Charting the journey to IP video distribution

IP video distribution is transforming the content journey, and paving the way to a more cost-efficient, sustainable future for the broadcast industry. While largely invisible to the consumer, the transition to IP has required a convergence of great technological minds. Diving deeper into the topic, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Principal GTM Specialist Rory McVicar caught up with a panel of experts at IBC 2023 comprising Sveriges Television (SVT) CIO and Head of Distribution and Infrastructure Daniel Ekelöf; Radio Télévision Luxembourg (RTL) Deutschland VP Standards & Innovations Frank Heineberg; Independent TV (ITV) Director of Technology, Partnerships, & Distribution Paul Kane; and Qualcomm Senior Director of Technical Standards Thomas Stockhammer. Check out the conversation in this blog post and watch the panel session.

Navigating the challenges ahead

Collectively, panelists noted a shift in the prominence of internet protocol (IP) video distribution across industry conversations today compared to years past. While enthusiastic about the progress to date, all agreed there is more work to be done, especially in overcoming challenges like scalability, latency, and sustainability.

According to Kane, when ITV launched video-on-demand (VOD) ad-supported streaming service ITVX in 2022 ahead of the World Cup, it attracted one of the company’s largest audiences to date. Maintaining that kind of momentum means ensuring a seamless viewer experience when content is consumed in IP environments, which Kane said is still difficult today. To this end, ITV launched its service on several UK IP distribution platforms—from Sky Glass to Sky Stream, and others. These collaborations, he noted, have been beneficial, because they “bring linear experiences together in a single aggregated user interface.”

From a technical perspective, however, increasing bandwidth capacity is also essential. Kane added, “Today, when we look at our OTT delivery, we live with latencies of between 30-45 seconds and our target is to get to at least as good as DTT; it’s also about how do we do it in a more cost-effective, sustainable way.”

Heineberg described the horizontal market in Germany as strong, citing more than 40 percent reception via satellite, 40 percent via cable, and the rest terrestrial and IPTV. To keep pace with consumer demands, RTL invested heavily in building out its VOD streaming service RTL +, incorporating a host of content from its media group Inman division into the app. Third on the streaming provider charts in Germany, the app serves more than 4.3 million regional subscribers with an eclectic mix of VOD and live streamed content, including live streams of all 15 of RTL’s channels. It also features material from print publications. In Heineberg’s opinion, one of the biggest remaining long-term hurdles, however, is infrastructure, especially when it comes to fiber and 4/5G expansion, which he described as slow coming.

Optimistic about the state of the IP transition from the lens of Sweden, Ekelöf noted, “We are about 20 years into a 30-year journey. DTT is not going to go away completely. Broadband has taken, but it’s going slowly. And, as we can see right now, the infrastructure is holding up. I was more worried a few years ago that everyone would switch over, it would get congested, and everything would just break down, but that didn’t happen.”

Operators kept adding bandwidth and SVT innovated with compression, which allowed it to avoid reaching that breaking point. “We’re more or less at the tipping point, where we have more audience reach, more hours spent on IP than broadcast,” he explained. “The only thing is that you need a different strategy. You have to work more with the decentralization of your distribution than centralization. The problem in Sweden is that it doesn’t exist in the edge close to the customer; it exists in the core. If we can work our way to the edge, we’ll be okay for now.”

Coming from a company focused on the development of hardware for consumer devices, Stockhammer explained that global platform standardization remains a key piece of the puzzle. He shared, “Standards is one way to ensure global technology, so we supported the development of a global standard for internet distribution, which resulted in DASH. And, with the convergence of CMAF and HLS over the last couple of years, we’ve done a good job.”

Ensuring a separation between the service and distribution is also paramount. Coupled with a growing reliance on global technologies supported on chipsets throughout the world, it’s helped guide the transition. Stockhammer noted, “Because an MPEG-2-based broadcast distribution is a very vertical integrated environment, you go from almost the service to the user, to the physical bit; that’s one vertical aspect. I also believe there are good steps moving forward that we use any IP network to distribute different services, and now, we’re looking to do some service standardization. It’s basically at the edge. Do you need a service standardization like DVBI? It’s good because it helps to unify, but whether it’s picked up by RTL or in Europe, that’s another question, but at least it’s an idea to converge on a service layer.”

Making smarter use of available bandwidth

From Ekelöf’s perspective, it all boils down to decentralization and being able to reach as far out as the edge as possible. This translates to having multiple options for connecting to the internet, more CDNs, and more interconnects. For Sweden, he argued, the bandwidth is so good, that this hasn’t been an issue yet. Going forward, however, he said, “We’re going to have to have a lot more decentralization moving into rural areas and put our content closer to the edge.”

Commenting on several different options that ITV is exploring, including multicast ABR, Kane added, “It (multicast ABR) solves some of the problems around cost and energy consumption if we can deliver stuff at the same time to a large number of customers.” Presently ITV’s DTT network is operating optimally, and Kane expects it to continue doing so, given it delivers video and audio to a large number of people at the same time in a very effective way.

“We’re already live on BT’s network with multicast on the UVIP products,” he explained. “It’s not going to be one answer fits all. There’ll be different strategies that we can look at. We certainly know some CDN providers think this is a natural evolution and that the market will expand, and the technology will address the needs of the market. But then we’re also looking at how can we do deeper caching into the networks to make it so that we get that content closer and to reduce the impact on the peering.”

Whatever the approach, Stockhammer underscored the importance of distribution technology remaining invisible to the user. “Multicast ABR is a good idea, but it is very deep in the network,” he said. “It’s important that you don’t alter the service or the user experience by a new distribution.”

While still in early days, 5G broadcast could eventually replace current solutions and go directly to TV as well. “It (5G broadcast) might be a way to solve your peak capacity and at the end, it’s giving you a lot of flexibility. Do I serve the mobile? Do I go to the TV?” he mused. “You can scale up, and if your football match comes up, you use most of the capacity for some time distributing this on the highest quality. Then, maybe you go more to background file distributions or use it for other purposes. It’s an action tool to be given to content providers, broadcast service providers to use it to scale up the network.”

Charging full steam ahead

Wrapping up the conversation, McVicar described the transition to IP as a shared journey, and in their closing responses, the panelists echoed this sentiment, noting that continued progress will require more work from key industry players across the world. Kane said, “We’re really keen to collaborate with industry partners. We’ve done quite a lot of work with the ESAM interface standard around SCTE 35, and it’s tough to get stuff to work together with lots of different components from different partners. The main thing is that we understand this as an industry-wide problem, and it’ll have to have an industry-wide solution to help us get there.”

For Stockhammer, moving the needle forward means looking at the transition globally. He explained, “If you look at technologies that are very much needed to scale on devices, go beyond just Europe; it needs to work for China, US, and so on.” Stressing the importance of stakeholders across industry corporations coming together, Heineberg added, “We need the reach, otherwise it’s not efficient. This is one point, and the other, let’s all think about how we can use the bandwidth more efficiently. There’s a lot of potential in encoding and using new codecs, which makes it easier to use the unicast networks in the way we want to.”

Ekelöf sees more flexible standards as a way to help solve for IP’s shortcomings. While we’re not there yet, ideally, he said the goal is to get to a place where IP is reliable enough that it can be run at any given moment, even during a crisis. He concluded, “It’s really a hard problem that will take the whole community to solve and it will take a mix of standards to do that.”

For more insights on Europe’s transition to IP, watch the full panel, or check out the AWS for M&E services page.