Discovery and BAMtech joint venture explained

Sports Business International

How linking up with technical services expert BAMTech will turbocharge multi-sport paid online services for ESPN and Eurosport.

http://www.sportbusiness.com/sportbusiness-international/streaming-sport-discovery-and-bamtech-joint-venture-explained

It’s 2020 and viewers at home wearing virtual and augmented reality headgear are competing against athletes in the 100 metres final live from the Tokyo Olympics.

It’s the sort of scenario being toyed with by Discovery Communications – which holds Olympic Games rights across 50 European countries and territories from 2018 – and made technically possible through a partnership with BAMTech, arguably the most proficient and multifaceted video-streaming service on the planet.

The pair have formed BAMTech Europe, a joint venture aimed at supercharging Discovery’s digital business by implementing BAMTech’s video platform and services across products that include Eurosport.com and Eurosport Player – ambitiously dubbed the “sports Netflix” by the operator’s president and CEO, David Zaslav.

The deal also has potentially seismic ramifications for sports rights-holders across the continent.

Discovery’s story 

Discovery has spent the bulk of its 31-year history as a purveyor of non-sports factual programming on cable and satellite networks. Like many conventional broadcast businesses, it saw revenues from carriage of its content on pay-television channels eroding and its future as a direct-to-consumer proposition on the internet.

Under Zaslav’s command, Discovery set about overhauling its content and distribution business. With a maturing US market for its channels like Animal Planet, Discovery turned to Europe’s 700 million residents to stimulate growth and identified live sport as the prize asset to spearhead demand.

Alongside Eurosport, which it finally took full control of last July, the Maryland-headquartered group began hoovering up rights. These include all the tennis slams, Bundesliga soccer and a raft of cycling events often sharing rights with broadcasters in certain territories. It topped the lot with a $1.45bn swoop in June 2015 for European rights to four editions of the Olympics from 2018.

At the same time, it relaunched streaming service Eurosport Player, charging fans $8 per month as part of a wider rollout of web-delivered products dubbed D-Play.

The goal is to help Discovery amass one million paying internet subscribers globally by 2017, a figure forecast to rake in $100m in extra revenue.

“If we can get to a million, I think it could be a tipping point for us,” Zaslav told analysts following Discovery’s full-year results last February. “If we can get to a million, why can’t we get to three?”

To do this, Discovery has to deliver top-tier sports content by using the latest technology to enrich the viewer experience, as well as package, process and distribute content for any device and for any digital and social media platform, rapidly and at scale. That’s where BAMTech comes in.

BAMTech’s story 

Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) was formed in 2000 by the league to create websites for the 30 MLB teams and to consolidate their digital rights.Long before Netflix began delivering films on demand online, MLBAM pioneered video over the net by delivering over 2,500 live, often simultaneous baseball games per year to MLB.tv.

“The hallmark of what we’ve done is scale,” executive vice-president and chief technology officer Joe Inzerillo told trade show IBC last year. “We had to deliver over a million streams concurrently and routinely. When we started doing this, the technology simply wasn’t around. We had to build our own in-house and figure out compression, geo-fencing and multi-application delivery at scale.”

The runaway success of MLB.tv and its mobile app, ‘At Bat’, which this year contributed over $1bn to the MLB’s staggering $10bn in revenues, attracted other content owners.

In quick succession MLBAM took responsibility for handling the back-end duties for World Wrestling Entertainment’s streaming channel, Turner Sports’ coverage of college basketball’s March Madness, the online delivery for the PGA Tour’s golf events and the on-demand services for Sony PlayStation Vue and Game of Thrones maker HBO.

In August 2015 it signed a $600m, six-year deal with the National Hockey League (NHL), with the intention of replicating the MLB model. MLBAM took control of NHL’s digital and broadcast rights, including NHL.com, while NHL took a 10-per-cent stake in MLBAM.

Shortly afterwards, the New York-based unit was spun off into a business so highly regarded it is valued at $3bn.

Who benefits?

The pact with Discovery gives BAMTech its first major foothold in Europe, allowing for further expansion.

“The deal will give it access to a larger viewership and the ability to exploit the sports rights which Discovery owns, now and in the future,” says Daniel Gadher, an analyst at Ampere Analysis. “The partnership also allows access to selected European sports rights for BAMTech.”

For both Eurosport and BAMTech, the partnership “could allow for a greater exploitation of sports rights which are currently owned or potential future rights,” he adds.

Eurosport’s main aim is to increase its digital presence. “It offers access to a range of sports content, live and archived, to a greater number of customers over a greater number of screens,” according to Gadher.

Eurosport chief executive Peter Hutton has also spoken of creating digital communities for ‘super-fans’ around its key properties. That task falls to Ralph Rivera, who is now heading up Eurosport’s digital operation.

This is a reversal of Eurosport’s historic model, which had been to broadcast the same video feed across territories, but with localised commentary to keep production costs down. Under Discovery’s ownership, the brand plans a different editorial and monetisation emphasis for each territory.

There could, for example, be fee-based offerings for specific sports, such as a season pass for cycling or an app subscription to tennis majors – monetisation and marketing services that BAMTech is an expert at delivering.

Discovery might be expected to dip further into its pockets and go after more premium sports rights to augment Eurosport’s traditional second-tier sports offering. In the past couple of years it has been linked with bids for football’s English Premier League and Italian Serie A, while Discovery also has a link to Formula One through board member and stakeholder John Malone, with the tycoon’s Liberty Media recently having acquired the motor-racing series for $8bn.

The ESPN angle

Discovery’s strategy is similar to that of US sports broadcaster ESPN and for similar reasons. In August ESPN parent company Disney acquired one-third of BAMTech for $1bn to launch an ESPN-branded multi-sports subscription service.

“It will not, however, include any current ESPN channels or its content,” Gadher says. “This cautious approach is perhaps due to a fear of cannibalising its audience. ESPN’s new service will exploit rights held by BAMTech, MLB and the NHL.”

There have been suggestions that ESPN has struggled with customer growth and retention recently. Data from audience measurement company Nielsen indicated that the broadcaster lost 621,000 pay-television subscribers month-on- month through to October 28, although ESPN challenged the figures and said that the results do not include those who subscribe through digital services and other new distributors.

“By developing its digital offering, ESPN aims to gain access to a larger audience as well as increasing the choice its customers have to where they access sports content,” Gadher adds. “With younger demographics increasingly shifting towards digital platforms, this strategy allows ESPN to engage with this group.”

The direct-to-consumer offering, which is yet to launch, could allow subscribers to purchase specific seasons, teams or dates.

Disney’s deal gives it an option to buy BAMTech outright in the future, potentially extending the organisation’s reach into Europe via Eurosport.

Olympics as never before

BAMTech’s reputation not only rests on delivering a technically superior streaming product. It has innovated in editorial areas too.

From special features, like being able to watch multiple games at once, to pioneering the ability to synchronise in-game statistics with video and graphics to yield rich analytics, the team has raised the bar in terms of sports interactivity.

“We see opportunities because we’re starting afresh and not having to drag technologies from the past,” Discovery Communications’ chief technology officer, John Honeycutt, said in September. “We will be studying the emerging technologies of VR, augmented reality, extreme high-resolution pictures and artificial intelligence [serving in-game insights]. You could imagine virtually racing alongside [Usain Bolt].”

Some of this could even make its debut in coverage of the 2018 winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

“We are coming at this by reimagining how we can use a piece of technology or code in a different way,” Honeycutt concluded.

Virgin Goes Mobile First With Revamped TiVo and TellyTablet Launch

Streaming Media

The Virgin-branded Telly Tablet allows viewers to watch content anywhere in a house; company also introduced revamped Virgin TV Anywhere app and new TiVo-powered V6 box.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Virgin-Goes-Mobile-First-With-Revamped-TiVo-and-TellyTablet-Launch-115037.aspx

UK pay TV operator Virgin Media has unveiled a mobile-first strategy with which it hopes to leapfrog rivals like Sky. Notable about today’s launch was a Virgin branded 14-inch TellyTablet which is intended to allow customers to view TV anywhere around the home.

The Liberty Global-owned operator had fallen behind Sky's Sky Q set top box which launched this summer and BT Sport's YouView box, with its existing HD TiVo STB. Sky Q Silver, for instance, has 12 tuners and 4K video.

In response, the new TiVo-powered V6 box can record six shows at once while users can also watch a seventh recording or stream from services such as BBC iPlayer or Netflix. The system has been designed so that users can pair two boxes in the home to double their record options to 12 tuners (each box carrying 1TB storage) with playback from either box—or on mobile.

David Bouchier, Virgin's chief digital entertainment officer, described the offer—which includes a download-to-own service—as "game changing TV."

The TellyTablet is an Android-powered tablet with 32GB of memory, a microSD card slot, two USB ports, up to eight hours of battery life and a stand for users to watch TV anywhere in a house. It costs £299 ($350) and is available for all Virgin Media customers.

A revamped Virgin TV Anywhere app permits recordings and live TV to be paused and continued room to room on a V6 box, a customer's existing TiVo box, or on a mobile device.

This service mimics Sky's, which made video playback on mobile possible for the first time with the Sky Q app. It allows subscribers to watch on demand and live streamed content content regardless of device in or out of the home. Features include a pause and playback of content on different devices.

Next summer the pay TV rival BT is launching a new BT TV app with options to manage recordings and stream live and on-demand programmes.

Liberty Media is pursuing a quad-play bundle in every market it operates in and wants to more than double its mobile base from 15% to 40% of its 17 million broadband subscribers by 2022.

The V6 box itself—which costs £99.95 (U$130) as a one-off fee—is intended for widespread deployment across Liberty Global companies in Europe and Latin America.

There’s support for 4K UHD, with Netflix and YouTube available in 4K from launch. Although it lacks the native 4K live event content of Sky and BT (Sky has also begun ramping commissions in UHD HDR non-sports programming) it is compatible with high dynamic range—something that neither Sky nor BT yet offer. HDR will be available for Netflix and Amazon shows via software update. The 1TB capacity equates to 100 hours of HD recordings or 500 of SD. It wasn't stated how many hours of UHD this would mean.

The Virgin Media Store is a download-to-own movie service with titles available to own immediately after theatrical release (a separate physical DVD will be automatically posted). This launches in February and is also available for non-Virgin Media customers.

In addition, a new ads-free Kids app will be launched for iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire tablets by February 2017.

Going live across the nation

Broadcast

Large-scale live and as-live non-sport productions are no longer the preserve of London, with Manchester, Birmingham and Belfast all vying for business.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/going-live-across-the-nation/5111649.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

When ITV contemplated resurrecting long-dormant Saturday afternoon magazine show World Of Sport, there was never a doubt that its home would be Manchester.

“World Of Sport was always a very northern programme [though hosted from LWT’s South Bank studios], so it made sense to take it back there,” says Tom McLennan, creative director of ITV Studios Entertainment and the show’s executive producer.
The two-hour World Of Sport Wrestling pilot was shot ‘as live’ in Dock 10’s HQ1 in front of a 700- strong audience. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says McLennan, who accommodated overspill by setting up monitors for a few hundred to watch outside the studio at MediaCityUK. “The atmosphere at this taping was electric.”
Dock 10 is not only the region’s dominant facility, it is arguably England’s largest, claims head of studios Andy Waters.
“With the contraction of TVC, we are the biggest outside or inside the M25,” he says. Dock 10 provides live presentation for CBBC year-round from HQ5, with Blue Peter and Match Of The Day other regular live residents. Campus-wide connectivity to studio galleries brings outdoor spaces like the Piazza into play (last used for Sports Relief Battle of the 5-A-Sides in March).
Plus, new BBC talent show Let It Shine has its knockout stages recorded at Dock 10, before the live finals shift to Elstree. “We are really busy here and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that there’s a lack of studio space in London,” says Waters.
Demand is only going one way and, as with high-end drama, there is not sufficient purpose-built capacity to fulfil it anywhere in the UK. “Studios are jam-packed in Manchester so we’re constantly looking at other opportunities,” says McLennan.
One venue is Manchester Central Convention Complex, which hosted Potato’s ITV physical gameshow Ninja Warrior in February.
McLennan is also eyeing the former Granada HQ at Quay Street. Owned by property developer Allied London, the original studios, including the 7,922 sq ft Studio 12, are still in place and used for a variety of events.
“We nearly put World Of Sport there because of lack of space at Dock 10,” reveals McLennan. “There’s still a large grid to do massive shows, although we’d have to use an OB.”
Another option is revisiting ITV’s history with Liverpool. This Morning returned to the Albert Dock in 2013 for a 25th anniversary special and McLennan would “love to do a live show in Liverpool.”

North-West

In Manchester, a 30,000 sq ft stage will open next September, billed as “the largest purpose-built stage in the north” by The Sharp Project chief executive Sue Woodward. “The majority of our facilities have supported the TV drama, film and commercial market,” she says. “The new stage really opens up large-scale live production.”
Even though The Space Project was built with drama in mind, the five studios incorporate ‘cat flaps’ for scanners to plug into. “We believe producers are seeking spaces that help improve the overall creativity of the content outside the traditional studio box, allowing them to look beyond the shiny-floor studio,” says Woodward.

South

Despite no track record of live production, Bristol’s The Bottle Yard will host a live TX over a few days in December (details are still under wraps) and has a Hat Trick quiz show booked for the new year.
“We’re seeing quite a lot of live or ‘as live’ enquiries – I can only assume because London is so full,” says site director Fiona Francombe. “It’s opening another avenue of business for us.”
Producers looking to tap regional spend could nip over the M25 to Pinewood. BBC1 Christmas special Peter Pan Goes Wrong recently used the facilities, which include three fully equipped TV studios (largest 9,000 sq ft) and an extensive backlot.
There’s nothing stopping a TV production booking into one of Pinewood’s larger sound stages either – except for serial Hollywood productions like Star Wars.
“The entire site has 10GE fibre, so you can record from anywhere using the studio galleries or an OB van, live stream or route to our post facilities for quick-turnaround edits,” says head of TV Sarah McGettigan.
“We have seen a rise in shows that want to record ‘as live’. We have a huge database of crew and suppliers based outside the M25 to help producers meet that aspect of regional spend.”

Wales and NI

Pinewood Wales is built for drama and film and lacks a dedicated TV stage, but does boast “massive event spaces”, says McGettigan.
Wales has a number of largescale venues suitable for holding major broadcast events, including Cardiff ’s Wales Millennium Centre, which has the largest stage outside London and hosts auditions for shows such as Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor.
Last year’s Sports Personality of the Year at Belfast’s SSE Arena was the largest live event yet hosted in Northern Ireland. NI Screen is encouraging more work by incentivising factual and entertainment shows with up to 16% of local spend.
It is promoting the new 120,000 sq ft studio at Belfast Harbour Front and notes that Game Of Thrones is likely to depart from the Titanic Studios by April 2018 following final season production, releasing two 21,000 sq ft stages.
“You have to remember that all across the UK, every week, live sports and music events are recorded and transmitted,” says NI Screen head of production Andrew Reid. “The infrastructure exists everywhere if people choose to look for it.”
Indeed, connectivity provider SIS Live has linked more than 100 venues with fibre lines. Where locations are more inaccessible, or in limited use, it can service a TX with satellite trucks. For example, W’s Celebrity Haunted Hotel Live broadcast from Kent village Pluckley for five days over Halloween.

Scotland

North of the border, Pacific Quay is the main TV studio hub and logical home for shows like Who Dares Wins and Eggheads. Live inserts for events like Children In Need or Hogmanay are also corralled there.
The main 8,500 sq ft Studio A is the largest dedicated TV space in Scotland. “The space we’re calling out for is for drama and film rather than live TV,” says BBC Scotland commercial manager Alexandra Gaffney.
Large-scale televised events are catered for at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, host of last month’s MOBOs. The annual awards tends to shift location, having been broadcast from Leeds’ First Direct Arena and Liverpool’s Echo Arena in recent years.

Midlands 

One arena complex making a play for more TV work – including primetime shows – is Birmingham’s NEC Group.
NEC manages a number of venues including the Barclaycard Arena, home to Gladiators in the 1990s, and the Genting Arena, annual site of Horse of the Year Show and Crufts, as well this year’s Sports Personality Of The Year.
Plans to expand the complex, which are set to be published this month, could include the construction of a bespoke TV studio.

“We have a masterplan developed with the city of Birmingham to extend the site, and the potential for film and TV studios is high on the list,” reveals Phil Mead, managing director of NEC Arenas. “People are looking for a more permanent TV offer and there is already harmony between live events and the broadcast business. When The X Factor or Strictly begin their TV run, the live tour dates are already planned, and they include the NEC.”

Studios have the last laugh

Broadcast

Entertainment shows are big business for studios outside of London, with appreciative audiences, good facilities and nearby accommodation for guests.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/5111628.article

Comedian Lee Mack was probably not joking when he told an Edinburgh Festival audience this year that he gets 20% more laughs when he performs outside of London.
“It’s difficult to put your finger on, but there’s a different buzz when you do a comedy in Manchester,” says Tom McLennan, creative director of ITV Studios Entertainment.
“In the conversations I’m having with commissioners, it’s clear that they realise a northern audience gives you 10% extra.”
This is far from trivial: audiences can be a deciding factor in the location of an entertainment production.
ITV Studios’ first season of The Voice UK remains at Dock 10, home of its BBC incarnation – and of new BBC1 rival Let It Shine. It is ITV’s most significant live light-entertainment show shot outside of London since production ceased on Stars In Their Eyes at the old Granada Studios in Manchester in 2006.
It is shot at Dock 10 in part because of the ancillary spaces available to manage the 1,000-plus audience. “We have two audience-handling areas plus a large open centre for warmup,” says Dock 10 head of studios Andy Waters.
“Ultimately, people are here to have fun and it’s our job to help create the chemistry between artists and audience, which is all important to a show like The Voice UK.”
McLennan says he wants to bring more big shiny floor shows to the north: “We are proving that production teams in the north can do these shows better than anyone else.”
Productions will head outside the capital to meet national quotas and qualify for regional spend but these are far from the only reasons. A fuller and more enthusiastic audience is one; lower costs is another.
“There’s been a shift of mindset in the past five years,” says McLennan. “There was a feeling that talent wouldn’t travel or that key crew needed bringing up from London, but that is no longer the case.
It often takes as long to travel across London as it does to get to a regional studio and the talent pool around hubs like Cardiff and Manchester is established. Shooting outside London is no longer token. We can produce, shoot and edit shows better than anyone.”

Glasgow - 5-Star Family Reunion 

The second 8 x 60-minute series of primetime BBC1 National Lottery quiz 5-Star Family Reunion was filmed at Pacific Quay in Glasgow.
“We’ve operated out of our Glasgow base for eight years and the majority of our shows [including Who Dares Wins] are filmed here,” says 12 Yard Scotland executive producer Zoe Tait.
Two recordings a day are made with around 300 audience members and a sizeable set that demarcates areas for family dynamics and the Newton’s Cradle ball selection machine. Globecast provides international live links.
“The tricky challenge is juggling the logistics of booking studios on the other side of the world for live links with families,” says Tait. “It may mean booking slots at 3-4am in New Zealand.”
Post is handled by Glasgow’s Editworks. Although co-produced with Cardiff ’s Boom Cymru, the team are mostly local freelancers.
“Part of my role has been making sure we develop key talent from researchers to lighting directors and realise a solid pool of freelance staff to call on across all of our productions,” says Tait. “We don’t look elsewhere.”

Cardiff - Only Connect

With its 12th series complete and another run in the works, the Victoria Coren-fronted quiz show is going great guns for BBC2, where it regularly pulls in around 2.5 million as part of Monday night’s quiz hour.
The show’s home has always been in Cardiff. Siân G Lloyd co-developed it while at indie Presentable before co-founding Parasol Media to continue production with RDF in 2013.
Recorded at Enfys TV Studios, the show uses six manned cameras including a jib and one locked-off camera for the Connecting Wall quiz round. There is no studio audience. “We typically shoot between three and four episodes in a day so a 37-part series is shot over 12 days across three long weekends,” explains Lloyd.
The series is post-produced inhouse, except for the sound mix, which is taken to nearby audio post production facility Cranc.
“Producing an entertainment show outside the M25 has never presented us with any difficulties – quite the opposite in fact,” says Lloyd.
“The talent and contestants are happy to travel to Cardiff and are always pleasantly surprised by its proximity to London.”
That said, the number of studio facilities available to indies in Cardiff is “woefully inadequate”, she says.
“Enfys is a brilliant facility and the team there provide us with everything we need technically to make a very successful entertainment series. But there are now very few options open to producers in Cardiff.
“NEP Studios was demolished last year to make way for housing and the C1 studio at BBC Wales is rarely available to indies because of their scheduling commitments. The sound stages at BBC’s Roath Lock in Cardiff Bay and at Pinewood Studio Wales, while ideal for drama, are not a good fit for studio entertainment shows.
Extensive trussing, extra sound-proofing and suitable floor coverings are essential but basic requirements for any studio production, but they are all expensive additions that don’t add any on-screen value. These are costs that today’s tight budgets simply can’t bear.”

Bristol - Trollied 

Roughcut TV took Sky 1’s supermarket sitcom to The Bottle Yard in 2011 as the Bristol studio’s first tenant.
“We needed a large warehouse space and London’s cost put it out of the question,” says head of production Tim Sealey, who selected Bristol over Manchester. “The Bottle Yard was then just a warehouse so Bristol council supported us by inwardly investing in the production to keep costs low.”
The council used Trollied’s studio rental fee to build wardrobe and dressing rooms and help create a working environment. “It was also important for us to recruit locally and work with local crew,” adds Sealey.
The main 1,500 sq ft set, which required a false ceiling, has been standing through all six series and the production occupies a second studio during the seven-week shoot.
Offline assembly is made on-site by Films@59, which also handles dubbing and final post.

Glasgow - Time Commanders 

Last made 11 years ago, Lion TV is reviving historical battle series Time Commanders for BBC4. The BBC Scotland commission ensured its studio production at Pacific Quay.
The 3 x 60-minute show, which features two teams re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo and the Roman conquests of Zama and Catalunia, is housed in Studio B but employs two galleries.
In this unusual set-up, the gallery for Studio A is used for vision mixing, while Studio B’s gallery holds the servers running Creative Assembly’s games platform.
“We don’t have to take up two galleries but the space helps to accommodate a whole load of PCs,” says Lion director of specialist factual Bill Locke.
The set is draped with banners depicting various historical generals, with the video screens that divide the teams each showing that team’s view of the battle. The shows were rehearsed and filmed over three days and shot with 10 locked-off cameras.
Around six minutes per programme is VT inserts shot on location.
Offline editing is done at Lion Scotland, while online moves to the indie’s London base and all of the audio is performed at Glasgow’s Edit 123, apart from the voiceover, which is recorded at Platform in Soho.
“There’s often no benefit to shooting in London,” says Lion director of entertainment Simon Welton. “For CBBC series Officially Amazing [also recorded in Studio A], we need contestants from all over the UK, so it makes sense to base ourselves in Scotland, where production doesn’t attract the premium of central London.”
Post for Officially Amazing is taken back to Lion London and overseen by Welton.
“I like to be very hands-on with the edit so it simply saves time. Even outsourcing to Soho is too far.”

Belfast - Hive Minds

The Fiona Bruce-fronted BBC4 quiz show relocated from Belfast’s Lyric Theatre to BBC Blackstaff House in Belfast for its second 13-episode run.
“The Lyric wasn’t available but we’re also able to take advantage of the greater infrastructure at Blackstaff, such as more space for production offices,” explains Stephen Stewart, managing director of Green Inc Film & Television, which co-produces the show with Jeremy Salsby’s Saltbeef TV.
“The Lyric is an excellent venue but has no gallery so you need to book an OB. It’s also a very active theatre, whereas the BBC was able to grant us exclusive use of its facility for a week.”
Four half-hour shows were shot each day in the 6,000 sq ft Studio A during the booking, using a typical six-camera set-up (five pedestals and a jib) without an audience.
“I’ve produced network shows all over the UK but Belfast offers several benefits, including great value for money,” says Stewart.
“Everything and everyone you need is within a couple of miles. When we do an entertainment show in London, trying to find accommodation near the studio is hard and everyone struggles to travel in on time. For Hive Minds, we’re able to put contestants up in hotels just outside the studio gates.
“The staff, from editors to lighting directors, are a match for anyone working in the UK – provided you book them early. Plus, there are highquality post facilities on the doorstep.”

Hive Minds is offlined in-house and onlined at Yellow Moon (Game Of Thrones, Line Of Duty) in Holywood.

The Tried and Trusted Route to UHD Live - NEP UK

Broadcast Bridge

While Arena opted to invest in an IP core for its new fleet, Sky Sport’s other regular OB supplier, NEP UK has gone a different route out of necessity. This article, a follow up to ​the article ‘Making The Leap To 4K Live Over IP - Under The Hood At Arena’, explains its decision.

https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/7266/the-tried-and-trusted-route-to-uhd-live-nep-uk

When a fire devastated NEP UK's Bracknell base last November the firm was on the cusp of signing contracts with Sky and needed to deliver with trust and trusted technology. All IP UHD was considered a leap too far although they do feature an Imagine Communications' IP3 hybrid IP/baseband router.

Its 4K trucks Pacific, Aurora, Caspian and Sargaso are all out on the road built to a similar template costing around £10m each including Sony HDC-4300s with a combination of Canon and Fujinon lenses, EVS XT3s and SAM Kahuna 9600 6ME 1080p’4K vision mixers. On the audio side, the infrastructure is based around a Calrec Audio Apollo console, Genelec monitors and Telex intercom technology. The new trucks have the ability to work standalone or together in any combination. They are able to interconnect with each other via a CWDM fibre system, while the configuration allows for 200 shared 3GB signals to be sent between the trucks. Each truck can fit 30 camera channels and 12 EVS positions.

“There are aspects of IP which are still challenging,” says Keith Lane, Sky director of operations. “We very much felt we're at the beginning of a journey with UHD and that it was important to start from a strong knowledge base. Quad HD gave us that. We all understand SDI and from [NEPs] point of view we were pushing them to build so quad HD was the right thing to do.”

Like BT, Sky has made the strategic decision to adopt a hybrid UHD/HD production, down-converting the HD from the 4K feed to save on live event costs. 

“That decision was all about making sure the editorial product we produce in HD wasn't compromised,” explains Lane. “We have talked about different camera angles and we are aware of what UHD can do editorially. We know that the wider establishing shot will be a much bigger wow to a UHD customer. But ultimately we want the HD and the UHD to be as good as they can possibly be. I am sure we will make adaptations in time but just now the priority is ensuring the experience is good for everyone.”

This quality control is also making a new set build for Sky’s flagship EPL presentation. “In the past when you transported a set you weren’t too worried about any damage it might receive because the detail wouldn’t reveal on screen. With UHD that luxury is not possible. We’ve got to consider set construction and how to best light it because this will matter.”

An EPL game, one of 124 Sky is covering this year alone, is typically covered with 19 cameras, 13 of which will be used in more than one position (for team arrival, pre-match interviews etc and then during the game).

RF cams still have a considerable lag with the commentary so these are converted from 1080p at present. “The delay on the UHD RF links are just too high at present,” but this is something we expect to introduce within the year as soon as latency gets down from the 1 second to near the 2 frame mark,” explains Lane.

When it comes to High Dynamic Range the broadcasters are testing various routes with their OB suppliers. 

“There are considerable issues around HDR, particularly on the workflow about how we manage the creation of a high quality HD and UHD HDR picture simultaneously. How do we monitor that? Plus, there will be training for camera-operators in terms of racking since they and we will see more detail as we transition between sunlight and shade. HDR is a tremendous tool and of great benefit but we are not quite there yet.”

Televising the IP revolution

Broadcast

I produced the editorial and chaired this conference. http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/televising-the-ip-revolution/5111381.article

A panel of experts at the Broadcast TECH IP Summit discussed the technology’s potential as a creative tool, through advancements such as object-based broadcasting and remote production.

Object-based broadcasting, where elements like music, commentary and camera feed can be separated and chosen by galleries and consumers alike, is revolutionising how people can access content. Beyond the technical challenges, it has the potential to create new genres and formats, but poses regulatory and storage issues. A panel at the IP Summit organised by Broadcast’s sister titleBroadcast TECH grappled with how IP is evolving as a creative tool.

JON PAGE, Head of operations, BBC R&D

Like any good 19th century scientist, we started off in IP by experimenting on ourselves.

We’ve been running our all-staff meetings across multiple sites as a live event, using our IP infrastructure. In 2014, we ran parallel coverage in UHD over IP, camera to screen.

At the moment, we’re focusing on this challenge: if Glastonbury is a massive moment for the BBC, what if we wanted to do 50 Glastonburys, without increasing the licence fee?

We’ve been evolving that with the

Scottish music festival T in the Park, and with the Edinburgh Festival, to work with logging off single cameras, plugging those into the internet and then creating a very simple web frontend editor that enables us to produce content very simply. What we’re finding from the production communities and from different parts of the BBC is that people want access to this.

The ‘object’ bit, though, comes when you think about content not as strings of half-hour programmes, but as a series of objects where a half-hour programme might be one of many ways of arranging them. Without having to spend more money doing recuts or anything special, you can present it in many different ways.

We’re continuously asking more questions about what we might do with objects.

Global news has holes in its schedules every so often – 30 seconds, 45, maybe a minute and a half. By taking news objects and bracketing edit decisions, you can then put that through an algorithm that automatically generates a curated version.

This is about thinking about objects on a higher level – a scene, or series of scenes, that follow each other. It’s part of the way in which a story is told.

You can then extract that and tell it in a different way that allows people to catch up on content.

We used it on Peaky Blinders as a way to bring audiences up to speed with a condensed catch-up of the action before launching series three.

In a cookery show, you could label what you are filming so you understand what the objects are. When placed in a database, it enables it to be played out in such a way that it presents the content as it is being cooked – it tells the viewer what they are cooking, what ingredients they have chosen, how many people they have to feed, how long it takes to chop the onion.

It’s a teacher in the kitchen that comes out of having made the show. If you do your planning at the outset, you can get three or four products out of the same production.

What’s interesting is to speak to the production community. When we put it into producers’ hands, they throw back more challenges to optimise that technology.

CASSIAN HARRISON, Controller, BBC4

One of the things I’ve noticed in my career is how at particular moments, there have been pivot points in technology that have radically changed the mode in which we can make content and renewed and refreshed TV itself.

Small DV cameras, the VX1000 in particular, transformed the documentary and we ended up with what became the docusoap. We could create really intense, long-running series that would have been unaffordable before.

The advent of hard-disk storage allowed us to store a huge amount of data and access it in a random access manner, which gave us the fixed rig, while the heli-gimbal transformed natural history filmmaking with Planet Earth.

I think we are reaching a tipping point around live TV, which has always been an incredibly premium product, and a central element of what TV is.

Linear TV, in particular, is having something of an existential crisis, but what keeps on coming through is the value of the special shared moment.

You think about sport and entertainment, but what’s interesting over the past 10 years is how the BBC has really looked at how live can be used in science (with Stargazing Live), in natural history (with Springwatch), and even in very straight forward documentary contexts like Airport Live.

Before, we needed to hire a very expensive studio, pre-wired with a gallery, and if we wanted to step outside, we would need to hire an incredibly large OB truck and take the tie line to whichever natural park Autumnwatch was filming in.

Constraints on technology meant that there were real limitations on what we could offer.

What really floats my boat is that now the entire nation is fixed with camera tie lines. You have them going into every single home and over the air. In the context of factual filmmaking, that becomes extraordinary, because you can suddenly go anywhere and receive a live image and begin to make TV out of it – BBC News can take mobile feeds into news production.

But we haven’t had the tools to begin to craft a switch-edited output, in the manner that you can in a studio gallery or an OB truck, that we can then put live to air.

That’s the final piece of technology that will enable us to produce creative output out of this network of camera tie lines. My mind begins to spin at the idea of a virtual gallery.

We can plug in cameras anywhere in the UK and they pop up on a network that can be seen at a central location in the same way that the switch room in the basement of New Broadcasting House works.

The guilty secret is that a lot of what TV is about, and the stories that people like to watch, doesn’t change that much. People return to the ob docs, glimpses into people’s lives, the stories of crime and justice. But we now have the ability to go to those precincts and tell those stories in a different way.

This is more of a BBC4 brief of arts culture and creativity than for BBC2 – although I am thinking about how the heck I do multi-point Police Live.

Is there a way that we can co-opt Britain’s massive craft communities, making stuff every day all across the county, celebrate it and make it into a TV event? That would have been impossible three or four years ago, but it’s a fi rst step into a completely new way of approaching ob docs.

MARTYN SUKER Consultant; former head of production, ITV Studios

When you talk to creatives about IP, you get a pretty puzzled reaction.

To them, it’s all about rights – brand or format ownership. It begs the question: do directors and producers need to be aware of the plumbing, so long as it’s reliable and flexible?

They should be aware of its capabilities.

How do you write the stories if you don’t know what the opportunities might be?

Creatives are rightly nervous about anything to do with IT and we can’t introduce anything too early.

Any savings hardly ever find their way back to the production team battling with falling budgets – they go back to the broadcaster. Operating expenses? Personally, when I’m on location, I don’t want to share resources with another five clients; I want to know somebody is there supporting me, and only me – and that comes at a price.

Shifts in production methodology only work for certain formats – live, multi-camera sport, entertainment and reality events – and there will be a huge expansion there. Drama? Probably not so much.

It will take time for this to settle in and to get through to the creatives what it means for storytelling. Optional extras, like additional feeds and the information that comes with it, take time and effort to create somewhere within the programme- making process, and that costs money.

If our tariffs are falling, where is the money going to come from to give creatives the freedom to do this?

Remote and centralised production processes enable fl exibility but will alter how we do things, not what we do. And if we can overcome this, is this the tech nology that might actually change our view of the linear scheduled broadcast?

ROB FRANCE, Senior product marketing manager, Dolby

The two words we hear most about object-based video, ‘efficiency’ and ‘flexibility’, are just as applicable in audio.

Object-based audio can deliver a more flexible experience, but it’s IP that ultimately needs to give us the backbone and flexibility on that level.

The first use of objects is to say ‘I have a sound, and I want to produce it differently depending on the replay environment’.

Our technology Dolby Atmos brings 3D sound, which we use in the cinema – and as more people watch content on tablets and mobiles with headphones, they expect better audio than just a mix of left and right channels.

People want more choices – if your team scores, you want to hear what a great goal it was; to the rival team’s fans, it can be the greatest goal in the world, but you don’t want to hear that.

That’s why every major Premier League team has its own commentary streamed over the web for fanclub members. We could distribute those over the IPTV channels without changing the ‘object’, or the content.

For sports that someone is unfamiliar with, it might be very useful to have commentary that describes and explains everything, but if you know more about the sport, you might not want the same level of detail.

And there are certain elements of a story you don’t always want to cover. If you’ve got 20 minutes to watch a match, you watch the highlights.

Or in scripted shows, you might want a version for adults and a version they can watch with their children that has content cut out or some words substituted for more appropriate ones.

ANDY BEALE, Chief engineer, BT Sport

Most sports feeds are heavily locked down because rights holders are paranoid about their content.

They want to make sure the feed we produce in our trucks looks the same – not just in the UK, but internationally.

Consistency is very important, and the consequence of that is that all sports feeds end up being boiled down to an extremely predictable and reliable – and, hopefully, consistent – experience.

Personalisation of audio is interesting – fans love their commentary. Fans will choose to listen to their team’s commentary while watching a feed from us or Sky. It’s a disruptive experience as there’s no way it will be in synch with the pictures. There’s a missed opportunity there.

It goes beyond the creative and technical challenges, many of which will be solved. Ofcom needs to do some real thinking too – how do I prove to them I’ve delivered a broadcast- compliant programme to every single viewer if everyone is watching slightly different content?

What about how this content is recorded and archived? Do I put in a video file with some data and graphics, and what does my media asset management system look like?

How can I access it quickly when someone asks for a replay? How does playout look when I have multiple assets all flying around in parallel?

Every single sport in the world ends up having English graphics, but the two biggest brands in motor racing, Honda and Suzuki, are Japanese. That market is watching with English-language graphics and listening to English-language commentary.

Object-based broadcasting definitely opens up an opportunity to deliver personalised experiences to those markets.

We need to get the frameworks in place so the rights holders can hand to us broadcasters elements that we can’t break too far out of, but that allow us to offer the right amount of personalisation, and we in turn hand down the combined framework to give a consumer enough freedom.

If we fix that problem, we really have got an exciting opportunity.