CTOs: Bandwidth key to transformational future

Cable Satellite International

Greater bandwidth capacity, particularly with the incoming 5G network, will be transformational for media which could be augmented with AR, 360-video, artificial intelligence and 8K resolutions - even in combinations.

http://www.csimagazine.com/csi/Bandwidth-key-to-transformational-future.php

“5G will bring the user experience up to 20Mbps or higher and it’s bidirectional so that means we can collect content,” explained Ulf Ewaldsson, CTO of Ericsson, who joined other CTOs in assessing the technology roadmap. “This will be transformational. When we get wireless technologies to that level at a very affordable cost it means we can change the production of content, change the way we distribute things and we are able to create new content such as combining 8K with AR. This is not so far away.”

Ewaldsson said Ericsson had already made 35 operator announcements on 5G from operators who saw it as an opportunity to rationalise their business.

Discovery CTO John Honeycutt says the broadcaster will be studying the emerging technologies of virtual reality, AI and augmented reality as it heads towards its coverage of the 2018 Olympics in Pyeong Chang.

“We were in Rio watching and observing and seeing who’s doing what. We see opportunities because we’re starting a fresh and not having to drag technologies from the past,” he said. 

During the US Open, Discovery was able to give a 360 degree view of the court. A future example Honeycutt gave is being able to virtually race against Usain Bolt at the Olympics using augmented reality.

He said, “We had access to an early Hololens - and when you put it on you can start to imagine walking up the street with a map in front of you, with restaurant menus and personal reminders all while you’re having a Facebook chat. From a content consumption and a utility perspective 5G is a big deal.”

Honeycutt framed the discussion around “reimagining how we can use a piece of technology or code in a different way.” He said, “The reality is that we make content not for any specific device - we make content capable of moving in any direction. There is no point playing tech bingo, guessing what new platform will come down the track. For example, we now have to manufacture and prepare content for a whole new platform with hundreds of millions moments of consumption but Snapchat wasn’t anything we thought about 12 months ago.”

He was muted, though, on Ultra High Definition – saying that the experience of running a 3D channel had provided lessons. “The question becomes can we provide something that is materially better? With high definition the physical size of the TV changed, the location changed, we brought in better audio. It wasn’t just the one thing. But if you look at HD to 4K there’s days I can’t tell.”

Tamara Leemans, CTO for Belgium’s VOO said her priority was more bandwidth. “We’re moving to UHD which requires bandwidth, plus we want to give our customers a more individualised experience. All of this innovation must happen under budget constraints.”

The cable operator is making some bold tech choices, for example, integrating DOCSIS 3.1 in collaboration with Cisco across its internet platforms first at the back end and eventually to the customer.

Cisco’s SVP chief architect and CTO Engineering Dave Ward, highlighted Full Duplex DOCSIS as bringing bidirectional bandwidth to cable networks for the first time. “1Gig, 10Gig 40Gig and line of sight to 100Gig per home in the next few years,” he said. “That completely changes where we store content and how we serve it up to the home. That amount of bandwidth to the home is a fundamental change to the internet and a fundamental change to how video can be distributed.”

For Ewaldsson, Cloud is no longer coming “you start with cloud and architect from there. It’s starting from the vision of TV as a service and working back. If you can offer your entire platform in the cloud - as we do with MediaFirst - you can then offer any hybrid solution, you can distribute anything all the way to set top boxes, you can do things that could never be done before because it was isolated on a certain server and running on a certain piece of the network. That is a dramatic change for this industry.”

Spencer Stephens, CTO, Sony Pictures agreed with the theme. “Bandwidth drives content and content drives bandwidth,” he said. “As we get more bandwidth we can do more things with it but if people want to do more things with it it becomes a greater demand for bandwidth. For example, can you substitute point to point, the Netflix model of delivery to the consumer, with broadcast? Obviously point to point takes a lot of bandwidth but if we can get enough bandwidth to the consumer then we can change fundamentally how we deliver content.” 

He continued, “We went from tape to file and now file to network based workflow and this will have a major effect on post production to mastering. It changes where we keep data, for example. If I shoot a petabyte of data on a movie do I need to give it to the post house or can I upload it to the cloud and give them just the bit they need to conform?”

VR is the subject of fevered activity in Hollywood but Stephens had words of caution. 

“There is a lot of excitement about new technology where we haven’t quite figured out what it means or how to apply it. The use of VR in games is understood - there is a logical progression from first person shooter on a screen to doing it in VR. But what’s different with VR storytelling is the incredible technical challenge of creating live action VR. Also I don’t think we know what experience we are trying to achieve. We know full immersive experiences require six degrees of movement but how can I technically achieve that and then how do I direct the viewer’s attention? 

“My fear is that VR will go the same way as 3D with bad content and a bad consumer experience.”