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2016 witnessed
emergence of IP
for broadcast
media production
B Y D R AM AL PUN C HIHEWA
In June 2016, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardised
parameters for production and exchange of 4K/Ultra HD (UHD) content.
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) also
standardised high dynamic range (HDR) production interface standards in
SMPTE 2082, which defines the electrical and physical characteristics of a
12G-SDI coaxial cable interface suitable for applications where the signal loss
does not exceed an amount specified by the receiver manufacturer.
On July 5 this year, the ITU further announced a new standard for HDR
TV, namely the ITU HDR-TV Recommendation BT.2100 standard. The HDRTV Recommendation details two options for producing HDR TV images. The
Perceptual Quantisation (PQ) specification achieves a very wide range of
brightness levels using a transfer function that is finely tuned to match the
human visual system, while the Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) specification offers
a degree of compatibility with legacy displays by more closely matching the
previously established television transfer curves. The recommendation also
outlines a simple conversion process between the two HDR-TV options.
However, despite further developments in HDR, 4K/UHD and high frame
rate (HFR) for production and delivery, IP overshadowed all of these as a key
technology development this year, and will continue to do so leading up to
2017.
There have been a number of successful implementations of Integrated
Broadcast Broadband (IBB) technologies and services in Asia-Pacific, including
by Singapore’s Mediacorp with its Toggle over-the-top (OTT) service. At the
APB ConneXxion Forum held in Singapore at end-May this year, preliminary
work was carried out to empower broadcasters to embrace IP; it is likely that
IP for live TV production will remain top of the technology agenda for AsiaPacific.
Since 2015, we have observed how, in many parts of the world,
broadcasters are actively preparing for the use of IP in live broadcast media
production. Having been successfully started and completed in Europe since
March 2015, the Sandbox Live IP project earned the IBC Award 2016. In
Asia-Pacific, the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Technical Department (ABUTD) has also done work in preparing our Asia-Pacific broadcasters and other
stakeholders to embrace IP for live TV production. Some of the discussions
we had during the CTO breakfast meeting during BroadcastAsia2016 in
Singapore paved the way to initial work.
The ABU has continued to monitor global trends in the use of IP and
its advancements, addressing critical issues such as interoperability. In the
coming months an d years, a number of critical issues such as latency, loss
due to transcoding in transports, vulnerability to cyber-attacks and issues
around cybersecurity, lack of availability of human capacity, difficulties in
change management, lower life-span of IT equipment, and difficulties in
managing redundancy and/or backup services will be given due attention as
we look to resolve and mitigate them.
To create awareness, educate and ascertain the readiness of TV
broadcasters in Asia-Pacific, the ABU Technical Committee (ABU-TC)
Technology Debate was designed and proposed upon the theme of
Embracing IP for Media Production for the ABU-TC meetings held in Bali in
October this year.
The aim was to make sure that broadcasters in Asia-Pacific are educated
on the developments around IP for media production and prepare them to
explore it appropriately.
As the ABU has done for the delivery of content with IBB-OTT, which is