnonetheless the first to put hishead above the ‘HDSO’ parapetby declaring that the start of HDbroadcasting for all main chan-nels in 2012 will mark the end ofthe ‘HD Suisse’ brand, with thewithdrawal of SD simulcastinglikely in 2015. — Richard Dean

Production: New techniquesand processesThe backdrop: Will there be anynew SD installations or is HD nowthe only game in town?

The HD Masters conferenceexamined “where HD works andwhere HD works next,” as one ofthe organisers, Bob Sparks of theBKSTS put it in his introduction.Alongside current issues, such

1080p50, the suitability of low-budget HD cameras and spec-trum availability, discussionsranged to include Super HD,Ultra HD, 3DHD and even cubicpixels. Garbage in, garbage out. Ithas always been an axiom in tele-vision that you need to start withthe best pictures you can, becausethey are only going to get worse.

“Headroom is vitally impor-tant. It’s the thing that allows pro-gramme makers to degrade theirpictures before they send them tothe public and still look verygood,” said Andy Quested, Headof Technology, BBC HD.Unfortunately, “quality drops ateach stage of post production.”

BBC HD transmits usingMPEG-4 at 16Mbps and somethings are easy to encode, such as

drama, while others, such as sportare a lot more difficult.

In tests, at 5Mbps, the pro-gressive stuff still stands up toscrutiny, although it’s getting a bitnoisy, he explained. “As speedchanges, the effect of the codecchanges.” Codecs work differently,so that Dirac may produce watch-able pictures at rates that AVCdoesn’t, and the various codecsare improving all the time. Hebelieves that within ten years,viewable HD pictures at 2Mbpswill be possible.

Camera codecs also matter,although whether they are suit-able for HD transmission candepend on how they are used.The BBC has done trials withSony’s 35Mbps EX1, and foundthat if the scene is well lit it

“stands up pretty well for trans-mission, but in darker shots itbreaks up,” he said.

“For factual programming wewill need small cameras.Unfortunately, you get a goodcamera and you get a goodrecorder, but you never get themin the same box. It’s pointlessbuilding a camera with a low bitrate that you can’t grade.”

Picking the best camera forHD has also been a concern forGermany’s WDR, although itwanted something at the other

end of the scale. It recently dida lot of camera testing for HDproduction. Its drama produc-ers wanted to stick with film,but it has found that 16mm issuitable only if everything isoptimal, and you use the besttechnology, “otherwise you losequality,” said Walter Demonte,head of WDR’s camera andsound department.

It did a side-by-side compari-son of Super16 (Kodak Vision 3stock), against Sony’s F23, theArri D21 (recording to HDCAMSR) and the Red One (recordingto Compact Flash storage). Allthe digital cameras exhibited a lotless noise than film, and had a lotof headroom for colour correc-tion. It chose the D21, “becauseit’s a real 35mm film camera at thefront,” giving the most film-likelook (thanks to its 35mm depth offield) and had “no disadvantagesin comparison to film”. WDR

didn’t feel that lower-level cameras, such as the HDCAMHDW-750 (which it tested usingDigi-Primes and the Pro 35 adap-tor), had sufficient dynamic rangeor good enough picture qualityfor HD drama production.

The F23 was dismissed, inpart, because it was too big. TheD21 is also large, which makesSteadicam operation difficult,especially recording to anHDCAM SR deck (which is usedfor a secure workflow — WDR isnervous of losing any media).

He believes that the Red One isa better fit for independents, as itdoesn’t fit easily into a broadcastworkflow, although it did pro-duce excellent pictures.

However, Demonte did holdout hope for S16 production,thanks to Arri’s new “verygood” film degraining techno-logy. In production, with theD21, WDR created dailies on setusing XDCAM media. However,this resulted in problems forgrading, so in future it will pro-duce dailies in post. Not havingthe cost of film processinghelped offset the higher cost ofthe digital camera equipment.

“Sensitivity is still a problemwith single-chip cameras, but fordrama you don’t want a high sen-sitivity camera that causes you tostop the lens down and thereforelimit the depth of field.” WDRused the D21 up to 500 ISO.

OBs were the first mainstreamprogrammes to move to HD,but there were a lot of problemsto overcome on the way, saidRonald Meyvisch, technical andoperations manager, OutsideBroadcast. The first problem withHD was that “none of the ways ofmonitoring were very good.”


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Walter Demonte: WDR did a side-by-side comparison of Super16 against Sony’s F23, the Arri D21 and the Red One




Jean-Pierre Lacotte revealed that all six Frenchinternet service providers – who currently have6.2m SD subscribers – plan to launch HD broad-cast and VoD services over IPTV


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Watching the image on CRTGrade 1 monitors meant 20-inchmodels that were “heavy andexpensive”, while 12-inch CRTswere not full HD resolution.Plasma screens and computermonitors also had problems. Thesimplest and cheapest way to viewwas on SD monitors, but thequality was poor.

There were also problemswith cabling: A limit of 80m ona coax cable run and the need toreclock signals; fibre was animprovement, but also hadissues. For example, Dutch rollsdon’t work with fibre. There wasalso a need to remain compatiblewith both 16:9 and 4:3 SD,which meant installing a lot ofdown-converters and aspectratio converters. Lipsync wasalso a problem, and requiredembedded audio. Even today,Meyvisch advises always to perform an end-to-end test witha clapperboard.

The need to simulcastrequired double the hardwareand a complex set up, “which issomething to keep in mind themoment we start talking about3D.” While most of the prob-lems have been solved, at leastpartly, there are still some mat-ters to watch out for, such as alack of light, as gain can gener-ate more noise in HD, causingproblems for encoding.

There is still a lack of smallcameras capable of full HD. Herecommends that they shouldhave at least three 2MP sensors toprovide full resolution pictures,

and that HDV cameras shouldnot be used in multicamera set-ups as their lack of quality will betoo obvious.

There are also problems withspecial purpose mini cameras, asmost don’t have a monitor outputso that someone can frame a shoton location.

Beijing was the first Olympicsto be covered entirely in HD,offering more than 5,000 hours ofTV of 28 sports from 38 competi-tion venues. The IOC has nowestablished its own OlympicsHost Broadcaster (OBS), whichwill cover the Winter Olympics inVancouver in 2010 and theLondon games in 2012.

While the games are on, thehost broadcaster, and its inter-national broadcasting centre, isthe world’s biggest broadcaster.The Beijing games were shot in1080i/25, from which 16:9 and4:3 SD services were derived.There were also 5.1 and stereoaudio mixes for TV and a sepa-rate mix for radio.

The IBC covered some55,000sqm of floor space (andwill be about the same again inLondon for 2012), with 807km ofbroadcast cables, and using some24MW of “utterly resilient” pow-er. There were 91 host venue feeds(some venues needed multiplefeeds), with more than 40 feeds




High definition environment: Freeview HD’s initial channel bit rate of 12Mbps will drop to

around 9Mbps after DSO, as modulation switches from 16QAM to 64QAM

Intriguingly, Greg Bensberg said that a fifth slot may become available under

the current HD allocation scheme in 2013 after DSO has been completed


distributed to clients. As an anti-piracy measure, these feeds usedvideo fingerprinting, and werealso delivered at four differentbitrates for new media.

The video contribution net-work used one fibre per videostream, and was “highly resilient.”Except for the outlying venues,such as football from Hong Kong,all the feeds were delivered uncom-pressed to the IBC.

The EBU had seven STM-4streams (at 620Mbps each)delivered to Europe. The BBCtransmitted anything live with5.1 surround sound, but discard-ed the LFE signal for anythingrecorded, while any edited material went out in stereo“because, with eight audio channels, there was no room for commentary,” explainedPaul Mason, Head, OlympicBroadcasting Services London(who was responsible for theBBC transmissions last year).

There are currently 102 com-panies with 212 HD OB vans inEurope, and Reinhard Penzel,Principal, Jetzt, predicts thatabout 100 more HD OB truckswill arrive by the end of 2012. Inhis research into the Europeanmarket, he also found that thereare some 48 HD flyaway packsavailable, and these will be usedextensively for the 2010 WorldCup, as it would be more diffi-cult to transport vans to SouthAfrica, the HBS has opted touse flyaways.

About 30 new HD trucks arebeing built every year in Europe.On average, OB companies aredoing five live HD productions inEurope on any day, although thispeaks at the weekend.

There are currently 32 dedi-cated HD sports channels inEurope (out of 165 HD channelsin total), although other HDchannels sometimes cover sportstoo. The UK has the most HDchannels (36), followed by theNordic countries (20), France(18), Poland (17), Italy andRussia (10 each), and Portugaland the BeNeLux countries (9each), although no country hasmore than four dedicated HDsports channels.

For specialist cameras, Penzelsaid that there is now a greaterchoice in HD than in SD, as theultra-motion cameras were notused in SD.

“The economics of our indus-try are particularly challenged this year. The broadcast industryworldwide is a $20-$40 billionindustry, similar to the printerbusiness for Hewlett-Packard, soit is a very small industry,” saidJohn Luff, HD Consultant, andSMPTE Fellow

“The merging of IT and con-ventional television approachesis the important dream behindthe development of future technology. One of the mostimportant drivers in our indus-try is using consumer electronicproducts as the basis for profes-sional products.”

Because broadcast productsare now largely IT and consumertechnology based, obsolescencehappens more rapidly, prices are lowering significantly, but weare seeing an increased cost ofmaintenance (including replace-ment cycles) and the need to hire more IT engineers. There is also an increased need fortraining and education, he said.— David Fox

Regulation: Spectrumusage and businessstrategiesUnderstanding specifications forHD; DVB-T2 HD deployment;Transmission compression update;HD delivery options – what are thechallenges ahead?

Learning from the lessons ofFreeview SD — now watched in17.7m UK homes — Simon

Gauntlett, Technology Directorat the Digital TV Group (DTG)said that all DTT HD receivingequipment will be subjected to acomprehensive test and confor-mance regime to rigorouslyenforce the ‘D-Book 6’ HD spec-ifications published in March.“We are aiming to bring the highlevels of compliance charac-terised by low volume propri-etary vertical markets to the high

volume open standard horizontalmarket in Freeview HD equip-ment,” he said.

BBC Head of DistributionTechnology Graham Plumb saidthat five major transmission sites— including the UK’s most pow-erful at Crystal Palace, London —have now been earmarked forearly conversion to transmit the




three HD channels scheduled forlaunch by the end of this year,comprising a ‘Best of’ channelfrom the BBC plus evening simul-casts from ITV and Channel 4,with the Welsh language S4C forviewers in Wales.

Each mast will need to havenew MPEG-4 AVC H.264 compression and (currentlyunavailable) DVB-T2 trans-mission equipment installed,while existing MPEG-2/DVB-T channels will be moved from the HD-designated Multiplex B,one of the six granted toFreeview at launch in 1998.Viewers will need a new box towatch HD, and existing viewersin affected regions will have tore-tune.

The upshot was that some40% to 50% of the populationcould have access to highlightsfrom the FIFA World Cup inSouth Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010 on Freeview HD,claimed Plumb. The acceleratedroll-out follows evidence that the new compression and trans-mission standards yield overallbandwidth savings of 50%

compared to the 30% predicted,said Greg Bensberg, PrincipalAdvisor for Broadcasting at Ofcom.

According to Bensberg, theproposed evening HD simulcastfrom broadcaster Five — approvedby Ofcom this February in favourof proposals for Film 4 HD in theevening and S4C kids’ program-ming in the morning — could nowbecome available in some regionsby the end of 2010 “at the latest”.

Intriguingly Bensberg said thata fifth slot may become availableunder the current HD allocationscheme in 2013 after DSO hasbeen completed, leading many to

speculate that were BBC2 to makea successful bid, all of the tradi-tional analogue stalwarts couldsoon be up on Freeview HD.

Broadcasters would of coursebe able to apply for further HDbandwidth under the normal bidding process, Bensberg added,leaving many to wonder whowould be able to afford it.However he saw “no objection”to MPEG-4 being used for otherservices such as night-time downloads of SD material toPVRs for example.

Rainer Schaefer, Head of TVProduction Systems at standardsexperts IRT, explained thatexhaustive test sequences hadbeen run on several codecs usingMPEG-4 AVC H.264 — thecompression standard beingadopted for Freeview HD andmost new HD services world-wide — to establish the bit ratesat which pictures would appearindistinguishable from a refer-ence HD MPEG-2 codec operat-ing at some 24Mbps. MPEG-4picture quality was “generallybetter” even at half the bit rate,he observed.

Averaged results revealed anoptimum target bit rate of10.5Mbps for 720p/25 pictures(containing 720 lines scannedprogressively at 25fps), 12.8Mbpsfor 1080i/25 (1080 lines with

each frame containing two interlaced fields), and 12.1Mbpsfor 1080i/25 shown in a traditional4:3 aspect ratio rather than HD’snormal 16:9 widescreen format(1080 x 1440 pixels instead of1080 x 1920).

1080i/25 is of course the for-mat selected for Freeview HDpicture format, and in wasn’tlong before a question from thefloor challenged the platform’sbit rate in the light of the IRTfindings. Greg Bensberg admit-ted that Freeview HD’s initialchannel bit rate of 12Mbps willdrop to around 9Mbps afterDSO, as modulation switches

from 16QAM to 64QAM in thelight of higher digital transmis-sion power.

However the introduction ofstatmux will make better use ofthe multiplex bandwidth, claimedBensberg, while the increasing useof progressively-scanned material(1080p/25) for transmission —apparently already favoured bythe BBC — will cut out the ‘inter-lacing overhead’ hence reducingeach channel’s native bit rate. —Richard Dean

Special Feature: Super Hi-VisionMastering the future: Review ofSuper Hi-Vision demos fromIBC2008 and NAB2009; satellitetransmission tests for SHV; IPtransmission tests for SHV.

“Isn’t HD enough?”, asked DavidWood, chair of the European HDForum. Well, obviously not forNHK, the BBC, IRT, RAI and

the EBU, who formed theBroadcast Technology FuturesGroup in 2007, and took part in last year’s test of Super Hi-Vision transmissions at IBC.The results of which were dis-cussed in an interesting session atHD Masters.

“Super Hi-Vision is not just adream, but a real television sys-tem for the future,” said NHK’sDr Yoshiaki Shishikui. With aresolution of 7680x4320, it is 16times the resolution of HDTV,and has a native data rate24Gbps. However, the experi-ment at IBC last year, and devel-opments shown recently atNAB, demonstrate that the mostoptimistic prediction that itcould be viable for transmissionto the home in 15 years couldcome true.

Last year’s London transmis-sion was treated like a properOB, explained Dr JohnZubrzycki, Portfolio Manager,

BBC Research and Develo-pment. Video was converted to16 HDTV streams, then a single640mbps IP stream for transmis-sion (using MPEG-2). To aid co-ordination, there were alsoHD cameras and audio connec-tions at each end, using a10Mbps link. There were also 18 microphones to capture sur-round sound.

The transmission used redun-dant paths (except for 1,500m in Amsterdam), but there wereno failures. The demonstrationalso used Dirac SHV coding at128Mbps, but Zubrzycki hopesthat it can be reduced to70Mbps, to get it onto a singletransponder.

For the satellite feed fromTurin, RAI split the signal totwo transponders at 70Mbpseach, so it could be received by domestic dishes. It usedMPEG-4 and DVB-S2, “becauseit is very efficient and makes bestuse of the satellite capacity.From a technical point of view,SHV would be suitable for directto home,” said VittoriaMignone, RAI Rearch Centre.

RAI had about eight minutesof SHV video stored in Turin,which it transmitted via two36MHz Eutelsat transponders forthe test. “SHV is very demandingfor transmission, especially forbroadcasting. The reception partmust be very simplified and limit-ed to 140Mbps,” she said.

Because Ku band is almostcompletely occupied, it is neces-sary to move to Ka, where DVB-S2 allows multi-spot coverage.“For broadband, we have a largecapacity available, but we need a large investment. TerrestrialDVB-T2 is now a reality, butthat allows no more than40Mbps per channel, but wecould get 4k TV (one quarterSHV) on a single channel.”

SHV was displayed morerecently at NAB, where a number of improvements weredemonstrated. There is a newSHV camera, with higher sensi-tivity 8.9 megapixel 1.25-inchsensors (four of them — R, G1,G2 and B), and two new lenses(a wide-angle and a 10x zoom).NHK and NTT have collaborat-ed on new video coding based on


Vittoria Mignone, RAI Research Centre: “From a technical point

of view, Super Hi-Vision would be suitable for direct to home”




Dr Yoshiaki Shishikui: “Super Hi-Vision is not just a dream,

but a real television system for the future”

“The five point 3D plan: early clarity on Blu-ray3D format; showing of 3D movies on cable,satellite and online; sustained commitment to3D movie production; made-for-TV productions;and dual HD/3D-ready TV sets” — John Bird


H.264, giving scalable encodingand decoding, that can deliverSHV, 4k, HDTV and to mobiles.The demonstration used new 16-wavelength optical multiplex-

ing transmission equipment tosend the images from the LasVegas Strip to NAB.

In development there is a new33MP sensor, that can capturecolour pictures at 60Hz progres-sive, and NHK Executive ResearchEngineer, Dr Yuji Nojiri, hopes tohave a full-resolution prototypecamera, with three such sensors,working by 2010. It will have an

optical transmitter at 72gbps,which enables the camera to bemore than 1km from the CCUusing a single fibre cable.

A new full-resolution projec-tor, replacing the existing pair ofstacked projectors, make it a loteasier to set up. There are also

new high dynamic range projec-tors, with 8MP per signal. NHKhopes that 2010 will be the firstyear of full-resolution SHV, as itwill be the 80th anniversary of itsR&D Lab.

Zubrzycki believes there willbe a lot of use for SHV for spe-cial events over the next 10-15years, before services to homebecome practical. “We mustthink of it now if we want it inthe future,” added Mignone. “Ifwe start with 4k we may createthe need for 8k.”

NHK’s aim is to have an SHVbroadcast service in 20-25 years,said Shishikui, who hoped itcould be launched in time tomark the 100th anniversary ofJapanese broadcasting in 2025.Nojiri would like to see SHVbecome a broadcast reality with-in 15 years.

Higher resolution won’t lookas good without higher framerates, Richard Salmon, SeniorResearch Engineer, BBCResearch, told the conference, butsince TV frame rates were chosen,some 70 years ago, nobody hasthought much about them. That’sbecause 50Hz and 60Hz weregood matches for SD pictures.However, in an era of much larg-er screens, flicker has becomemore apparent, with a loss ofdetail evident in moving objects.

If you use a shorter shutterinterval you introduce temporalaliasing, resulting in spokedwheels revolving backwards.

In cinema, you use a slowerpan to avoid motion problems,“but for sport you have to followthe ball at whatever speed it goes,which causes problems in HD. InHD, the dynamic image is blurredand, in fact, is no better than instandard definition.”

Some years ago, the BBC pro-posed 80fps for HD, because sta-tionary HD pictures were so sharpcompared to movement that thedifference lead to a feeling of nau-sea. “That was solved by reducingaperture correction to reduce thedifference between static anddynamic, and increasing the shut-ter rate,” explained Salmon. “Thehigher the static resolution, thehigher the dynamic resolutionmust be for comfortable and life-like images.”

Today, there are 100Hz and120Hz upconverting displays, andhigher rates are being introduced.It solves the problem of flickeringand display smear. “It is donepurely to mitigate the problems ofLCD displays. It has nothing todo with improving the TV systemas a whole, but it means displayscould accommodate higher framerates.” If SD is acceptable at50Hz, then full HDTV needs150Hz, and “as resolutionincreases, we probably want atleast 300Hz.”

However, moving to higherframe rate production is not aneasy evolution. “It’s a revolutionand something to be incorporated


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In a May survey by the EBU of 53 broadcasters,just one of 37 who answered the question statedthat it had migrated its production facility toHDTV. A further 20 (54%) have partially migrated


in a future TV system. 300Hzwould be a very good masteringformat for the Olympics, forexample, because it is easy tomake 60 and 50Hz versions.” Itis also compatible with mainsfrequencies. However, it wouldlead to shorter exposures foreach frame (and sensitivityissues) and a loss of the filmlook. There are certainlyimprovements visible in a moveto 100 or 120Hz production (asSalmon demonstrated in one ofthe exhibits at HD Masters).

The good news is that “highframe rates should be easier tocompress, because there aresmaller differences betweenframes and each frame is sharper,so motion is easier to predict, andyou get rid of temporal aliasing,so it is clearer. Compression canbe more efficient if there are 150frames in a GoP.

“As each frame is so similarto the next one, it is easier toremove noise, and the eye does-n’t notice random noise at higher frame rates. As youincrease the sampling rate, youcan go to lower bit rates.”

A further advantage is that, inpost, you can filter out flashesfrom flash photography.

There is further work to do,especially regarding compressionand the visibility of noise, and theydon’t yet know how much morebandwidth will be needed. Moredetails are available in a BBCResearch white paper (WHP169 —available at bbc.co.uk/rd), and the

BBC is doing some work withNHK Research on this.

In the meantime, a quickimprovement to HD would be “toditch interlaced at the first oppor-tunity,” said Salmon. “Interlace isjust harder to compress, harder todo everything with. You can com-press progressive so much moreeasily than interlaced. Interlace isa compression system for the ana-logue world.”— David Fox

Consumer Perspective:New services and 3DExclusive insight into BSkyB trials of3D in broadcasting; the co-existenceof HD and 3D; The great 3Ddebate – is 3D the next HD?

John Bird of the Future SourceConsultancy reminded delegatesthat 3D is not a new idea. The

first patent for 3D film processingwas granted in 1898, with ThePower of Love emerging as thefirst commercially released 3Dmovie in 1922. After years in thewilderness the concept was nowquite literally back in the publiceye, he insisted, with 41 million adultUS cinemagoers (16% of the market)watching a 3D film last year.

Some 30% of the 8,700 D-cinemas worldwide were 3D enabled,he claimed. However nearly half(48%) of the Hollywood studios’income now comes from homevideo — could 3D TV versionsattract a price premium? Researchsuggested that 50% of TV viewerswould be prepared to pay morefor a 3D set, said Bird, althoughhow much and for what type of3D was not revealed. Whiletoday’s sub-US$20 polarising

spectacles were a useful transi-tional tool that escaped the costand complexity of shutteredglasses, he believed that these werenot acceptable in the long term.

The ultimate answer was anautostereoscopic technology, but

he conceded that this could take atleast five years to achieve the highquality and low costs required fora mass market. The obstacles werea lack of standards with compet-ing distribution and display formats, compounded by the all-pervading economic downturn.

Bird unveiled a five pointplan for a successful 3D TV roll-out – early clarity on a Blu-ray3D format, the showing of 3Dmovies on cable, satellite andonline, sustained commitment to3D movie production and con-version of classics, made-for-TVproductions from 2011, and dualHD/3D-ready TV sets. If allwent well, and he admitted itwas a big if, take-up in the UKcould reach between 6-12% inthe UK and up to 45% in the USby 2014. In any event 3D TVmust be seen as a long term proj-ect, he cautioned.

Bravely entering the lion’s den of 3D TV at HD Masters —which for anybody doubting theconnection relies on HD toobtain sufficient resolution —was Chris Johns, Chief Engineerfor Broadcast Strategy at BSkyB.A mixed programme of 16Mbpsvariable bit rate (VBR) contentsent via a secure test channel fromBSkyB in Osterley was on displayat the conference, received via astandard Astra dish on the new£5,000 46-inch 3D TV set fromJVC. Prior to transmission theleft and right images were

anamorphically squeezed side-by-side into the same picture. Inthe set, images are expanded tofull width and overlaid on thescreen, with an opposing polar-isation (matching the viewer’spolarised spectacle lenses)applied to each.

Johns pointed out that themore than 1m Sky HD STBscurrently deployed, and all theother links in the chain exceptthe viewer’s existing TV, werecompatible. Hollywood is pour-ing millions of dollars into 3Dmovies with more than 40 currently in production, he said,while cinemagoers seem pre-pared to pay £3 to £4 more towatch them — so it was onlyright that options for 3D TVshould be explored.

Freely admitting that BSkyBwas still learning about 3D TVproduction, Johns noted that current camera rigs were ratherbulky. Whether using a tele-prompter-style beam-splittingmirror with one camera mountedvertically, or two cameras mount-ed side-by-side, rigs could perhapsoccupy five otherwise revenue-generating seats at a sport stadium.However he suggested that theedit cut rate and hence the num-ber of cameras could be reducedto enable the viewer to ‘lingerlonger’ and explore each scene, anargument reminiscent of thatused for early HD coverage. Itwas also possible to fool the eye tothinking that narrow depth of

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Peter Angell (right): “There’s no way we can reduce the number of cameras if we want credible live 3D TV”

“For factual programming we will need smallcameras. Unfortunately, you get a good cameraand you get a good recorder, but you never getthem in the same box” — Andy Quested, BBC



field 2D shots were 3D if skilfullyintercut with ‘real’ 3D.

However Peter Angell, whoproduced both the 2002 FIFAWorld Cup in Korea and Japanand the first all-HD 2006 FIFAWorld Cup in Germany andAustria, and is now Director ofProduction and Programming atHost Broadcast Services includ-ing its 3D production arm, couldhardly disagree more. “For theWorld Cup in 2006 we used 18cameras per match,” he said,“but some 31 will be deployed foreach game in 2010. There’s noway we can reduce the number ofcameras if we want credible live3D TV.”

It is estimated that 6% to 10% ofthe population cannot perceive 3Dvia mechanical means, while somequestion whether the brain will everbe capable of believing the presenceof depth while being required tofocus on a single plane for anythingmore than short periods.

John Zubrzycki of BBC R&D(now back with its original nameafter a period as Research &Innovation) said that minimisingthe occurrence of objects out infront of the screen helps reduce

eye strain. He also recalled thenow-defunct ‘multiview’ projectwith Philips, in which parallaxwas added between overlaid dis-plays to create genuine separationbetween front and back.

Ex-Sony and Snell & WilcoxHD guru Peter Wilson, nowDirector at High Definition &Digital Cinema Ltd, said thatwhile movie makers could spendtime optimising images in post,live 3D TV events ran the risk ofinducing nausea. “During live 3Dproduction it’s likely that viewerswill inadvertently be presentedwith images requiring their eyesto diverge, or for one to look upwhile the other looks down, nei-ther of which is a comfortableexperience,” he said.

Another risk was ‘giantism’,caused by the use of long lensesconverging at too high an angle.“The brain attempts to resolvepictures apparently viewed by agiant being, leading to theimpression that a bunch ofdwarves are running around the sports field,” said Wilson.“Given that long lenses are a staple of sports, a whole newgrammar will need to be devel-oped for 3D coverage.”

A point of consensus wasreached when the panel agreedthat nobody expected all TV to be3D all of the time. However 3DTV’s position as a ‘new services’

topic — and its place on the HDMasters agenda — now seemsassured. “There’s a bit of a bunfight currently going on betweenpatent holders, who all believethey will be the next Dolby earn-ing generous licence fees,” saidWilson. “But there’s no doubtthat studios are now anxious toset proper 3D production stan-dards via SMPTE.” Furtherinvestment was also needed fromthe consumer electronics indus-try, added Angell.

Wrapping up the most suc-cessful HD Masters conferenceyet, John Luff concluded thatviewers were voting with theirfeet on HDTV equipment,HD production had nowreached a critical mass, and acommitment to HD broadcast-ing at some point was nowalmost ubiquitous worldwide.Television facilities are nowinstalling 3Gbps (1080p) infra-structure as replacement cyclescome around, paving the way for

a transition to the file-basedworkflow of today’s SD.

Tantalising developments layon the horizon, with the SHV(Super Hi-Vision) format pro-posed by NHK of Japan, the BBC,and Italy’s RAI promising to giveviewers a ‘clear window’ mediaexperience with four times HD’sresolution and 22.2 audio chan-nels. In the meanwhile, both 3DTV and Blu-ray offer importantnew avenues for today’s HDTV, heconcluded. — Richard Dean



A mixed programme of 16Mbps VBR content sent via secure test channel from BSkyB was on display at

HD Masters, received via standard Astra dish on the new £5,000 JVC 46-inch 3D TV set


IS 3D TV a realistic goal or will it be a tinyniche activity well into the future? Two recent reports shed significant light on the progress of 3D beyond the cinema screen, asChris Forrester reports

LG on June 18 unveiled a 3D (or we shouldsay a stereoscopic) version of its popular50-inch LCD high-def TV unit. This 3Dmodel is now added to other similar devicesfrom Hyundai and most other major players. 3D, for the set-manufacturers, isundoubtedly their next major thrust as wellas delivering better retail margins and atouch of consumer sparkle at trade showsand the like.

Moreover, we are all aware of the con-siderable push towards 3D being made byBSkyB, NHK, Fox, NBC, Turner and otherbroadcasters. But is 3D more than a ‘Fieldof Dreams’? If it’s built, will the puntersbuy? Or will we get a ruinous ‘standardsbattle’ into the process?

The world recognises that 3D in thecinema makes sound commercial sense,despite significant extra production costs.But will this enthusiasm transfer intobroadcasting’s strictly 2D world? The

question has been examined in a majorstudy by Screen Digest’s Global MediaIntelligence (GMI) division*, and thereport pulls no punches. GMI’s most pos-itive scenario makes somewhat depressingreading, stating that just over 15% of totalTV sets installed worldwide could be

3D-capable by 2015. The other end of thescale, its worst-case scenario, suggests thenumber could be nearer 3%, which is — atbest — niche.

The UK’s influential Digital TelevisionGroup (DTG) in its recent 3D study foundtwo distinct camps: One informal groupingadvocates a wait and see approach withcommon and agreed standards at its core.The other view, firmly backed by BSkyB, isto start transmissions as soon as possible,using established HD protocols, existingset-top boxes and well-understood cameraand transmission standards.

The DTG will host a seminar in Londonthis September to discuss the options, andthe topic will figure in a number of sessionsat IBC. “Whoever goes first could set thestandards not just for the UK but possibly

the rest of Europe,” said DTG director general Richard Lindsay-Davies. “It is ourjob to try to create both a commercial andtechnical balance.”

BskyB’s view, at least according to BrianLenz, its head of new product and design, isto be more aggressive. “Harnessing existingcapabilities clearly has the potential to leadto an earlier introduction of initial 3D serv-ices, which is good for both consumers andthe industry alike. By validating the demandfor 3D through this approach, you wouldhave to assume that this would [also] serveto highlight the demand for free-to-air, non-HD propositions further down the line.”

GMI’s study backs the adoption of con-sistent standards, saying 3D’s take-up couldthen be much better. “Cross-platform stan-dardisation would drive rapid uptake, withthe percentage of sets sold with 3D cap-ability worldwide reaching 32% in 2015.”

The GMI study also reminds us thatseveral broadcasters have conducted 3Dtrials but developments in 3D TV pro-gramming are a long way behind 3Dmovies. Fox Sports and Turner Sports haveutilised 3D cinema screens for specialevents. Fox showed a college football game

in 3D at select cinemas in January 2009.Other broadcasters have focused on pro-moting 3D using existing displays. NBC,for instance, has experimented withanaglyph 3D broadcasting. In February2009, the network transmitted a 90-secondpreview of DWA 3D movie Monsters vs.Aliens in Color-Code’s anaglyph formatduring a Super Bowl commercial break.According to NBC, 150 million pairs of theglasses required to view the ad in 3D weredistributed free ahead of the event. NBCsubsequently broadcast an episode of itsTV series Chuck in the same format, encour-aging viewers to re-use the 3D glasses.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic current 3Dbroadcasting is in Japan where NHK, since2007, has used its BS-11 satellite system totransmit 20 or so minutes a day of sport andtravel programming in stereoscopic 3D.

3D ARPUBut the TV industry already has its ownTrojan Horse, in the shape of 3D games,stresses GMI: “The requirement for 3Dglasses might be less of an issue for gamers,given their willingness to adopt peripherals,although the interactive nature of videogames (as opposed to the passive experi-ence of movie and TV viewing) presentssome unique issues for 3D. Sony’s afore-mentioned demonstrations offered a com-pelling example of 3D versions of gameswith fixed-camera viewpoints, such as first-person and driving experiences.”

But what do we know of broadcaster’sstrategies as far as 3D is concerned? It isrecognised that Japan’s leading broadcast-ers see 3D as a methodology for pushingthe creative envelope that bit further, whichis no doubt why they are also backing 4ktransmission. All agree that 3D could gen-erate extra revenues, and there’s nobody

more focused on Average Revenue Per User(ARPU) than BSkyB.

While BSkyB has hinted that it couldreplicate the top-up subscription fees itcharges for its HD channels for 3D, Skyalso noted that advertisers have declared aninterest in potential for 3D commercials sothis could represent another opportunity togenerate incremental revenue.

But the study warns that there is notyet a consensus in Hollywood around thepotential for a mark-up on 3D content.“Lessons from format wars like HD DVDand BD, VHS and Betamax or transmis-sion standardisation towards MPEG sug-gests that the market will not toleratemultiple 3D standards. Which format ischosen may ultimately preclude some ofthe technologies currently touted, whilethe process of standardising is likely toface a lengthy period of lobbying fromproprietary technologies and their associ-ated vendor groups to determine which, ifany, get a major share of this market,”warns GMI.

*Will 3D be the next big thing afterHDTV?” Screen Digest


TVBEUROPE HD EUROPE

3D production trials: Some broadcasters have focused on promoting 3D using existing displays

3D: If we build it, will they come?HD and 3D

“Whoever goes first could set the standards not just forthe UK but possibly the rest of Europe. It is our job to try to create both a commercial and technical balance” — Richard Lindsay-Davies, DTG

TVBE Aug P35-43 HD V2 29/7/09 15:35 Page 36

By Randy Conrod,product manager DigitalProducts, Harris BroadcastCommunicationsThis article reviews the state of theart for 3Gbps infrastructures today.Level A and Level B are discussedas pertaining to video and audioformats and the equipment thatsupports each format.

The 3Gbps infrastructure hasmany possibilities, including single-programme content for 1080p; twoprogrammes of SD, 720p or 1080p(can be differing programmes);or the left eye/right eye format for3D (three-dimensional) television.Given these numerous possibilities,identifying the signal type is impor-tant, and metadata is a solution for doing so. Other topics discussedinclude support for 32 channels ofembedded audio, 3Gbps-capableequipment and 3D in the home.

Level A and Level BThere are two methods for organ-ising the video essence, audioessence, data and metadata for the3Gbps serial digital signal — LevelA and Level B. Level A follows thesame data organisation as 1080iand 720p 1.5Gbps serial digital sig-nals. The video is carried in twostreams — Stream A and Stream B.

Stream A contains the lumi-nance information with its VANC(vertical ancillary data space) andHANC (horizontal ancillary dataspace), and Stream B contains theCbCr colour difference signals withits VANC and HANC. The YCbCrcolor space has been utilised bybroadcasters since the inception ofdigital television in the early ’90s.The sampling structure is 4:2:2,where the luminance (4) is sampledtwice as often as the color differ-ence (2:2).

A 10-bit digital word isutilised when sampling the sig-nal. The only difference is that1080i and 720p take up 1.5Gbpswhen in the serial digital domainand 1080p takes up 3Gbps in the

serial digital domain because ithas twice the data (ie, not inter-laced, progressive).

In Fig 1, the two-stream dataorganization is shown for 3Gbps1080p Level A.

Level B supports the DualLink (2 x 1.5Gbps) over one3Gbps serial digital connection.For several years, Dual Link hasbeen utilised in production formany types of video formats.Link A is formatted in a similarway to 1.5Gbps, as there are twostreams (A and B). Link B has acomparable formatting. Thismeans there are four streams in aDual Link Level B signal, eachwith its own VANC and HANC.The supported formats includeYCbCr 4:2:2 10-bit (as in tele-vision signals).

In Fig 2, the dual link dataorganisation is shown for 3Gbps1080p Level B.

Other formats utilised in production are RGB/4:4:4/12-bit, RGBA (A = Alpha or keychannel)/4:2:2:4/10-bit, YCbCr/4:4:4/12-bit, and YCbCrA/4:2:2:4/10-bit. Frame rates typi-cally supported are 23.98, 24, 25,29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60fps(frames per second). Televisionbroadcasters do not utilise these additional formats — they utilise the YCbCR 4:2:2 10-bit format.

Level B also supports a 2xmode that will carry two SD(270Mbps) or two 1.5Gbps 720por 1080i signals. Although thesetwo signals might be carryingdifferent content, they must be

the same format and phase-aligned. This is the same formatto carry 3D TV signals (3D) forthe left eye and right eye stereo-scopic image.

In Fig 3, the Dual Link dataorganisation is shown for 3Gbps 2x1080i or 720p Level B.

Since the 3Gbps serial digitalinterface supports so many formatsor payloads for video, it is impor-tant to utilise the ‘payload ident-ifier’ or ‘packet descriptor,’ whichdescribes the signal. This metadatais placed in the VANC three linesafter the vertical switching line andincludes the following information:Level A; Level B; Frame rate; Bitdepth; Interlace; Progressive; Colorspace; RGB; YCbCr.

The packet descriptor is impor-tant going forward so that wheninterfacing equipment, it is easierto make things work.

Embedded audioThe 1.5Gbps serial digital inter-face supports 16 channels ofembedded audio. Level A sup-ports 16 channels of embeddedaudio in a similar fashion as1.5Gbps. Level B supports up to32 channels of embedded audio.The question is why doesn’t LevelA support 32 channels of embed-ded audio? The answer is that thestandard has simply not evolvedfor 32-channel support for LevelA at this time; however, it is quitepossible that this may happen inthe future.

Despite the incurred cost, plan-ning to build a lab to experimentwith these new technologies may be

in order for those interested inmoving to 1080p and/or 3D televi-sion. With all of the formats thatcan be encountered, determiningwhat equipment supports a partic-ular format will be a daunting task,and testing devices before commis-sioning will be required. Today, testequipment is available for 3Gbps.

Cameras and tape transportsthat support 1080p and 3D contentare becoming available. It is veryimportant to understand whether aSingle Link 3Gbps or Dual Link 1.5interface is being used. Today,depending on the manufacturer,there may not be support for all of

the formats mentioned in this article.For instance, Level B 3Gbps is sup-ported for 1080p and 3D by only onemanufacturer. In another case, 3D issupported by a Dual Link 1.5Gbps.

Today’s routing switchers anddistribution equipment support3Gbps, and due to their nature,allow for the carriage of all for-

mats. Conversion equipment maysupport some of the formats, butwill most likely not support all.There is a movement toward sup-porting YCbCr 4:2:2 10-bitbetween Level A and Level B.

For 3D processing, frame syncs,proc amps and conversion will needa dual-channel implementation withthe capability of a control manage-ment system to affect both channelssimultaneously. These products needto move from two-channel to single-channel devices, dependent on theinput signal encountered.

Master control and distributioninto the home will have to evolve tocarry this additional information,whether it is 1080p or 3D TV.

1080p and 3D in the home environment1080p is now available for the homevia 1080p monitors and Blu-Raytechnology. For 1080p broadcasts,as mentioned above, the distribu-tion system needs to evolve to sup-port this format. Regarding 3D,

there are four competing standardsfor 3D in the home environment.Each of these standards requiresthe use of 3D glasses by the viewer.Television sets with this capabilitywill be available in 2010. However,it is too early to tell whether onestandard will dominate or whethermultiple standards will be used.

It is still early in the movetoward 3Gbps equipment purchas-es. Future-proofing with a pur-chase of a router and distributionsystem that supports 3Gbps makessense because any 270Mbps SD,1.5/3Gbps HD signal can passthrough it. Carrying two signalsper link for higher density, 3D or1080p in the future is entirely possible. 3Gbps-capable capture,record/playback production andprocessing and master controlequipment will continue to evolveas the market demands for produc-tion of 1080p and 3D ramp up. Asfor distribution, the standards willhave to evolve for 1080p and 3D inthe home environment.


TVBEUROPE HD EUROPE

State of the art for 3GbpsFuture-proofing with a purchase of a router and distribution system that supports 3Gbps makes sense because any 270Mbps SD, 1.5/3Gbps high definition signal can pass through

Fig 1: The two-stream data organization is shown for 3Gbps 1080p Level A

Fig 2: The dual link data organisation is shown for 3Gbps 1080p Level B

Fig 3: The Dual Link data organisation is shown for 3Gbps 2x 1080i or 720p Level B

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By Grant PettyCEO, Blackmagic DesignYou might have heard about opti-cal fibre but considered it tooexpensive and too complicated touse. This common perception ofoptical fibre is not necessarily cor-rect. Consumers are now gettingaccess to higher quality tele-visions and media sources thatfeature high bit depth and fastframe rate 1080p/50 and 1080p/60video. These media sources arenot just from broadcasters, as cus-tomers are getting content onlineand on Blu-ray Disk as well.

It’s vital the content produc-tion side of television can keepup with these high quality levelsso customers get the best viewingexperience. It’s likely that resolu-tions and frame rates will keepincreasing, and this will putimmense pressure on productiontechnologies, such as SDI, tokeep up.

In this article I describe thecurrent state of the art in SDI

technology and describe some ofits benefits and limitations as wemove towards the future. I then

explain how optical fibre SDIworks, as well as its benefits andlimitations.

Optical fibre technology is theonly viable technology that willallow television production to

move into the future. This isbecause optical fibre is virtuallyfuture proof, runs incredibly longdistances, is low cost, and it’s amature technology which is avail-able now.

As video technology has pro-gressed, resolutions haveincreased, frame rates have inc-reased, and more production isbeing done in the full bandwidth4:4:4 RGB colour-space. Theseincreases in quality have trans-formed video production and pro-vide a fantastic viewing experi-ence for consumers. In addition,these technologies have allowedrealtime 2k editing using the sameequipment used for SD and HDwork. 2k film workflow has nowbecome as easy as video.

All these high resolution, highframe rate video standards havepushed the limits of the SDI videostandard. One solution has beento use Dual Link SDI where twoHD-SDI links were connected toallow a 4:4:4 RGB workflow.However this is extremely cum-bersome, and doubles the cost ofcabling and routing video.

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Optical fibre SDI: Next generation SDIWhy it’s not too expensive or too complicated to use!

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Introducing 3Gbps SDI Back in 2007, Blackmagic Designintroduced the Multibridge Eclipseediting and HDLink Pro monitor-ing products. Both these productsfeatured 3Gbps SDI that alsoswitched to SD or HD-SDI. Thenlast year at NAB 2008, we intro-duced DeckLink HD Extreme edit-ing, Videohub routers and MiniConverters, all featuring 3GbpsSDI. Introducing 3Gbps SDI elim-inated the need to use dual cablesjust to get 4:4:4 video, and alsoallowed native 2k editing with a sin-gle BNC connection.

These products looked thesame to end-users, as we intro-duced them at the same cost as theproduct models they replaced. Wefelt this was the only way to reallyintroduce 3Gbps SDI technologyin any meaningful way. Thisincreased the number of post pro-duction facilities and broadcast-ers that were 3Gbps SDI ready.Since that time more third partymanufacturers have also intro-duced 3Gbps SDI ready equip-ment. Many post productioncompanies are now using 2k on3Gbps SDI-based products, andthis is dramatically simplifyingfeature film workflows.

Where is conventional SDItechnology heading? At the time ofwriting, no semiconductor com-pany has any new componentroadmaps for SDI speeds fasterthan 3Gbps. They all seem to beworking harder on breaking the300 foot limit of SDI’s cablelength. This is nice but still limit-ing. This means there currentlydoes not appear to be any majorrevolution coming to improve theperformance of SDI cable inter-connects in any way. So the answerto where conventional SDI tech-nology is heading appears to be“nowhere any time soon”.

What are the limits of conven-tional SDI? Overall the SDI stan-dard is incredible. SDI is like a firehose of pixels and is so simple touse. It’s the only true open stan-dard to which any company canbuild products. This has resulted inhundreds of companies producingsome extremely innovative prod-ucts. It’s amazing to go to NABeach year and see the huge numberof exciting new products released!

SDI leaves every pixeluntouched and clean, works inboth RGB and YUV, works inboth 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, can switchspeeds between dozens of differ-ent SD, HD and 2k formats, andeven includes a massive 16 chan-nels of digital audio as well astime code and all kinds of otherancillary data. It can be convert-ed, routed, and easily connected

all over your building. It’s no won-der it was adopted so quickly, andhas been able to keep pace withtelevision production over thepast two decades.

However there are some limi-tations that are becoming appar-ent including:

• SDI really only handles 300ft inlength in HD. Broadcasters con-stantly struggle with this limitation.

• SDI is speed limited. We arestuck at 3Gbps speeds currently,and there is no road map for anyfaster speeds in the future.

• SDI uses BNC connectors thatare no longer used in networking.BNC connecters are also very rareon consumer equipment now.BNC connectors are becomingexpensive as cables need to be custom-made.

• SDI cables need to be changedevery time a new higher speedSDI is introduced. When SDIwas first introduced, cables previously used for compositewere often not good enough and needed to be replaced tohandle the data rates of SDI.When HD-SDI was introduced,


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Grant Petty: ‘Optical fibre

technology is the only viable

technology that will allow television

production to move into the future’



the same upgrades wererequired, and some cables have also required replacementto handle new 3Gbps SDI speeds. This constant

upgrading of cabling is incredi-bly expensive.

• SDI cables are big. The cablesare quite thick, and need quitea lot of space when runningmany cables down racks, andthrough buildings. Anyone whohas seen SDI cables running into equipment rooms will know how much space they require!

How does optical fibre solve these problems?Optical fibre can solve these prob-lems easily. It’s also worth notingthat optical fibre SDI is the same bitstream as conventional SDI, but it’sjust passed down an optical fibreinstead of copper cable. This meansoptical fibre has all the benefits ofconventional SDI but removes someof the limitations as outlined:

• Optical fibre can run massivelengths. Blackmagic Designoptical fibre products are ratedto pass SDI pathological testsup to 45 KM in standard defini-tion, and 25 KM at 3Gbps. You

really need to look at thosenumbers again to understandwhat this means. SDI handles300ft, but optical fibre can handle 147,000 ft. It’s quite an improvement!

• There are virtually no speed lim-its on optical fibre cables. Copperbased cable has bandwidth limitsso, as data speeds increase, thecables cannot transfer the higherfrequency data. Semiconductorcompanies have spent a lot of timecramming higher bandwidth downcopper cables, a little like modemmanufacturers did back in the1980’s. However there is only somuch they can do. Optical fibre islike broadband, and there is virtu-ally no speed limits.

• Optical fibre SDI uses the samecommonly available cables thathigh speed networking uses. Mostoptical fibre SDI products usestandard LC type connectors andthese cables are on the shelf atyour local electrical wholesaler.The optical cables we purchasedwere about half the cost of thecopper BNC cables we get custommade for us. Also the optical fibrecables we purchased are ‘duplex’cables, which is an engineer’s wayof saying they work in both direc-tions. This simply means there aretwo cables moulded together. Youcan unclip the LC connectors andpull them apart to make two indi-vidual cables. That’s halved thecost again!

• You can keep using the samecables even as new high qualityvideo standards are released,requiring even higher SDI dataspeeds in the future. 3Gbps is easyfor optical fibre, and much higherspeeds can be run down exactlythe same cables. This eliminatesthe very expensive need to con-stantly upgrade copper cablesbecause you can plug the sameoptical fibre cables into higherspeed equipment in the future.

• Optical fibre cables are verythin and flexible with most of thethickness from the outer jacketthat protects the fibre itself. Youcan get multi core optical cableswith many individual fibres andthe overall size is about the sameas a single copper BNC cable.

Limitations of optical fibreThe main limitations of opticalfibre are related to cost and lackof standardisation. Cost has beenhigh because no equipment hasoptical fibre SDI built in, so con-verters are needed on every link.Only broadcasters who needed tobeat the 300ft SDI length limita-tion have used optical fibre in thepast, so the market was verysmall, and the converters on themarket were expensive.

You needed one converter foreach end of the optical cable andthe converters often cost thousands

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Optical fibre SDI:Next generation SDI


SDI is like a fire hose of pixels and is so simpleto use. It’s the only true open standard to whichany company can build products


of dollars. So it’s the convertersthat cost all the money, not theoptical fibre cable itself!

The other problem is stan-dardisation. There are differenttypes of optical fibre cable, con-nectors, and light frequencies.These can be a bit confusing,however there is a SMPTE stan-dard for optical fibre SDI whichnow solves this problem. TheSMPTE standard features LCtype optical fibre connectors,1310nm light frequency, laserdriver and the optical fibre linkmust pass the SDI pathologicaltest signal correctly. So this meansthe only real limitation of opticalfibre is equipment cost. If thisproblem can be solved, then opti-cal fibre can be adopted as easilyas copper SDI cables.

To make optical fibre trulycompetitive with traditional cop-per SDI cabling, the optical fibreconnections need to be built intotelevision equipment for no extracost. Only with built in opticalfibre SDI connections will theadoption cost of optical fibre bejust the optical fibre cable itself.Built in optical fibre then totallyeliminates the cost of convertingto and from optical fibre, andbecause it’s on the connectionpanel of television equipment, it’smore likely to be used.

Blackmagic Design launchedfour new products at NAB 2009that have built in optical fibre SDIconnections — Mini ConverterOptical Fiber, HDLink OpticalFibre, DeckLink Optical Fibre,and Ultrascope. BlackmagicUltraScope is the world’s first PC-based waveform monitoring that’sdesigned for editing and colourcorrection work, and that’s alsotechnically accurate. It featuresboth copper SDI and optical fibreSDI, and retails for only US$695.This is thousands of dollars lessthan other products, but alsoincludes more scope views, a muchnicer user interface, and opticalfibre SDI or copper SDI inputs.

With these new products, webelieve that optical fibre technol-ogy will now be more accessibleto small and growing televisionproduction studios. Users willnow be able to afford to use opti-cal fibre between equipment, andthen get benefits in the future asvideo quality increases, and dataspeeds of SDI also increase.Users will no longer need to ripout old cables every time videoquality increases. They can alsouse local electricians to run SDIvideo cables, because electriciansunderstand and install opticalfibre every day, so they are veryfamiliar with it.

Lastly I think it’s very roman-tic to think of video travelling allover a facility as pulses of light!Even putting aside all the techni-cal, financial, and future proofingbenefits of optical fibre, it is mindblowing to know that images,which are really just digitalisedlight, are now being transfered bylight. It really feels like the rightway to do it!


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Today’s broadcast engineer lookingat any new or modernisedinfrastructure should be consideringthe possibility that, at some time inthe future, there will be a need torun 1080p high definition signals.That means being prepared totackle the tough challenge of datarates of 3Gbps. Some may even belooking beyond that, to 3D or SuperHi-Vision, which may call for evenhigher data rates. So, copper orfibre — which is it to be? Opinionfrom Mike Purnell, director, Argosy

There may not yet be any equip-ment in the facility that is 3Gbps— or even HD — but it does makesense to establish the basics now,which means at the very leastinstalling appropriate cables.Does this mean the time has cometo ditch co-axial copper in favourof fibre?

There are arguments on bothsides. Sending 3Gbps signalsdown copper cable calls for a veryhigh standard of cable and a newset of installation skills – it is alltoo easy to bend or crush co-axwhich will dramatically alter itsimpedance performance and maywell mean that the signal does notget through. Even with perfectwireman work, it is only now thatproducts are emerging capable ofdriving 100m of co-ax at 3Gbps:experienced systems engineers

will know that 100m is not toogenerous in typical installations.

Fibre does not have this issue:distance is, to all intents and pur-poses, no object. Fibre is a littledelicate so will have a minimumradius for curves, but providedyou observe this then you canroute fibre anywhere you want.Some see the clinching argumentin the fact that fibre by the drumis now cheaper than copper, cer-tainly the very high quality co-axthat you need for HD.

On the other hand, there is asyet no fibre equipment. While it ispossible to build a fibre router,

using precision mirrors, at this timeno-one offers such a finished prod-uct. So every time the signal goesinto or out of a device, you need anoptical/electrical interface. Thesecost money, draw power, and emitheat. So the economic argument isnot so strong, and the environmen-tal issues become a consideration.

One of the key arguments infavour of copper remains the factthat there are plenty of wiremenout there who know how to fit aBNC connector, and they do itwith tools that are extremely inex-

pensive and readily available.What are the practicalities ofinstalling fibre, and can it be aseasy and affordable as copper?

A single mode fibre optic cableis a strand of glass 9 microns indiameter. That is an order of mag-nitude narrower than a humanhair. So the elimination of dust isclearly vital. Putting a termina-tion onto a co-ax cable is a 30 sec-ond job on site; because of theneed for a perfectly dust-freeatmosphere, terminating a fibrehas to be done in a clean room,which is a minimum investment ofaround 150k euros.

That is impractical, of course,so the solution is that connectorsare sold ready fitted to short tails offibre, which can be spliced on site.It is always good practice to adopta systems approach to installingany cables – selecting connectorsand conductors that are designedto match – and in the case of fibrethis is absolutely essential.

What you need on site is a toolcalled a core alignment splicer. Thisbrings the two pieces of fibre – cableand terminator tail, in this case –together and aligns them perfectly.

It fuses the two together and per-forms a mechanical stress test. Theresults should be highly reliable.

There are a number of splicingmachines on the market. Thegood quality device that we wouldrecommend is around 10k euros.In comparison with a set of strip-pers that seems like a lot of mon-ey, but it is a sensible investmentand, over time, may not be seen tobe a significant cost.

One important point toremember is that, when per-formed properly by an accuratelyaligned machine, splices in fibrecause virtually no attenuation ofthe signal. Jointing co-ax mid-run, because of cable damage, isgenerally considered to be badpractice because of the impact onthe signal integrity, but shouldyou break a fibre it can be splicedwithout problems. It is good prac-tice to lay in some spare fibre so

that you have slack if you ever doneed to repair it.

If your fibre infrastructuregrows you may find it worth invest-ing in an optical time domainreflectometer (OTDR), a devicewhich looks at the performance ofa fibre, either to identify how fardown the cable a break hasoccurred, or to determine if multi-ple splices in a fibre are having anyadverse impact on its transmissioncapabilities. OTDRs vary in pricefrom around 5k euros for a basicdevice to over 20k euros for some-thing with all the bells and whistles.

Having read that fibre can bebroken, you might reasonablypoint out that this fragility couldbe another argument against it forbasic infrastructures. Patch cables,for example, are frequently subjectto considerable rough handling.

To overcome this issue, Argosyhas a special fibre cable which iscalled BendBright-XS, which isdesigned to be very flexible forapplications like patch cords. It isrobust enough, and flexible enough,to be coiled around a pencil withoutbreaking or losing signal, so it is cer-tainly capable of standing up to theknocks of being in a patch panel.

However at around a 10% pre-mium over standard installationfibre, it may not be currently chosenfor general purpose use.Furthermore, on large fibre countcables the cost difference is greater— up to 30% depending on cablesize. Nonetheless production costscontinue to tumble and as produc-tion of BendBright-XS begins tooutstrip standard fibre, the pricedifference is expected to disappear.Although not suitable for all runs,but where there is the risk of roughhandling, it is a sensible investment.

In summary, then, fibre is aviable alternative to copper forbroadcast infrastructures. To setan engineer up to be fully capableof installing and maintainingfibre, including tools, training anda big bag of connectors, is aninvestment of perhaps 20k to 30keuros: not insignificant, certainly,but probably a worthwhile invest-ment. In the infrastructure of thefuture, fibre will play an increas-ingly important role.


The fibre question: Fibre by the drum is now cheaper than copper, certainly

the very high quality co-ax that you need for high definition

One of the key arguments in favour of copperremains the fact that there are plenty of wiremenout there who know how to fit a BNC connector

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Considering fibre for the broadcast infrastructure

TVBE Aug P56-58 HD 29/7/09 16:05 Page 56

By Michel Proulx, chief technology officer, Miranda TechnologiesFor the broadcast industry, a key questionover recent months has been whether 3D(stereoscopic) television will be the nextpremium service offering, or just a gimmickthat will not last? At last, the situationseems to be getting much clearer. Foralthough 3D television is still very much inits formative stage, there’s now real momen-tum behind its rollout.

In many respects, there are parallelsbetween 3D television and the earlierdeployment of high definition, in terms ofan alignment of different influences that candrive much wider adoption. Similar to theHD rollout, it’s likely that a successful tran-sition from HD to 3D television will be driv-en by four key factors. These are the avail-ability of 3D content, consumer demand,broadcast technology for facilities and view-ers, and impetus from specialty channelproviders. Unless these elements are all inplace, it’s likely that 3D television will fail totake off on a broad commercial scale.

For instance, with the earlier HD televi-sion deployment, all these factors were notaligned in the early stages. In 1998, when thecore delivery technology was in place, theHD content was both complicated andexpensive to create. Additionally, there wasno significant demand from cable and satel-lite companies to make HD a premiumoffering due to the high costs of the band-width to the consumer. The net result of thislack of synchronisation was that adoptiondid not gather pace for another 10 years.

Fortunately, in the case of 3D television,it seems that multiple drivers are now start-ing to come together. There has been a biguptake in the creation of 3D content in 2009,with 20-30 3D movies to be released, as wellas 3D sports coverage, and a growing popu-larity of 3D gaming. Importantly, thisupsurge in 3D content production has shownthat there is tangible interest amongst con-sumers in receiving 3D content.

This recently produced 3D content is notmuch different conceptually from when 3Dmovies were first introduced 50 years ago. Itstill requires special equipment to capture theimages, to display the content, and the view-er still needs 3D glasses to combine the dis-play of two ‘spatially offset’ images into onethree dimensional image. However, modern3D television technology makes this outcomemuch easier to achieve. Nevertheless, there arestill some real challenges with both acquisi-tion and production.

Acquisition for 3D is more complicatedbecause the final television output is creat-ed by combining two images, and thisdemands a special 3D camera rig formounting two cameras. To improve align-ment and spacing, one of the cameras mustbe mounted vertically, pointing down at aspecial mirror. Focus with a zoom now hasto manage the distance between the twolenses, tracking the focal lengths correctly.

During 3D production, the director alsofaces the challenge of needing to carefullymanage cuts between cameras pairs to avoidjarring changes in 3D perspective. Fortunately,the recent development of 3D multi-viewers,led by Miranda, will allow multiple 3D cam-eras to be monitored simultaneously in highquality 3D. This will enable the director to viewthe perspective of all the cameras before choos-ing the next shot, and thereby overcome theissue of mismatching perspective.

Unsurprisingly, several consumer equipmentmanufacturers are responding to this interest in3D, and are starting to announce 3D ready tele-visions. These new stereoscopic televisions useexisting LCD technology with a special twist.The solution is relatively simple, and requires apolarising filter and a few small changes to theinternal electronics. The prices for these new tel-evisions are still substantially higher than for reg-ular 1080p HD sets but they are now within therealms of affordability for more affluent viewersand for technology early adopters. Naturally,once the manufacturing process is perfected, thecost premium is likely to be less than 10% ofexisting HD displays of similar size.

Another important technology enabler isthe development of key television standards for3D. Most notably, the Society of MotionPicture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)announced their requirements for a stereoscop-ic 3D Home Master standard in April 2009.

Many successfully trials and demonstra-tions of 3D television have already been con-ducted. For example, BSkyB has demonstrat-ed 3D technology over an existing HD infra-structure, proving the production and distribu-tion process is not that different from the cur-rent HD process. As originally conceived,twice the HD bandwidth is required for 3DHD but BSkyB has streamlined the process byusing a clever coding scheme that allows exist-ing HD encoders and existing HD set top box-es to deliver the signal to the viewers. Naturally,the fact that 3D television can be based onexisting HD technology means that it won’ttake nearly as long for the broadcast industryto roll out when compared to HD in 1998.

With this clear interest from televisionservice providers in making 3D the nextpremium offering, it appears that the keydrivers are aligning for much wider deploy-ment and adoption of 3D, high definitiontelevision. The time is now right, and youcould be enjoying theatre quality 3D inyour home by the end of this year!


3D Opinion

Photon Beard is a major provider of studio and portable lighting for the professional broadcast market worldwide, as a result of the proven build quality and reliability of our equipment. With our recent growth, we are now in a position where we are continually developing new innovative products, all designed and manufactured at our UK factory.

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TVBEUROPE HD EUROPE

Market drivers align behind 3D television

3D wow factor: ‘The recent development of 3D

multi-viewers, led by Miranda, will allow

multiple 3D cameras to be monitored

simultaneously in high quality 3D’

TVBE Aug P56-58 HD 29/7/09 15:45 Page 57

tvbe aug p1, 3, 4, 8, 10 news v2 29/7/09 14:00 page 8 ...€¦ · cabling: the superiority of...

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