TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
New Coverage :  Asterisk  |  Call Recording  |  SIP Trunking  |  Fax Software  |  Load Balancer  |  PBX  |  SIP Phones  |  Small Cells
Webinars
Channels by Topic
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend
IPTV community
September 25, 2007

Broadcast International Predicts IPTV Not Ready for Prime Time

By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
 
IPTV – while not everyone may be familiar with what this acronym stands for, the majority of the viewing world is ready for the quality and functionality that it can bring to prime time viewing. The challenge, however is that it may not be ready to deliver.


According to Broadcast International, the infrastructure for delivering on the promise of IPTV (News - Alert), or HD quality video delivered on an IP broadband network, wherever and whenever users want it – is not yet ready for prime time.

Rod Tiede, CEO of Broadcast International (News - Alert), noted that the weak spot in the delivery chain is inadequate video compression technology, which is necessary for providing the quantity and quality of video that users will demand. 

Bandwidth is expected to be devoured at unprecedented levels as new video content sources proliferate, from traditional broadcast media, to portal players such as Yahoo! and Google (News - Alert), to YouTube-style user-generate content. Tiede highlighted that even new fiber initiatives such as those from Verizon and AT&T will be challenged to deliver HD-quality.

"Experience has shown us that as broadband adoption has increased, so have consumers' appetites for ways to use that extra bandwidth. IPTV will test those limits," said Tiede, in a Tuesday statement.

"Right now, most video compression solutions are not up to the challenge of dealing with the avalanche of video content that will accompany the emergence of IPTV, and certainly not with anything approaching HD quality. At best, most offer a 25 percent reduction in bandwidth, with compromised picture quality, which is nowhere near that required for IPTV."

Tiede also noted that a video compression solution that is capable of dealing with the content requirements for IPTV must offer closer to a 90 percent reduction in bandwidth for both live and pre-recorded video and deliver an HD quality experience.

"In order for IPTV to live up to its promise, the user experience must be at least as good as that delivered by traditional broadcast media; and in fact, it should exceed it. But the existing infrastructure is just not up to that standard without a major change in video compression technology," continued Tiede.

An IPTV-ready video compression solution must be based on an open software architecture in order to be easily upgraded as new standards such as H.264 emerge and as new specialized codecs come onto the market.

In order to ensure that additional processing power can be readily added to accommodate the predicted surges in video consumption brought about by IPTV, a scalable underlying hardware architecture is also required.

"Right now," said Tiede, "there are billions of dollars in video compression infrastructure that will have to be literally thrown away when new standards emerge because the software and hardware on these 'encoders' are so tightly coupled.”

“That's like having to throw out your whole computer every time Microsoft (News - Alert) releases a new version of software. It's just a bad model that has been rejected in nearly every other segment of the technology industry, but somehow persists in the encoder market," Tiede concluded.

BI's patented video compression software, CodecSys, reduces bandwidth needs by more than 80 percent for HD-quality video over satellite, cable, IP and wireless networks. Its open software architecture enables new codecs or video compression standards to be easily accommodated when they emerge, virtually "future-proofing" the technology.

The demand for video compression software is likely to increase exponentially as the demand for IPTV is expected to spike after the new HDTV requirements take effect in 2009. Consumers will demand IPTV in prime time, it is up to service providers to be ready to deliver as the bulk of the market will go to those who can handle the demand.
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

Upcoming Events

ITEXPO West 2012
October 2- 5, 2012
The Austin Convention Center
Austin, Texas
Mobility Tech Conference & Expo
October 3- 5, 2012
The Austin Convention Center
Austin, Texas
MSPAlliance MSPWorld™
October 3- 5, 2012
The Austin Convention Center
Austin, Texas

DevCon5
DevCon5 provides you with the information and tools you need to exploit the capabilities of revolutionary HTML5 technology
View all >>
Subscribe FREE to all of TMC's monthly magazines. Click here now.