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put to good use for the
introduction of 4K
services,” predicts
ARRIS’s Ciocirlan. “In
the case of telcos, HEVC
is also producing
significant
improvements even with
1080p streaming. The
issue here is more
around legacy and the
large population of
existing set-tops in the
field that, although they
might be HD MPEG-4
capable, might not be
HEVC capable. That’s
why the bandwidth
benefits are gradual and
it takes a while for these
benefits to be realised,
certainly for cable
networks. In the case of telcos, they can realise
the benefits already and many have already
rolled out HEVC content and are taking full
advantage of the bandwidth savings that
brings them. It also gives them the ability to
expand the reach of their HD service well
beyond what it was before the HEVC
technology arrived.”
In term of next steps, ARRIS’s Ciocirlan
sees an increased focus on improving the
efficiency and density of 4K and HEVC
encoders. “Green initiatives are being started
across the industry and the ability to pack in
more functionality while using less resources
is becoming more important. I think this will
be a key area of industry focus over the next
few years,” he adds.
TRANSFORMATIVE. According to Lionel
Bringuier, director of product management,
Elemental Technologies, there are many
reasons why HEVC/H.265 can and will
continue to bring transformative changes to
content compression and delivery. “First, it is
worth remembering that there are two distinct
stages to innovation in codecs. First, the new
approach brings a big jump in compression
efficiency, but that is never the end of the
process. As implementations mature, so small
refinements allow further efficiencies. Couple
that with processor gains thanks to Moore’s
Law, and a well-designed, widely accepted
codec will continue to grow. MPEG-2
continues to develop: initial HD channels
needed around 18Mb/s in MPEG-2; today the
same codec can deliver equal or better quality
in less than half the bitrate.”
“HEVC today already offers us as much as
50 per cent bandwidth efficiency over H.264.
We can choose to put twice as many SD or HD
channels in the same bandwidth. Or we could
offer the same quality in smaller bandwidth,
greatly improving what we can deliver on OTT
or LTE-enhanced mobile video. Or
we can use HEVC for new
formats. It is ideal for Ultra HD,
whatever combination of 4K
resolution, extended colour
gamut, high dynamic range and
high frame rate is required. HEVC
is also an ideal partner for
emerging delivery formats
including MPEG-DASH, a
ubiquitous, adaptive bitrate
packaging format designed to
serve as a common, open
streaming format for all devices
and players. Taken together,
HEVC and MPEG-DASH simplify
headends as well as drive quality
and consumer experience up.”
“Finally, HEVC can be
implemented in software running
on standard data centre hardware.
Elemental has commerciallyproven installations running solely in
software, as virtual machines or in the cloud.
The codec is used as part of just-in-time
packaging, just-in-time DRM solutions which
deliver live and on demand content to multiple
platforms. This approach provides a practical
and extremely cost-effective solution, and one
which is readily adaptable. If market forces
dictate a move to a 4K offering, for example, a
few lines of XML are all that is needed to set it
up,” he concludes.
“HEVC offers a significant compression
efficiency improvement over the predecessor
H.264 standard, particularly for 4K/UHD,”
says Harmonic’s Trow. “Each MPEG variant
coincided with the introduction of a key
format for digital transmission. For standard
definition it was MPEG-2, for high definition
it’s H.264/MPEG-4, and a key enabler for the
introduction of 4K/UHD is HEVC. A
secondary benefit, particularly for H.264 and
HEVC, is improvements for multiscreen
applications, where the expanded toolset
opens up the potential to reduce bitrate
“HEVC will be put
to good use for
the introduction
of 4K services.”
- Cornel Ciocirlan,
ARRIS
network. However, they don’t have to be
implemented at the same time. With more
advanced constellations, it is possible to reach
higher speeds even without changes on the
used frequency band. Also when the higher
(1.2 GHz) frequencies are taken into use,
DOCSIS 3.1 can offer its full 10 Gbps
throughput. That type of network upgrade can
be built with remotely configurable and
adjustable network components, which makes
the evolution path to DOCSIS 3.1 flexible,
minimises future upgrade needs and gives
operators more freedom in designing their
services.”
“While DOCSIS 3.1 brings more capacity, it
also requires HFC network that has better
performance and smaller tolerances. As a
result, professional network design and
installation play a major role in successful
DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades, and overall sys