No. 302 (April 2005)

Bookshelf Archive

The business of streaming & digital media

This book is about using streaming technologies profitably, when providing digital media to the end users: i.e., it provides some guidance on how to run a profitable business on the Internet by using advanced streaming technologies for carrying digital media.

As most EBU Members use streaming to complement their broadcasting services, this book at first sight might be irrelevant to them. However, it also provides a number of very useful hints on how to make streaming successful (rather than merely profitable). The four key principles of a stable digital media strategy (as quoted in the book) are: scalability, security, intelligence and quality.

Scalability is about the distribution cost – the more users that access, download and consume the content, the more the provider has to pay for distribution, security and licensing. The question is how to keep the distribution costs as low as possible.

Security is about keeping media safe. Security technologies allow content creators to charge for their content. It is an opportunity for new business models – subscription, pay-per-use or just authentication. A DRM (digital rights management) system enables providers to decide who, when, what, and in what form, content can be accessed.

Intelligence is about tracking and measuring audiences and their usage habits. Website cookies, registration engines, media player preferences and transaction pieces allow the provider to know who is watching what and for how long. Of course, web logs must be wrapped in a suitable reporting package which is easy to read and understand.

Quality of the content delivered is a critical factor in determining the success of online digital media. Technical quality has been significantly improved in recent years, both in terms of compressed video and audio, and network robustness.

The book gives several case studies to illustrate these general principles. One of them is about Citigroup, the leading financial services company in the United States. The company has some 6000 offices all over the world and needed a system that could reach about 150'000 PCs. The CDN (content distribution network) system, provided by Media Publisher, has been set up to serve for a variety of business purposes: executive communications, live and on-demand training and market research. The system is most widely used for executive communications, as executives want to create a shared vision – and the best way to convey that message is not via e-mail or PowerPoint presentations. With video communications, they can communicate using verbal and non-verbal cues; their audiences feel an enhanced sense of corporate culture with this system. As executives get on a plane and travel around the world, they receive streamed content directly on their laptops. Training throughout the Citigroup branches has also been enhanced: no physical DVDs or video tapes need to be dispatched. The system is user-friendly, so no IT staff need to be involved in the operations. A financial scrutiny showed that Citigroup has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a result of their CDN.

As the EBU grows and becomes a global association of broadcasters with several offices on different continents, such a system may be of interest. It could serve not only as a link among the Active and Associate Members and for executive communications, it could dramatically reduce the number of meetings and thus reduce travelling costs. It could provide live or on-demand training delivered straight to the Members' desktops in different countries. A CDN has a much wider footprint than current satellite systems and is incomparably cheaper. Such a system could usefully complement the existing Eurovision satellite system. Its use could be extended into virtually endless business possibilities to enhance the services provided to our Members and potential new customers.

In summary, the use of streaming technologies is not a replacement for broadcasting but is a useful complement to it. As streaming has evolved from an obscure technology to mainstream, the time has come where no broadcaster wants to stand by and wait for others to blaze the trail.

This book offers a useful guide for building and managing a streaming and digital media business ... successfully.

The business of streaming & digital media
Dan Rayburn & Michael Hoch
Bound volume of 224 pages
ISBN 0-240-80598-4. Price: £29.99.
Focal Press, 2005
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

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The Technology of Video & Audio Streaming – Second Edition

"For broadcasters and web developers involved in media delivery across the web, the book could be a very useful first step in understanding the basics of streaming technologies"

This is what we wrote about three years ago (see EBU Technical Review No. 297) when the first edition of this book was published. Now this very same text appears on the front cover of the recently-released second edition.

Of course this statement still holds true. The present version is, apart from some minor editorial touches, almost identical to the first edition but with certain much-needed updates. The two most important topics now included have been the subject of significant developments over the last three years or so: video coding technologies and DRM (digital rights management). The second edition also includes streaming to wireless devices, and reviews some new streaming companies and commercial products.

It should be stressed that streaming has become hugely important in recent years, with many changes taking place. First of all, streaming has become ubiquitous and there is practically no broadcaster who would not use this technology on their websites. Secondly, the QoS of audio and video streams has improved significantly. Now that broadband networks are rapidly improving (by adopting more advanced access technologies such as ADSL2 Plus, VDSL and FTTH), video-on-demand has become very popular, particularly for relatively short video clips. Video streaming is now a mature technology which is particularly suited to serving relatively small numbers of simultaneous users in widely spread-out locations across the globe. To this end, many a corporation uses streaming for improving their communication with staff, clients and business partners.

It can be concluded that streaming has become an important part of our lives and successfully complements traditional broadcasting for distributing video/audio content to some niche audiences.

We can recommend the second edition of this book to all broadcasters involved in webcasting and on-line services production, publishing and distribution.

The Technology of Video & Audio Streaming – Second Edition
David Austerberry
Bound volume of 344 pages
ISBN 0-240-80580-1. Price: £29.99
Focal Press, 2005
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

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Understanding MPEG-4 – Technology and Business Insights

The eye-catching buzzword "MPEG-4" in the title of this book is likely to attract many broadcasters, eager to understand this new cornerstone media-compression technology. The MPEG-4 family, in particular its latest members MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264/AVC video and AAC+ v.2 audio, are here to revolutionize the media landscape including broadcasting. This new technology is likely to improve the quality of broadcasting services, make the broadcasting networks more (spectrum) efficient, allow broadcasters to introduce many new features and applications, and – last but not least – make broadcast services more attractive and more profitable.

MPEG-4 AVC is not only a better compression technology for digital audio and video technology than any other compression technologies introduced so far – it requires only about 50% of the bitrate required by MPEG-2 for the same subjective quality. It is a fundamentally novel technology: it is object-based and allows for interaction between the server and the client. The latter aspect is not sufficiently understood and used in practice but may be an important factor which will take television and radio into the interactive multimedia age.

This book provides an interesting overview of MPEG-4 AVC including its development and standardization within the ISO MPEG and ITU communities, its potential areas of usage and applications, and the business opportunities it could provide in broadcasting, video over IP, mobile communications and mobile multimedia. Any readers expecting a detailed insight of the technology might consider a multitude of other excellent technical books and articles already available on the market. The authors did not attempt to produce yet another engineering handbook. The target audience for this book are executives, business people, the Press, marketers, content creators and artists.

Nevertheless, this book provides a concise overview of the MPEG-4 and MPEG-4 AVC technology, without going into too much detail. It gives a good introduction to the different features and functionalities of the MPEG-4 family of systems and what might be the impact of MPEG-4 on various businesses and markets. It is certainly useful for the business-oriented reader to understand the technical basics of the standard.

The book is much more than just a straightforward eulogy on MPEG-4 AVC. It assesses critically the pros and cons of using open international standards (as opposed to proprietary approaches). It provides arguments in favour of using object-based technologies (scene description, metadata, transport of objects) for efficient content creation and delivery. It portrays MPEG-4 AVC as a flexible technology that is capable of supporting a large range of coding bitrates – from 64 kbit/s (or even less) for video streaming up to 20 Mbit/s for HDTV. To this end, MPEG-4 AVC is widely considered to be the enabling technology that will bring low bitrate video to mobile phones on the one hand, and HDTV to terrestrial broadcasting and broadband connections, on the other.

The book discusses extensively various important market issues such as interoperability and competition. Interoperability ensures that all products from different vendors work together in a standardized manner and the user has a choice of selecting the most favourable product. The vendors are motivated to develop interoperable products which are competitive on the market. MPEG-4 products are clearly an example of an open, competitive market.

The book reviews the advantages and disadvantages of using MPEG-4 AVC in broadcasting. Clearly, our mission is to deliver our content over multiple delivery platforms such as television, radio, internet, broadband (IP), mobile telephony, DVD and other packaged media. Cross-media delivery is an important aspect today and MPEG-4 – as an interactive multimedia system – is ideally suited for that purpose. Furthermore, we need operational flexibility, scalability, functionality, speed, reliability and affordable costs. This is exactly where MPEG-4 AVC comes in.

Using object-based techniques, MPEG-4 AVC can be advantageous in virtual production and chroma keying where the camera can now be moved because its position and orientation are measured. The background picture can thus be adjusted to keep correct registration. Splitting the whole scene into objects may also allow us, in future, to send these objects as separate streams from the studio to the user at home, and assemble the scene in the decoder rather than in the studio mixer. This functionality will facilitate user interaction and will allow for different business models (e.g. an object remains hidden until the user pays for it).

For these reasons, MPEG-4 AVC is likely to replace MPEG-2 in many, if not all, broadcast applications. By moving away from MPEG-2, broadcasters could improve their delivery and storage efficiency by a factor of 2, and consequently increase the return on investments and reduce their operational costs.

However, there are some downsides. The transition from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC may be rather painful, complex and lengthy, particularly where MPEG-2 broadcasts are well established and in mature markets where many millions of receivers are readily deployed. To this end, MPEG-4 AVC may be more easily introduced in a "green-field" situation, where there are no legacy problems. A typical example could be the introduction of HDTV, which can be positioned as a new service requiring new production facilities, distribution channels and frequency spectrum and, of course, new decoder STBs. The book however admits that MPEG-4 AVC may be faced by the proverbial "chicken-and-egg" situation (which will come first – MPEG-4 AVC encoded content or MPEG-4 AVC enabled STBs?).

The second downside may be the increased complexity of MPEG-4 AVC decoders, potentially resulting in higher STB cost and increased latency (processing time). Latency may be a problem for some time-critical data applications and for audio-video synchronisation (lip-sync).
There is an interesting discussion in the book about the relationship between H.264 and the Microsoft VC-1 system. Technical comparison of H.264 and VC-1 reveals that the latter is slightly less complex than H.264 and uses less coding tools. This may result in slightly poorer performance but the experimental evidence so far is not yet conclusive. In particular, VC-1 includes neither CABAC nor 4x4 motion compensation. Whereas H.264 has been standardized by the ITU and ISO, VC-1 has now reached the status of the Committee Draft within SMPTE and has been submitted to ballot for Final Committee Draft (FCD). Both systems have been selected by the rival HD DVD and BluRay DVD proponents. The book does not give a partisan view of one system or the other but admits that both systems could be commercially successful. Because the two systems are not too dissimilar, most chip manufacturers could produce common chipsets containing MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and VC-1 technologies.

Finally, the book devotes some space to MPEG-4 licensing matters and openly admits that some licensing aspects have been widely criticised in the MPEG LA process . Licensing should be seen as part of the business model and not just a quick way to recoup the money invested in the development of the system. Many world broadcasters are still not quite clear on what the MPEG LA licensing provisions really mean. The current language used talks about "free television" and requires each broadcaster to pay a one-time royalty of $2500 for each encoder used in Free Television transmissions.

In summary, this book is a pleasure to read. It is also easy to read (even by those who use English as their second or third language) and it is comprehensive and well structured. The writing style is lively and consistently non-technical. All in all, it should help readers to understand the whys and hows of MPEG-4 when used in broadcasting and elsewhere.
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1. In this review, MPEG-4 AVC actually stands for MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264/AVC. It is assumed in this review that MPEG 4 Part 2 has been superseded by its later development, i.e. MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264/AVC.
2. See, for example, Iain Richardson's "H.264 and MPEG-4" or Mohammed Chambari's "Standard codecs: Image compression to advanced video coding".
3. CABAC stands for Context-based Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Codes and is a very efficient entropy coding scheme.
4. The EBU Technical Committee commented on some aspects and defended the view that royalties should not be linked to the (amount of) usage.

Understanding MPEG 4 – Technology and Business Insights
Klaus Diepold and Sebastian Moeritz
Bound volume of 319 pages
ISBN 0-240-80594-1. Price: £24.99.
Focal Press, 2005
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

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The MPEG Handbook – Second Edition

The second edition of The MPEG Handbook (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4) is a significant update on the first edition (see EBU Technical Review No. 288) and now includes a substantial description of MPEG-4 audio and video technologies.

This is very much a technical textbook which gives a clear and comprehensive technical background to audio and video compression principles and technologies. Not only does the book cover the underlying coding principles, it also explains well how MPEG bit-streams can be transported and multiplexed on IP and other networks. Of particular interest is the last section which talks about MPEG applications in telephony, broadcasting, storage media and broadband networks.

As with all John Watkinson's books (such as the Art of Digital Video and the Art of Digital Audio), the present one is a classical example of an excellent engineering textbook. It deserves to be on the bookshelf of every broadcaster involved in new coding technologies.

The MPEG Handbook – Second Edition
John Watkinson
Hard-bound volume of 435 pages
ISBN 0-240-80578-X. Price: £39.99.
Focal Press, 2004
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

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Introduction to SNG and ENG microwave

This book provides a good introduction to the technologies required for organizing broadcast coverage of a news event. It offers a simple approach to the technical aspects of television news ingest, with an emphasis on the transmission systems.

The book covers the general aspects of real-time television transmission from the location of the event – using microwave radio links, satellite links and even optical links. In addition to the purely technical aspects relating to systems and components, it gives information on more administrative matters, such as the regulatory issues and the relationship with satellite operators. The protection of persons against hazards, such as microwave transmitter radiation, is also treated, which is unusual in such a technical book.

Finally, guidance is given about the working conditions in a "news event" environment which, of course, could be a hostile environment.

However, while an advantage of this book is the simple and general way that it deals with the subject matter, it is too superficial in some sections. As an example, the chapter about link budgets does not give any examples of a link budget calculation or the structure of a link budget estimation, which would allow the reader to determine if a satellite transmission will work.

Also, while there is a very detailed Table of Contents at the front of the book, it is missing an A - Z Index at the back, which makes it hard to find specific topics. However, a comprehensive Glossary of Terms is included at the back of the book.

In conclusion, this is a good introductory book, giving an overview of SNG/ENG techniques in about 200 pages.

Introduction to SNG and ENG microwave
Jonathan Higgins
Bound volume of 216 pages
ISBN 0-240-51662-1. Price: £15.99.
Focal Press, 2004
Web link

Marc Lambreghs

European Broadcasting Union L'Ancienne Route 17A CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex Geneva Switzerland techreview@ebu.ch