The popularity of live streaming over the Internet is growing. The number of private Internet connections are rapidly expanding and consumers may today go online from almost any location using wireless technologies. However, live streaming over the Internet was born with two problems: scale and cost.

The challenge is to transmit a signal to many users simultaneously and to do so without the transmission cost rising in proportion to the audience size.
In this article, we will walk through various technologies for transmitting live streaming, including the more traditional ones, to see how the problems of scale and cost occur. Then, we will look at how some of these technologies partially solve these problems. Finally, we will present and explain GridCasting – which offers a solution to both problems – and then look at how Octoshape takes advantage of it.

The distribution, delivery and storage of video are core activities for broadcasters. In the digital world, compression is used to exploit limited storage and transmission capacity as efficiently as possible. The BBC is developing a video compression technology, called Dirac, so that we can understand the technology and use it at reasonable cost and without restrictions.

Dirac is a hybrid motion-compensated codec that uses modern techniques such as wavelet transforms and arithmetic coding. It is an open technology which means that it is freely available and can be used without the payment of licence fees. Open technology is well suited to the business model of public service broadcasters as it allows open collaboration by those interested in its future development.

Rai Click was Italy’s first Video-on-Demand (VoD) television service. It was launched in 2000 by a partnership between the Italian state broadcaster Rai (60%) and FastWeb (40%), the country’s first “Triple Play” telecom operator.

So far, Rai Click is the only Italian channel that can also be accessed via the Web; is the only Rai television channel with a subscription fee and direct client base, and is the first Italian television channel to develop editorial and commercial formats that exploit the interactive capabilities of broadband.

While France and Italy, in particular, are forging ahead with Broadband TV services, it has been a different story in the UK – arguably the most mature Digital TV market in Europe. So why has the UK fallen behind some of its neighbours in the provision of Broadband TV services? And what does the future hold for a fourth Digital TV platform in the UK? This article sets out to provide some answers.

DAB digital radio began test broadcasting around ten years ago but it has not been a universal consumer success across Europe. In the UK, however, digital radio receivers are one of the fastest-selling consumer electronics products and sales have overtaken those of analogue radios. Why has the UK succeeded with DAB digital radio when other European countries have yet to see their markets take off?

This article explains what steps the UK took to make DAB digital radio a success.

This article focuses on the risks associated with introducing new communication and computing technologies into the broadcasting world. It is mostly concerned with inter-broadcaster connections, rather than issues that are internal to a specific organization.

NAB 2005 showed once more the onward march of high-definition television, and programme production with "commodity products". But there were also important new production hardware products, and the event probably saw the birth of the "broadcasting-to-handhelds" excitement, which has already occurred in Europe.