Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) June 2018 Volume 35, Issue 5

www.apb-news.com
NEWS & VIEWS
W O R L D I N B R I E F
Net neutrality stays –
for now
WASHINGTON – The US Sen-
ate has voted to retain the net
neutrality ruling in the country,
which is against the recom-
mendation of the Federal Com-
munications Commission (FCC).
However, this decision is likely to
be challenged by the US House
of Representatives.
OTT worth US$51.5b by
2022
NEW YORK – The worldwide
over-the-top (OTT) video market
is expected to grow at CAGR
10% to generate US$51.4 billion
in 2022, predicted ABI Research.
And by 2018, OTT is expected
to have 400 million subscribers;
thus, it will further impact tradi-
tional pay-TV services.
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CREATION
18
MANAGEMENT
22
LINEAR OR VOD?
IT’S ONE
WORKFLOW
WITH
WHATS’ON.
READ PAGE
24
BROADCASTASIA
BOOTH 4K4-06
DISTRIBUTION
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JUNE 2018
26
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VOLUME 35
X-PLATFORM
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ISSUE 5
30
IP – make haste slowly,
retrain & upskill staff
Ong Bee Lian,
vice-president of
TV engineering,
StarHub: “What
we learnt in the
transition [to IP]
is that, due to
the new nature
of the technology, some fine-
tuning is required, especially for
video switching and ad insertion.
Retraining and upskilling our
broadcast engineers on how and
what to manage for an IP video
headend is also essential.”
Read story on page 8
BY SHAWN LIEW
SINGAPORE – Television will
evolve into something more im-
mersive, more pervasive, more
interactive and personalised. And
this, according to Matthew Post-
gate, chief technology and product
officer at the BBC, will usher in the
day when all media will be distrib-
uted over the Internet.
Speaking at last month’s DTG
Annual Summit in London, Post-
gate said: “For the BBC, the ques-
tion about our IP future becomes
Invest & acquire know-how
today for your tomorrow
CONTENT-CENTRIC
OR VIEWER-CENTRIC?
7
NEWS & VIEWS
June 2018
SINGAPORE – Where IP transition
is concerned, Asia-Pacific shares a
global trend — the evolution of
standards and implementations
that are currently slowing progress
and creating confusion, accord-
ing to Bogdan Frusina, founder
of Dejero.
He told APB: “There are so
many different protocols and
wrappers, which make it challeng-
ing to choose a specific path that
will work across multiple vendors,
tools and workflows.”
Frusina, however, is convinced
that these are challenges that will
be overcome as more workflows
move to the cloud, and require reli-
able video transport over IP from
end-to-end (acquisition, manage-
ment and distribution).
The move towards IP work-
flows, he added, is driven by
the flexibility and scalability that
broadcasters need to provide more
high-quality content with budgets
that are increasingly under pres-
sure. “For live remote productions
for instance, accessing reliable
connectivity to transport video
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not when, but also how? [It is] not
only about how quickly we can
get there, but how best, and under
what conditions?”
As Singapore hosts Broadcast-
Asia2018 this month, these are the
same questions many broadcasters
in Asia-Pacific will be asking as they
embark on their own IP journey.
Today, many media organisa-
tions are operating in an extremely
challenging and fragmented media
landscape, which is severely limiting
their ability to invest in large-scale
emerging technologies, observed
Dr Ahmad Zaki Mohd Salleh, group
GM, engineering, Media Prima.
“However, we are cognizance of
the fact that these emerging tech-
nologies — including IP — can also
assist us in achieving our long-term
digital goals.”
Currently, the Malaysian media
company’s investments in IP is lim-
ited to transport, distribution and
contribution, while it continues its
gradual upgrading of infrastructure
to IP to enable file contribution,
online browsing, file sharing, as
well as delivery and reception of
signals from Media Prima to its
clients and service providers.
The shift of broadcast infra-
structure to IP, Dr Zaki told APB,
represents an opportunity to enjoy
economies of scale. “The ability to
use conventional IP infrastructure
will enable broadcasters to acquire
off-the-shelf equipment at signifi-
cantly lower costs.”
The drawbacks, he countered,
include the “huge” depreciation
losses that will be incurred should
baseband equipment be replaced
today.
Despite having just moved
into a new media facility last
year, Singapore terrestrial broad-
caster Mediacorp is still basing its
A/V backbone around SDI. While
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