“The Future of TV Broadcasts”: Cloud TV and beyond

With the proliferation of the Internet, television, like paper books and theater, predicted a quick death. But the world wide web not only did not lead to the collapse of the television industry, but even strengthened its position by only slightly transforming the format: the initiative from the "traditional" television companies is intercepted by the companies supplying films and TV shows based on streaming media that distribute their content via the Internet.


/ photo Iain Watson CC

New generation television

Today in the market of television services provided via the Internet, Amazon, Google and Apple have a significant share, although this is not directly related to their main business. For example, last year the number of subscribers at Amazon Prime reached 40 million . However, the IT giants are not inferior (and sometimes overtake them) firms engaged directly in video content. Today, Netflix has more subscribers than many paid cable channels - about 75 million users .

The popularity of the OTT (over-the-top) service market is partly due to the reluctance of people to be distracted from watching movies on ad units - users like the opportunity to influence advertising. But the main driving factor in the popularity of Internet platforms has become high-quality content. In 2011 alone, Google invested $ 100 million in the creation of original premium projects, and Netflix $ 185 million.
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For a long time, the indisputable advantage of the TV remained its large screen. However, the model of interaction with the viewer is also changing: there is a tendency to introduce the so-called second screen - when a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) adds interactivity to watching a television program. According to the NATPE survey, in the USA, 79% of viewers use a smartphone or tablet while watching TV, and 42% view content related to the current program: information about actors / athletes, program discussions, etc.

People also download special apps or leave comments on social networks: for example, over the past year , 16.5 million posts appeared on Twitter about the Game of Thrones series, 12 million about The Walking Dead, 1.7 million about Cards House "And 1.5 million - about" Jessica Jones. " Using the second screen improves the quality of perception and profit providers and improves the effectiveness of advertising campaigns of various TV shows.

Cloud technologies in the TV industry

But what is behind all these figures and why is television so actively developing? One of the reasons - the introduction of cloud technologies , the use of which facilitates the work at different stages of creating video content. Television companies need equipment and software for the collection, installation and processing of video, which means high costs for their installation and maintenance. For example, according to the results of the study , an investment in the amount exceeding $ 4.5 billion is needed to create a new channel in India.

The use of cloud services reduces the costs of TV companies by 29%, a study conducted by Cloudonomics showed. They are confident that cloud infrastructure will allow companies to get better services for less money. At the same time, Prime Focus Technologies offers to spend the money saved to create its own content, which gives an excellent competitive advantage.

Cloud technologies provide savings thanks to the payment system for the number of users per month. Building an infrastructure that easily withstands a dramatic increase in the number of viewers requires huge costs, and the cloud allows you to bear only operating expenses upon use of the service.

This enables parallel work, which greatly facilitates communication between production departments and reduces the time to product release. According to Accenture experts, speed is no less important when it comes to the introduction of innovations: such technologies allow you to quickly respond to changing market conditions and use all resources to the maximum.

It is also worth noting that cloud services significantly expand the possibilities of content personalization: analyzing data on user preferences allows you to increase the loyalty of viewers who are pleased to receive current offers based on previous views. In addition, the use of cloud technologies reduces the possibility of data loss, and the search for the desired content itself becomes easier.

Content Delivery Network

The cloud model allows the use of network function virtualization (NFV) in particular. It is built on the use of a virtual content delivery network (vCDN), which solves the problem of increasing broadband traffic and ensures rapid deployment of nodes with increasing demand.

The benefits of CDN include the ability to access around the world (connecting through the cloud to local providers), reducing waiting time, faster data loading (local data center system), reducing network load and maintenance costs, improving performance and stability and protecting from ddos ​​attacks.

The appearance of CDNs in the 90s was preceded by server farms, and the first generation of CDNs solved the problem of increased demand for streaming audio and video and was used, for example, to speed up the work of websites. The main points of interest of the second generation CDN were video on demand (VoD) and content delivery to mobile devices. The third generation of CDNs is expected to be managed by the users themselves, and the main task will be to achieve high levels of perception quality (QoE) and quality of service (QoS).

However, the development of television broadcasts does not end there. The television industry is moving in new directions, for example, ultra-high-resolution Ultra HD technologies (UHD or 4K) are being introduced. Moreover, engineers want to make better not only the picture - work is underway to improve HDR technology, sound, and even 3D functions.

Will it turn all your ideas into reality and support them at the level of virtual infrastructure? It will show both the process of technology development and the development of the market, but one thing is clear for sure - television is not going to die yet.