Watch This Space: 8K TV To Go Mass Market by End of the Decade

NAB Amplify

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/watch-this-space-8k-tv-to-go-mass-market-by-end-of-the-decade/

8K TV displays are barely on the consumer’s radar anywhere outside Japan but by 2030 they will be as mainstream as 4K TVs are today and HD sets were a decade ago.

There’s an inevitability about the growth of 8K sets in the home as the baseline continues to crawl upwards.

Following a slower than expected 2020 when just under 350,000 8K television sets were sold globally, Strategy Analytics is forecasting sales of more than 1 million 8K TVs this year and that this will quadruple in 2022.

By 2025, North America will have close to 25 million households owning at least one 8K TV set, according to the analyst.

The economic uncertainty and inability to get to shops led to a slack market for TV set sales last year but this expected to rebound — not least because stay-at-home orders caused many people to renew their relationship with the living room screen and may wish to upgrade.

That won’t translate into many 8K UHD displays sales of course, but the more we buy 4K TVs (and it is hard to buy an HD one) the higher the bar will be raised.

Consumer desire for ever larger screens is considered the principal driver.

According to David Watkins, Director, Connected Home Devices at Strategy Analytics, “As we saw with 4K, TV panel manufacturers are likely to switch entire production lines over to 8K as soon as it makes financial sense to do so. This transition will start with the very large screen sizes over 70-inches before trickling down into the 60 to 69-inch and even into some sub 60-inch sizes.”

By the end of 2025, he adds, anyone looking to buy an ultra-large screen TV will have an increasingly hard time finding one that is not 8K. At CES this year, leading brands Samsung and LG expanded their 8K TV ranges.

Screen size is important for 8K since it’s widely considered a waste of time (and space) to have anything smaller than a 50-inch set in order to discern any difference in pixel quality.

These predictions chime with those of another respected analyst, Omdia. It said (last December) that it expected between 250,000 and 300,000 8K TVs to ship in 2020, with around 600,000 in 2021. Omdia analyst Paul Gray said, “If we get to the million mark, it would need the Chinese market to take off.”

According to Omdia’s figures, about 19,000 sets of 8K TVs were sold in 2018. The figure increased by 100,000 in 2019 and reached more than 250,000 in 2020. In itself, it is staggering growth, but in comparison to 4K, the technology has a long way to go to catch up.

Indeed Q3 2020 saw the highest-ever third quarter result for TV set unit sales, charted by Omdia. Of the 62.9 million total, displays with UHD resolutions accounted for 58.6% but 8K TVs only represented 0.22% of these.

The relative surge in 8K TV sales between this year and next might be attributed to the Olympics double header. The Tokyo Games is chased by the Winter Games from Beijing next February and both will be heavily covered in 8K.

No broadcaster outside of Japan’s NHK is regularly airing content in the format and while an increasing number of feature film and series drama are being captured in 8K, plans to launch a 8K streaming service make little sense without a critical mass of sets in the market.

That Catch-22 will be broken. British broadcaster BT Sport has already made noises about 8K live transmissions and might already be doing so but for the problems of getting technicians into Premier League grounds this past season. The costs of 8K TV sets are also coming down to around US $3,000 (from $12,000 in 2017), according to Deloitte, with entry-level units available for less than that.

 

Can Hollywood Write Its Own Happy Ending?

 NAB Amplify

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/can-hollywood-write-its-own-happy-ending/

Hollywood loves a triumphant comeback but rarely are the studios cast as the underdog. Yet the most recent annual health check from the Motion Picture Association (MPA) makes grim reading for almost all involved from production through distribution. 

In 2020 the entire global theatrical and home/mobile entertainment market banked $80.8 billion, the lowest figure in four years and a decline of 18% from 2019. The pandemic was to blame.

Along with their 2020 drop in revenues, studios spent much less on production, released fewer films, saw reduced marketing expenses, and put staff on furlough or layoffs.

Theatrical was by far the hardest hit. With cinemas closed for lengthy periods worldwide box office receipts plummeted 72% on 2019 and comprised just 15% of all entertainment revenue. Global ticket sales reached just $12 billion compared to the $42.3 billion a year earlier. In the US, the lowly $2.2 billion in receipts marked a 40-year low.

Matters would have been catastrophic had the studios not had streaming outlets in place. With freedom restricted we all sought solace in digital entertainment to a degree which saw global online video subs pass one billion for the first time — up 26% from 2019. The time spent viewing with subscription OTT also grew by 34% in 2020, passing one hour (71.8 minutes) for the first time.

Digital Media Rockets

Indeed, digital media accounted for over three-quarters of total entertainment revenue, climbing to $61.8 billion.

The rapid take up of new streaming services such as Disney and Warner Bros/HBO Max sucked more life from physical sales. In 2020, sales of Blu-ray, DVD and disc rental halved from $14.9 billion in 2016 and accounted for just 9% of total revenue globally. This segment is in terminal decline.

What is not clear is quite what the impact of the suspension of the movie-going habit and the studio’s pivot to new premium digital windows will have on exhibition. Premium VOD (PVOD) either drastically shortens the theatre window for films to 17 days before becoming available for home video viewing or make a film available digitally day and date with theatrical — or bypasses theatrical completely.

Studios justified this as the only ways to begin to break even let alone grow revenue on their IP, but theatrical exhibition, with its wide publicity and word of mouth value, is still considered integral to the ability to maximize a film’s potential downstream.

The Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures movie Godzilla vs. Kong probably points the way forward. The movie grossed more than $350 million globally and $69.5 million domestically in its first two weekends since its release on March 31 — making it the highest grossing movie in over one year and already profitable. The movie was simultaneously released on HBO Max.

“In the aftermath of the pandemic, this will be the new model in the years to come,” suggests Forbes. “It will however, take several years to fully recover.”

In Asian countries, particularly in China, the box office has already returned to pre-pandemic levels but European and North American markets will take more time to get off the canvas.

MPA chairman Charles Rivkin wanted to paint an optimistic note but concluded, “Most of us anticipate that things are unlikely to return to what is ‘normal’ anytime soon.”

Original Productions Down

While streaming services, Netflix included, had enough content in the can that they could get over the line in 2020, they may be forced to market a more limited amount of fresh content in 2021 to the hilt. That’s because the number of original scripted TV programs across broadcast, cable, premium pay and streaming dropped last year for the first time since the number was tracked over a decade ago. In the early months of 2021, the number original shows on Netflix have dropped year-over-year by 12%.

The report also found there were only 338 theatrically released movies in 2020, a year-over-year decline of 66% from 987 movies in 2019.

All this means that when cinemas begin to open en mass this summer, exhibitors could — just could — be in for a bumper time as consumers eager for new content and a new experience head back to the big screen.

Perhaps that’s why Universal is rolling out the red carpet for James Bond title No Time To Die, with a staggering $15 million premiere in October.

 

All to play for: Why sports need gamification

copywritten for Blackbird

The next twelve months could prove crucial for the future of live sports. With even major events such as the UEFA Euro Championships and the Tokyo Olympics likely to be reshaped in the absence of crowds, elite sports and broadcasters must team up to bring fans into the stadium in other ways.

https://www.blackbird.video/uncategorized/all-to-play-for-why-sports-need-gamification/

What this means is that broadcasters and leagues need to use technology to start interacting directly with viewers.

“First and foremost, it is critical that sports organizations invest in the infrastructure required to power digital channels, streaming platforms, and augmented and virtual reality solutions,” argues Pete Giorgi, a US Sports Practice Leader at Deloitte.

The good news is that the ground work is already laid.

Fans no longer expect to passively consume broadcast content. They demand entertaining new ways to engage with their team, the players and with friends and the wider community around and during the live game.

The market is ripe for gamification

During the resumption of sports, personalised audio services were introduced that provide alternative commentaries, live audio feeds from the referee’s mic, and crowd sounds for an ‘authentic’ stadium experience. Other innovations from Eleven Sports, BT Sport and Sky Sports among others, focused on social streaming, allowing friends to watch together. This experimentation will only increase in 2021.

Live streaming platforms like Twitch and Facebook Live already offer significantly more interactivity and engagement than linear TV. Live chats, interactive overlays and clickable buttons adjacent to the streams allow for deeper engagement and with that, more customization for gamification experiences and greater potential for monetization.

With real time votes, quizzes, surveys and polls fed back graphically into the live stream fans can be actively engaged – and stay connected. Behavorial and individual data can be collected, analyzed and fed back into improved experiences in a virtuous cycle.

The fan engagement revolution is on

The esports industry has been particularly progressive around rewarding users for their hours spent viewing and watching content. For instance, several publishers offer in-game rewards to viewers of their esports leagues. Riot Games took this concept into a deeper gamified model, with specific ‘watch missions’ that fans could take part in.

Overlays blended with the live OTT live streams can engage fans on the main TV not just on second screens. Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray stats overlay is a prime example of offering bonus content to viewers and a value add to subscribers. The advance of VR and AR propelled by 5G will only extend the viewer’s role in directing the action.

The natural evolution of this is real time betting. Bookmaking regulations will hinder its growth in different markets but the rise of shared viewing features could pave the way for prediction-based games without money changing hands. 

This is happening faster than you think. In the U.S., the live broadcasts of NFL team Arizona Cardinals are to be augmented with sports betting thanks to a deal between betting group Bally’s and regional broadcaster Sinclair. They aim to launch Bally-branded apps for watching Cardinals games not only giving fans the chance to watch the games without a cable or streaming subscription, but to also wager as they watch.

In comments that will resonate with other cash-strapped rights holders Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley argued there was still long-term value in sports rights, but that returns might increasingly come from “reinventing the [network] around gamification, community-based fandom and around direct to consumer.”

Cutting edge cloud native tech is fundamental to success

The monetization of sports from enhanced fan interaction will only happen with the ultra-low latency connectivity and the fastest production tools on the planet to support it.

Blackbird’s key objective is simple: to increase the value of your video – whether this is monetary value or usability value. It does this by hyper-accelerating the speed at which live and non-live video can be accessed, viewed, edited and published – from anywhere.

It’s a genuinely distributed ecosystem meaning that remote production teams can access video fast and frame accurately from any laptop, making it immediately available worldwide.

The unique Blackbird codec and toolset is completely cloud-native, developed for supercharged live workflows and trusted by AAA brands including the NFL, NHL, Eleven Sports, BT, Deltatre, Riot Games, European Tour Golf and Arsenal FC.

The lines between traditional one-way forms of entertainment and interactive content have been blurred. Fans want to participate, play with the experience and ultimately, to control it.

Behind the scenes: Small Axe

IBC

Steve McQueen’s acclaimed series about the West Indian experience in 1970s London doesn’t so much rewrite history as write the community into British history. 

 https://www.ibc.org/trends/behind-the-scenes-small-axe/7467.article

Shabier Kirchner had never been to Carnival outside of Trinidad and Antigua, so when he went to Notting Hill in 2019 he made the most of it. The cinematographer had just shot Mangrove for director Steve McQueen and was about to embark on Lovers Rock, another in the five films that comprises the acclaimed BBC miniseries Small Axe. 

“It was just hot and sweaty with so many black people fully expressing themselves and the love for each other, and the love for the culture,” Kirchner says of Notting Hill. “I went to a house party afterwards and the party was bathed in the craziest light. I woke up the next morning still drunk from the night before. It was a bank holiday but Steve had called us in for a meeting.” 

McQueen wanted to discuss Lovers Rock. They had scouted the location found by the art department, but had never spoken about the film’s visual language. 

“I walked in and Steve took one look at me and he was like, ‘You were at a mashup last night, weren’t you?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, man. I was’. He’s like, ‘I can smell the booze coming off of you’. And I was like, ‘But Steve, listen… ’ 

“I proceeded to tell him about the energy of what I had experienced. The whole birth of Lovers Rock was that conversation. How do we transform that feeling of literal intoxication visually?” 

The film will resonate with anyone who has attended a house party thanks to Kirchner’s camera which moves rhythmically with the partygoers and to the reggae music. It was named by Sight & Sound as the best film of 2020. 

The impetus was “not rewriting history, but writing us into history,” Kirchner explained to Sight & Sound. “When you ask Steve why he made Small Axe for television, he says it’s because he wanted his mum to see it. He wants her to switch on the BBC and see our stories there on the screen in the living room. That is something that black people got robbed of the chance of seeing.” 

How Kirchner came to shoot Small Axe 

Created, directed and co-written by McQueen, each Small Axe drama about London’s West Indian community is treated individually and shot with different film or digital formats. They are kaleidoscopic in showing characters impacted but not defined by racism with equal weight given to a nostalgic and personal celebration of family, friendship and Black British culture from 1969 to the mid-1980s. 

Kirchner proved the perfect collaborator for McQueen but, if not quite plucked out of nowhere, the Antiguan was not the obvious choice. 

“It was Shabier’s showreel that first struck me,” McQueen’s regular cinematographer, Sean Bobbitt BSC, tells IBC365. “When we met in London he told me we’d met before on a Skype call when I was tutoring at the NFTS [National Film & Television School]. He had applied but the school didn’t accept him because he was so far advanced there was no way he was going to gain from attending. But no-one ever told him that.”  

Mostly self-taught, Kirchner was highlighted in 2018 by Variety as a ‘Cinematographer to Watch’, having made a name filming several shorts and indie features, including Skate Kitchen (2018), about teen girl skateboarders.  

“His attitude was impressive,” Bobbitt says. “It was that, and that he doesn’t just do drama but art installations, that felt like he would be a really good match for Steve. It was only later that I learned he was from Antigua.” 

Bobbitt who had worked with the director on such films as Shame, 12 Years a Slave and Widows, was unavailable for Small Axe but was asked by McQueen to recommend someone  

“I had wanted to find a young British black camera person,” he says. “The stories are powerful but from a privileged white middle-class background they don’t mean the same to me as they do to someone who has actually suffered racism. What was shocking was that I couldn’t find that person in the UK. A lot more needs to be done in terms of diversity and opening up the industry here.” 

Individual film packages 

The longest film in the series, Mangrove – a true story centering on the Mangrove Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill and the 1971 trial of the so-called Mangrove Nine – moves from street demonstrations to courtroom drama. Kirchner chose to use 2-perf 35mm Kodak stock (500T 5219) on Arricam LTs using Cooke Speed Panchro lenses. 

The exposed negative was push-processed to increase grain and contrast in the image and to make colours such as red and orange stand out. The intent was to feel more handmade, textured and “community built”, than smooth and digital. 

Red, White and Blue, the true story of how black police officer Leroy Logan tried to change the institutional racism of the Met by joining the force, was shot on three-perf 35mm with an unfussy style that focused on John Boyega’s Golden Globe-winning performance.  

Kirchner mounted Cooke S4 glass on Arricam LT and Arriflex 235 cameras to give a sharper and cleaner-looking result than Mangrove. 

Education, an account of the injustices of the schooling system through the experience of a young boy, was shot handheld on Arriflex 416 Super16mm to suggest BBC drama of the period, such as those about working-class characters directed by Alan Clarke, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.  

Alex Wheatle, a biopic of the early life of the DJ-turned-novelist set against the backdrop of the New Cross Massacre and the 1981 Brixton riots, is filmed on the Sony Venice. The camera’s larger field of view allowed Kirchner to “frame Alex in a beautiful close up but see the entire world around him at the same time”. 

Lovers Rock was also digitally shot, on Alexa Mini, partly so they wouldn’t have to cut and change film reels every 11 minutes. A lighting rig over the main dance room allowed the DP and the actors to move freely in the space for long takes. “We changed the lighting according to the narrative, the emotion of what was happening. We wanted it to feel quite contemporary in its feel, but also a spiritual representation of Black love.” 

Kirchner says he was conscious of the responsibility of bringing these stories of West Indian heritage to screen. During production he even badged the film camera magazines with the flag of a different Caribbean country. 

“I’m becoming less and less interested in the parameters we’ve been told filmmakers should operate in by Western culture,” he said. “For me, this isn’t cinema, this is ancestral. In a time when our histories are fading, I want to be able to keep making choices that preserve that in any way possible.”  

Small Axe: Production Design 

For production designer Helen Scott (A Very English Scandal) the main challenge was unpacking five distinct scripts in a compressed timeframe. Mangrove was shot over seven weeks. The rest of the films took between two and four weeks each, with filming interspersed with breaks for rest, recces and prep. 

“We wanted a clear divide between each episode and that drove the location scouting,” Scott says. “The time scales were so tight. Quite often we made decisions without Steve while he was busy filming.” 

Parts of Kilburn were dressed to double as Notting Hill. Goldthorn Avenue in suburban Wolverhampton stood in for the (now gentrified) boroughs of Hornsey and Hackney. The modern building used for Hendon police college was in Shrewsbury. 

“Steve wanted authenticity and accuracy and would challenge us with that – sometimes quite unexpectedly,” she says. “For example, for Mangrove he was very keen to know exactly what the shops were on the All Saints Road at the time, what the street layout was and how each building sat alongside each other.” 

Jonathan Barker’s photographs of West London from the era provided a reference point. “The photos no longer represent reality, of course, so the challenge was in finding locations that hadn’t been developed, crowded with buildings and trees, where there should really be gaps left from the bombings. Ultimately, we had to construct our own version of that era.”

Alongside researching national archives, family photo albums, newspapers and periodicals, Scott also had the opportunity to talk to Leroy Logan and musician Leee John, a friend of Logan’s who shared insight into his character. She also spoke with Alex Wheatle, who visited the set. 

“Research and facts are your bones and the things you work with to give the design an overall look,” she says. “On top of that you have to overlay tone.” 

She adds: “Steve and I talked of Mangrove being a story about the written word with written messages standing for the unheard voices. We chose to convey this graphically, placing banners and graffiti in the design. With Shabier we talked about how that part of London felt dusty and parched but that a vibrancy was emerging and the Mangrove was the hub and lifeblood of that. That’s where the colour palette came in. The Mangrove appears hot and rich in colour contrasted to the streets outside which are drained of colour. I wanted that sense of urgency, unambiguity and clarity in the design.” 

Lovers Rock was less about a place, she says, and more about creating a frisson between people and the detail of what they were feeling and doing. “Creating atmosphere was much more important than the party house and its walls,” she says. “The accuracy felt less important as what we were creating was the bubble of a world, a fairy tale. The breath and sensuality of that along with the smoke and dancing established the space more than anything.” 

The most challenging part of this film was creating an accurate journey between Ealing and the party in Notting Hill, and the journey the romantic couple take on his bike home afterwards.  

“Steve had visual anchors along the way which had to be effectively described, but ultimately, he has the ability to simplify the journey and draw our focus making it just about them and their story,” Scott says. 

“Each script had a set of characters, locations and time zones that are different and with no physical continuity but nonetheless they are all connected,” she says. “It was about trying to find the nuance of each film.” 

 

Behind the scenes: WandaVision

IBC

Marvel’s first scripted series blends its cinematic universe with retro sitcoms and a hint of Hot Fuzz.

https://www.ibc.org/trends/behind-the-scenes-wandavision/7468.article

Marvel’s Disney+ series owes as much to British action-comedy film Hot Fuzz as it does to yesteryear American sitcoms Bewitched and The Dick Van Dyke Show. 

In Edgar Wright’s 2007 film, co-written by Simon Pegg, the cream teas and vicarage idyll of village England is shattered by murder and mayhem. Something sinister also lurks beneath the apple pie suburbia of Wandavision’s Westview. Creator Matt Shakman makes the connection explicit by inviting Hot Fuzz cinematographer Jess Hall to help design the look of the show. 

“Matt Shakman is a Hot Fuzz fan and that was one of the reasons he thought about me for WandaVision,” says Hall. “In Hot Fuzz there’s sense of a neighbourhood and community but something uneasy going on under the surface. In WandaVision, we establish this bubble of a comfortable sitcom and then we fracture it. That’s a really interesting dramatic tension to work with as a cinematographer.” 

The nine-episodes of WandaVision pay homage to several decades of American TV, starting in the 1950s and breaking through the fourth wall in the 2000s. Hall, a British DP who grew up with Porridge, Last of the Summer Wine and The Good Life, read up on the history of American sitcoms. He also studied classics like The Brady Bunch, Modern Family and Family Ties for clues about colour and visual vocabulary to translate into WandaVision. 

“I wanted to understand what tools and techniques were used for specific shows and what was common to that era of TV,” he says. “The cameras and lighting instruments or film stock available to the show’s makers at the time influenced the creative choices they made.” 

Hall could have chosen to shoot each episode using film and video cameras appropriate for each period but decided to use the Alexa LF for almost the entirety of production. 

“I felt it was important to have some level of technical continuity because we are also varying aspect ratios, mixing black and white with colour and styles of composition often in the same episode,” says Hall. “Working with one camera platform was intended to provide a baseline on which we developed the colour science. I collected stills from different shows of the era, analysed the colour values and built a palette. These colour values could be translated across other departments, such as costume, so we could build a lot of coherence within the episode.” 

With colour imaging guru Josh Pines at Technicolor, Hall created a LUT in 4K HDR for use as a style envelope for each period. To the colour science, he added 47 different lenses, some custom-made by Panavision for the show.  

For example, he observed that as TV moved into the ’60s, the visual language became more cinematic. He had a pair of portrait lenses made for actress Elizabeth Olsen, for close-ups, which blurred the highlights at the edge of the frame.  

I Love Lucy’s pioneering use of three cameras led to it becoming the standard technique for the production of most sitcoms filmed in front of an audience from the 1950s onwards. Consequently, WandaVision episode one was also shot in front of a studio audience and in two days to recreate the edgy vibe of live. The commitment to period extended to seating audience members on old school wooden chairs and asking them to come dressed in 1950’s wardrobe.  

Episode two, ‘Don’t Touch That Dial’ mimics The Dick Van Dyke Show which ran 1961-1966, down to the living room layout and furniture. It was also shot single camera with more modelled lighting in contrast to the broader lighting scheme used in episode one. 

By the time Wanda has punched through the forcefield (called Hex) surrounding Westview into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in episode three, the aspect ratio dramatically shifts from 1.33:1 (4:3) to the cinema screen ratio 2.39:1. The warm tones of the family sitcom are left behind for the cooler sheen of the MCU. 

Hall rewatched key Marvel movies to ensure continuity between WandaVision and the MCU, particularly Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Age of Ultron and scenes involving Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda) and Paul Bettany (Vision). For MCU world scenes he used the Panavision Ultra Panatars made originally for Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. These anamorphic lenses were only used on the MCU’s S.W.O.R.D scenes, while spherical lenses were employed for everything in Westview. 

“I was ‘encoding’ the Marvel world with a look that fans would be slightly familiar with, probably not consciously, but somewhere in their subconscious,” he says. 

Inspired by television’s visual language  
Kevin Feige, the primary creator and producer of the MCU franchise, told the editing team he wanted the show to be era-specific but also readable by a modern audience. Editors Nona Khodai, Zene Baker and Tim Roche also reviewed DVDs of old sitcoms to get a handle on tone and pace but not quite to mimic the editing styles. 

“The Dick Van Dyke Show was actually very fast in terms of the performances so we didn’t have to speed the editing up, but shows from the ’70s and ’80s are a little too slow for an audience today so we had to spend a bit more time quickening up those moments,” says Khodai. 

Sound engineer Paul Iverson, who is credited as the show’s laugh track consultant, gave the team a selection of laughter track recordings from the live studio sitcoms of the ’50s and through the eras.   

The editors also researched old TV commercials for toothpaste, soft drinks and watches to help recreate the style of the promos inserted throughout the episodes. 

The biggest challenge editorially was the integration and interpretation of 2,500+ visual effects shots – more than in VFX extravaganza Endgame. 

“In the script you’d get a line that would read Agatha absorbs power,” says Baker, who cut Thor Ragnarok. “On paper that seems easy – but translating that into visual storytelling can be tricky.” 

The opening to episode eight, which centres when the series’ manipulative villain Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) is tied to a stake, proved a particular challenge for Khodai. “I didn’t know if it was going to turn out well. I didn’t quite have the coverage I needed, it was raining when they shot the scene and VFX-wise it was a challenge. It was hard to show that Agatha was absorbing the power – hard to make sure you could see what was happening. We worked it and worked it and now I’m super-happy with it.” 

Multiple VFX shops including Digital Domain, Lola VFX, ILM, Rodeo FX, Zoic Studios and Framestore were marshalled by the show’s VFX supervisor, Tara DeMarco. 

“We knew that the Hex had to be a boundary that kept the townspeople in, but was mysterious to the people on the outside,” DeMarco explains in Disney’s documentary special Assembled: The Making of WandaVision. “We decided early on that it would be more mysterious if it was an invisible Hex.” 

She used “the language of television” as inspiration. “We studied how magnets were drawn on old CRTV televisions and the magnetisation you would get across the screen,” she says. “[We studied] the pixelisation you would get when you zoomed way into an old TV, those skinny lines that you would see on old NTSC square TV.” 

The documentary also reveals that Bettany’s crimson face for Vision was actually blue in the black and white scenes, so that the colour would translate into a better shade of grey. It’s a technique actually used in the 1950s when actresses wore blue lipstick so it would appear ‘red’ on black and white telly. 

 

The transformation journey that broadcasters need to make

copy written for Net Insight

Broadcasters across the world are looking over their shoulders as online streaming services coupled with mobile internet are taking over audiences. Younger people have been at the forefront of viewers’ migration from linear TV to mobile on-demand. Their first port of call is YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and major streamers like Netflix consumed anywhere on mobile devices and away from traditional television channels and living room hardware.

https://netinsight.net/resource-center/blogs/the-transformation-journey-that-broadcasters-need-to-make/

What’s more, streaming-first companies like Amazon, DAZN, Twitter and Facebook are shaping up to challenge pay-TV broadcasters in the battle for the live audience. Once again, the advantage they offer is anytime anywhere viewing coupled with immersive and interactive experiences.

Capitalizing on trends

Sports franchises know this too. As their revenues dwindle from behind-closed-doors events the digital fan experience has risen to the fore. The NFL, for example, is putting more exclusive live games on Twitch and Amazon Prime Video and offering a viewing experience that includes interactive features such as statistical overlays and user-selectable audio options.

When US broadcast group Sinclair was forced to write down the value of its regional sports networks by U$4.23 billion last November, CEO Chris Ripley insisted there was still long-term value in the rights provided the group “reinvent” its sports assets “around gamification, around community-based fandom and around Direct To Consumer.” [source: https://www.nexttv.com/features/steve-rosenberg]

Some media companies as well as public and commercial broadcasters have sought to capitalize on these trends by offering their own streaming services – Disney+, Peacock, Joyn, BritBox and Discovery+ among them.

To boost take-up, Discovery has a multi-territory and multi-platform partnership with Europe’s largest mobile and fixed network operator, Vodafone. This deal advances Discovery’s broader strategy of expanding its existing linear distribution relationships with direct-to-consumer distribution for the first time.
In addition to a highly competitive market and higher complexity in consumer behavior, new consumer technologies such as AR/ VR and 4K/8K video bring additional challenges for the broadcasting industry. Bandwidth requirements are increased for both production and distribution; the use of public clouds to collect and use data is a prerequisite if content is to be generated at scale; and there’s is a need to adapt production assets for UHD. There’s even a strong case to be made for reinventing certain program concepts to integrate AR/VR.

Build the transformation on cloud and data

However, the profound changes in media consumption habits offer broadcasters an opportunity. The shift from linear to non-linear viewing increases the necessity of using big data to develop a deep understanding of consumer habits and preferences in order to create increasingly tailored content.

The critical transformation broadcasters must make in 2021 is to address the intensely personalized model of digital content delivery to individual devices.

Consultancy Arthur D Little pinpoints [https://www.adlittle.com/en/BroadcastIn5G] three key capabilities that public and private broadcasters can capitalize on to strengthen their market position and fight back against the tech giants:

• Create more local content to differentiate from the global players at a competitive cost
• Create more specialized and next-generation content (e.g., AR/VR, 8K, mobile) for a tailored audience by fast learning from an individual’s consumption habits
• Distribute content anytime and anywhere (an omni-channel approach) to regain reach and relevance in young and fragmenting audiences

Broadcasters are forced to act urgently and quickly – both in terms of running the right digital transformation programs as well as finding ways to fund the transformation.

Don’t underestimate the crucial role that technology and vendor partnerships will play in helping broadcasters to consolidate their traditional business with the new while streamlining the cost of operations.

Crucial partnerships

For instance, only a year ago cloud was perceived by some as a lower performance alternative to satellite or dedicated fibre that could not meet the security and quality needs of high-end broadcast. The pandemic changed all this, demonstrating that cloud does work, is reliable and can meet the quality and reliability requirements that media transport demands when implemented correctly.

Net Insight’s cloud-first Nimbra Edge represents the start of next generation global content media delivery. It is already allowing media service providers such as Tata Communications to launch elastic cloud-based live media transport to service the needs of Tier 1 sports. At the same, Tata is integrating and leveraging its existing network infrastructure in tandem with Net Insight to provide a complete end-to-end media delivery and processing platform for both broadcasters and content owners.

The Nimbra platform delivers an open virtualized media ecosystem, capable of providing exciting end-user experiences and services that give customers a competitive edge match-fit for today’s dynamic market.

With global IT, consulting and outsourcing company Wipro, Net Insight has formed a strategic partnership to enable service providers, broadcasters and rights holders to unlock the benefits of cloud-centric media ecosystems and enable new ways of creating content, including remote and cloud-based production.

We are very proud to move forward with this partnership and excited to give more organizations access to our transformational technology.

The State of Live Streaming in 2021

Streaming Media

Video dominates the internet, so much so that Cisco has predicted that 82% of all IP traffic will be video by 2022. COVID-19 has goosed that growth. Streaming video, especially to mobile, is globally essential for work, entertainment, and health. At the peak of the lockdown, mobile networks held up remarkably well to the strain of additional data traffic, as work-from-home data usage spiked dramatically. For instance, AT&T reported a 22% increase in its core network traffic and a 30% increase in wireless voice minutes. The new combined T-Mobile/Sprint saw mobile hotspot usage spike 60%, while tethering was up 57% for T-Mobile and 70% for Sprint. 

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/The-State-of-Live-Streaming-in-2021-146325.aspx

In April 2020, Akamai CEO Tom Leighton noted that global internet traffic increased by about 30% during the previous month. "That's about 10 times normal, and it means we've seen an entire year's worth of growth in internet traffic in just the past few weeks. And that's without any live sports streaming."

A report from Conviva shows that between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, the time spent watching streamed video on mobile rose 30% globally, with video on demand seeing 34% growth and live content up by 16%. Grand View Research calculates that the global video streaming market will reach $223.98 billion by 2028. That's a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21%, and live video will show the fastest growth.

COVID-19 Accelerates Sports' Digital Transition 

Last year's suspended animation exposed the structural issues that have long plagued the sports and sports broadcast industry. Digital engagement led by live streaming offers a way out, but at the cost of a seismic jolt to business models.

The need is dire. According to Pete Giorgio, the U.S. sports practice leader at Deloitte, NFL teams likely lost an estimated $5.5 billion in stadium revenue. The company's 2021 U.S. sports outlook says that because the NBA finished its 2019–2020 regular season and playoffs in a fanless "bubble," it likely lost about $500 million.

It's imperative to find ways to bring fans back to arenas and to create alternative sources of revenue in 2021. Deloitte's prescription is stark: Sports leagues and athletes should move beyond traditional broadcasts and start interacting directly with their fans. "First and foremost," the company says, "it's critical that sports organizations invest in the infrastructure required to power digital channels, streaming platforms, and augmented and virtual reality solutions."

Ampere also notes that the suspension of live sports may have had a long-term impact on fans and claims that it affects their propensity to pay to access sports on TV. Its Q3 2020 polling shows that in 22 markets, 34% of sports fans are willing to pay to access at least one sport, which is down from 42% in Q3 2019. This trend is sharpest in Europe and North America. 

Reduced incomes and higher unemployment are two reasons for this shift, but Ampere also points to a greater share of the household budget going to premium subscription video-on-demand channels. However, Ampere believes this has not yet translated into widespread premium pay TV sports cancellations. 

"The next twelve months will prove crucial for live sports," says Minal Modha, consumer research lead at Ampere. "As broadcasters begin to sign new rights deals or renew current contracts, many will seek to leverage the pandemic to reduce fees. If consumers do begin to cut the cord, this will only provide further ammunition and may see a widespread re-evaluation of sports rights." 

It's not as if sports clubs and franchises are blindsided. A report from MediaKind finds that while most sports rightsholders still define their direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform as complementary to broadcast, they now also see it as an essential part of their future distribution strategy and of building direct touchpoints with fans. In addition, the report says that the user experience bar is rising from one of pure entertainment, or presentation, to one of engagement, or interactivity. It shows an even split between rights­holders who use their D2C platform as a content hub only and those who explore a whole range of fan engagement tools to exploit OTT's full capabilities.

"D2C platforms … now form an essential part of any strategy for live sport," asserts Raul Aldrey, chief product officer at MediaKind. "While current D2C services are largely representative of an emerging market, this sector is ripe for experimentation, exploration, trial and error, innovation, creativity, and risk-taking—with big rewards for those that get it right."

Broadcasters Monopolize Rights, but Cracks Widen

So where does this leave the major sports contracts? Largely, as they were, with the bulk of live games for the major leagues airing on TV. That includes the NFL, whose contracts with NBC, CBS, and Fox are due for renewal in 2022. According to a Nielsen study commissioned by the NFL, Super Bowl LIV in February 2020 was watched by about 135 million people in the U.S., with most of them attending viewing parties around a TV. From a TV ratings perspective, the Super Bowl's viewing figures wrapped up a positive year. The league had a 5% increase in viewership for the 2019 regular season, attracting an average audience of 16.5 million viewers per game. 

However, the NFL has also continued to experiment with exclusive live-streamed games, such as the San Francisco 49ers-Arizona Cardinals game on Twitch and Amazon Prime Video on Dec. 26, 2020. The viewing experience included interactive features like X-Ray, which lays stats over the game, and user-selectable alternative audio options. Similarly, a wild-card game in January 2021 was streamed exclusively on NBCUniversal's Peacock. The league has also streamed games exclusively on Twitter and Yahoo.

An article from Deadline suggests that while Amazon is an NFL streaming partner for Thursday night games, these streams "have not yielded blockbuster numbers." It notes that while linear ratings continue to erode, "most analysts expect incumbent rights holders to retain their rights, even at an expected hike in valuation."

That's certainly the case for MLB, which last year extended its broadcast contract with Turner Sports for a further 7 years in a deal reportedly worth $3.2 billion. That averages out to $470 million per season. The deal will also allow the WarnerMedia-owned group to stream live MLB games and highlights on its digital platforms, including Bleacher Report.

In a 2018 deal worth $5.1 billion. Fox sewed up the rights to air MLB games until 2028. And should ESPN re-sign with MLB in 2021, as expected, the league would see its TV revenue increase to approximately $2 billion per year, up from $1.5 billion. By comparison, MLB's separate $300 million agreement with DAZN is small, but ESPN will take note that its virtual lock on showing an extended package of 16 wild-card games in 2020 not only won the TV ratings (averaging 1.87 million viewers per game), but delivered a huge boost for ESPN's digital space. During the wild-card playoffs, ESPN.com had its largest digital audience of 2020, with more than 60 million page views of MLB content across Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

Notable other live-stream pacts of 2020 included the WNBA's renewal with Twitter to live stream 10 regular season games. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group, however, wrote down the value of its regional sports networks (RSNs) by $4.23 billion. It "grossly overpaid for cable channels hobbled by cord cutting and shrinking subscriber revenue," according to Bloomberg. These RSNs are former Fox assets 
that Sinclair acquired for $9.6 billion in 2019. Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley says there is still long-term value in sports rights, but hints that returns might increasingly come from betting. He suggests "reinventing the RSNs around gamification, around community-based fandom and around direct-to-consumer [streaming apps]."

Social Broadcasting and Gamification

In 2021, expect to see live-event rightsholders and broadcasters "gamify" their video offerings with a greater degree of social interaction and mixed-media experiences. Nowhere has this crossover been more acute than on game-centric video platforms. Indeed, the lockdown resulted in particularly explosive growth. Statistics from StreamElements and Arsenal show that the leading sites all grew massively year over year from April 2019 to April 2020: 101% for Twitch, 65% for YouTube, and 238% for Facebook Gaming.

The related global esports market, which generated revenues of more than $1 billion in 2020, is forecast by Newzoo to hit $1.6 billion by 2023. Even if 2020 earnings took a knock while spectator tournaments closed, the successful experiment that many physical sports took by replacing live action with video game simulations will be a lasting legacy. For example, the pandemic led the NBA's Phoenix Suns to simulate games on NBA 2K, streamed on Twitch. In its debut stream, which was set to mimic the team's scheduled game against the Dallas Mavericks, the Suns' Twitch stream drew 221,000 views.

Likewise, SRO Motorsports switched real races to esports, even holding them at their originally scheduled date and time. SRO Motorsports drivers competed in the game simulation from their homes. An in-game director team was connected to AWS Elemental MediaLive, and live commentators were connected directly to the game server. AWS Elemental MediaLive output streams to social media channels, while AWS Elemental MediaConnect generated a live stream using Zixi for delivery to the GT World YouTube channel, Motorsport.tv, Eurosport, and CBS. Online, the broadcasts earned more than 500,000 live-stream views, and more than 4.4 million live-stream impressions were delivered across multiple platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. AWS says that SRO Motorsports was "impressed" at the ability to stream the games in high quality at 60 fps to multiple destinations, "something well outside the traditional TV workflow."

In addition, Deloitte claimed in a 2019 report that "there are more millennials … who have a gaming subscription than those with a traditional Pay TV subscription—and close to one-half of millennials and Gen Z pay for both a gaming and video streaming service."

Steve Miller-Jones, VP of edge computing and solutions architecture at Limelight Networks, says that in 2021, "We can expect gambling integration and personalised services that provide alternative commentaries, live audio feeds from the referee's mic, and crowd sounds for an authentic stadium experience. We will also see more features focused on social streaming, allowing friends to watch together. These features might be short-lived, but those that really engage audiences will remain and change how live streaming experiences are defined. We're not there yet, but we're approaching a model where the user controls the content experience for themselves."

It's not just live sports that were trending on sites like Twitch last year. During the Black Lives Matter protests, the site was prominent as a hub for airing sit-ins and marches. According to The New York Times, "Some Black Lives Matter protesters and citizen journalists have created Twitch channels just to broadcast the protests, while gamers who were already on the site switched to showing the demonstrations instead of video games." In addition, "Many said they chose Twitch because they were familiar with the site from video games and wanted to leverage an existing tech-savvy audience. Twitch also has some technical tools for live broadcasting that other platforms lack, they said, like a robust moderation system to avoid spam in chats." 

Video the Killer App for 5G

With video forecast to constitute 79% of all mobile network traffic by 2022, it's no wonder that mobile operators consider video to be their killer app. And with 5G as the platform, the opportunity for telcos is to support the best mobile video and also become home to a new kind of video experience—something better than what has gone before. This doesn't mean just enhanced mobile broadband for streaming live events in HD or UHD; 5G is foundational for more immersive and more interactive video experiences. 

"Our number one priority in 2021 is to expand our network and the quality of our video streaming with enhanced protocols like 4K and HDR to deliver a TV like experience over the public internet," explains Darren Lepke, head of video product management at Verizon Media. "Secondly, we're addressing emerging use cases that we see broadcasters investing in including realtime video and interactivity, wagering and gamification. We're developing new video protocols that deliver realtime video at scale and integrating things like gamification engines and video chat features so you can watch [a Premier League] match with your mates."

In 2020, operators began to migrate to standalone networks away from legacy network technology, finally opening up the speed and latency gains of 5G. The first to reach this mark in the U.S. was T-Mobile, fueled by the April 2020 completion of its merger with Sprint. Verizon began moving traffic onto its new 5G standalone core in the second half of 2020. Both have allied with sports to showcase their services. 

T-Mobile partnered with MLB and put mini 5G-powered cameras on the caps of players and coaches to provide a first-person view of the action in pre-game practice before the first game of the 2020 World Series. T-Mobile's 5G FieldCams and BatterCams streamed live on MLB's digital platforms, including the MLB VR app. "A broadcast like this has never been done before, and it offers a glimpse at how wireless connectivity is set to transform the way we watch and interact with live sporting events and more," says Neville Ray, T-Mobile's president of technology.

Verizon and the NFL have a multiyear plan to enable new fan experiences based on 5G connectivity in all NFL stadiums (13 installed to date). To develop new services required by broadcasters, rights owners, sports teams, and leagues, Verizon is also adding real-time streaming tech from Phenix Real Time Solutions "to enable sub-second latency for live sports at scale." 

For example, multi-camera viewing can make "remote sporting events more like in-venue experiences with the ability to see plays from any angle," according to Verizon. "Real-time streaming also provides viewers with brand new ‘watch together' social experiences, such as co-viewing synchronized live streams, in-game trivia, and even wagering, allowing fans to host virtual watch parties with family and friends." Additionally, in the future, fans could potentially experience post-game player interviews via 360° holograms, Verizon says.

Yahoo Sports is already using some of these real-time streaming features. Up to four NFL fans can watch live games together via the Yahoo Sports app. This "Watch Together" function debuted during the Kansas City Chiefs season opener versus the Houston Texans on Sept. 10, 2020. It follows similar concepts introduced by U.K. broadcasters Sky Sports and BT Sport when live Premier League soccer resumed post-lockdown.

Having played second fiddle to AT&T and Verizon for years, T-Mobile is making the most of its current position as the nation's biggest mobile network. With 5G, for example, it argues that it is not just serving more people (its 5G network was "live" in more than 210 cities as of November 2020), but doing so in a better way. "The fact is that fewer than 1% of Americans can even find Verizon Ultra Wideband 5G … because it doesn't scale," contends Mike Sievert, T-Mobile's president and CEO. "The bottom line is this: they simply bet on the wrong technology. Mid-band is the Goldilocks 5G band. It has massive, transformational capacity. AND it can reach for miles. T-Mobile is the ONLY one with big swaths of mid-band dedicated to 5G. … Where customers have both our low-band and mid-band 5G, we're seeing transformational speeds [of] 300 Mbps average, with peaks up to 1Gbps."

Let's park that there and leave them to slug it out.

Automated Sports Production

AI-driven live production is spreading like wildfire among college and high school sports. Israel's Pixellot has a deal with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and PlayOn! Sports that will allow it to install 20,000 automated video production systems into U.S. high schools by 2026 and to produce more than a million live-event broadcasts per year. "The automatic production field is causing the entire sports industry to rethink its approach," explains Yossi Tarablus, Pixellot's director of marketing. "COVID accelerated the automated content creation evolution."

According to Lepke, "The most deployed use of AI/ML [machine learning] is for video analytics to enhance metadata generation and improve what is otherwise a very manual process. As we advance AI/ML we will see more use cases in live content such as being able to detect in a live stream if a goal or pass or shot was blocked. This will enable smarter user experiences though on-screen graphic overlays."

Olympics Return and 8K Rises

One result of the delayed sports seasons in 2020 will be a bumper 2021, with international events such as the Tokyo Olympics and 43rd Ryder Cup back in business (with or without spectators). FIFA World Cup soccer qualifiers are also scheduled for 2021 ahead of the Qatar tournament in 2022. "The next two years will be a marketer's dream because of the very rich pipeline of sports events," says Paul Gray, Omdia's senior research manager. In addition, he notes that sales of 4K TVs will be boosted, and 2021 will be a "tremendous" year for broadcasting 4K content.

Despite the dearth of live sports content, TV sets were popular sellers during the lockdown, as consumers upgraded their entertainment experience. In the U.S., unit sales of TV sets 65" or larger increased by 52% in the first half of 2020, and sales of sets larger than 65" grew 77% in Q2 2020. Gray argues that 8K will play a growing role as a professional performance format (for acquisition if not yet for distribution) and that the 2024 Olympics Paris will see a big leap in 8K sets sold.

A few high-end smartphone models offer 8K video capture, including Samsung Galaxy S20, Xiaomi Mi 10, and RedMagic 3. This number is likely to increase during 2021 and beyond. "Most owners today may only dabble with 8K video, partly because of its large storage requirements (600MB per minute) and because of the slower frame rate relative to 4K and HD capture," according to Deloitte. "However, consumers who do shoot videos in 8K capture could share this content via online platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. Over the course of 2021 and the coming years, the volume of 8K videos captured on a smartphone should steadily grow as smartphone memory capacity increases and frame rates go up."