Digital TV Technology Trends and
Internet Convergence
Farncombe Consulting Group
Barry Flynn, Principal Consultant
June 2009 – Digimedia 2009, Prague
© Copyright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009
DIGITAL TV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Combination of different enablers and drivers is changing traditional DTV landscape
Increased performance
 More powerful chipsets as processing-power becomes cheaper
 More memory as RAM etc becomes cheaper
Increased storage
 More permanent storage as hard drives become cheaper
 More semi-permanent storage as Flash memory becomes cheaper
IP everywhere
 Video encapsulated in IP because more efficient
Broadband return-path
 Increased broadband penetration driving hybridisation with traditional DVB-T, DVB-S
 Increased penetration of IPTV
 Increased penetration of DOCSIS on digital cable
SDTV→ HDTV
 Enabled by increased performance, migration from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, DVB-S to DVB-S2
 Driven by consumer take-up of HD-Ready flat-screens
 (Driven by DVD/games console quality versus over-compressed SD??)
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IN PARALLEL, CHANGING CONSUMER TASTES
Consumers expect more flexibility in content consumption in general and video in particular
Video on the Internet
 As broadband penetration increases, consumers increasingly accustomed to consuming video
on the ‘open’ Internet, and via new CE devices with Internet connectivity
Linear → Non-linear consumption
 In part because of Internet, but also because of increased penetration of PVRs, consumers
increasingly understand/accustomed to/expect non-linear video consumption
Portability/mobility of devices
 Mobile phones, MP3 players/iPods, portable games consoles – all encourage requirement for
new devices able to deliver portable/mobile video content (although this may be a weaker
trend than many have assumed)
Portability/mobility of content
 STB no longer a dummy device used to decode digital video → in addition to integrating PVR,
expectation that STB will enable them to get access to personal content stored on PC and other
devices, including photos and videos, and their favourite content from the Internet
Expectation of ‘free’ content
 Experience of Internet music and availability of pirated video leading to expectation that
some premium video content should be ‘free’ at point of consumption
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TV/INTERNET CONVERGENCE?
What happens when you marry these two sets of trends together?
TV
TECHNOLOGY
ENABLERS
CONSUMER
DRIVERS
?
OVER-THE-TOP
(OTT) VIDEO
+
‘TRADITIONAL’
DTV
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Confidential and Proprietary
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AGENDA
1
OVERVIEW OF THE FARNCOMBE GROUP
2
DIGITAL TV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
3
CHALLENGES OF DTV/OTT CONVERGENCE
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HYBRIDISING DTV WITH OTT VIDEO: STB PERFORMANCE
Today’s STBs are still not powerful enough
STBS are more powerful today than they used to be, but….
 Today’s STBs typically decode video with:
– dedicated hardware
– limited range of “frozen” standards such as MPEG-2/
MPEG-4
 A wide range of OTT video formats that generally demand:
– software-based decoding, and
– higher level of processing-power than most STBs can deliver (even
today, after much progress)
This problem can be solved, but ….
 Requires spending much more per box
 This makes deployment prohibitive
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HYBRIDISING DTV WITH OTT VIDEO: ARCHITECTURE
A more fundamental difficulty: marrying a stable technology environment (DTV) with
a highly dynamic one (the Internet)
OTT video services change rapidly/are frequently upgraded
 Media players, Internet browsers used for OTT video playback frequently
upgraded
 Similar issues arise with Internet technologies such as DRM and HTML
Issue not so much technical as economic
 Even if engineers could adapt STBs to upgrade dynamically (like PCs), PCs
have scale – 1bn+ now installed around globe (Gartner, 2008)
 Vast majority are interoperable through use of Windows OS
 PC software developers can spread costs of codec/player/browser/plug-in
software development across large number of new PCs installed/yr
 Plus receive occasional upgrade fees from installed base
 This is not the case with STBs!
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THE PROBLEM WITH STB ARCHITECTURE
STBs do not enjoy economies of scale that PCs do, because DTV is highly fragmented
Pay-TV providers generally use proprietary combinations of hardware and
software tailored to their own needs/territorial standards
Applications
HTML
JAVA
MHEG5
FLASH
Applications Manager
Network Provider Special Services
Middleware Services
OS + Drivers
Hardware
Source: Farncombe Consulting Group
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CA
 Interactive TV providers have
tried over last 20 years to
make ‘middleware’ platformagnostic, e.g. using a Java
‘virtual machine’ (as in DVBMHP)
 But MHP generally
acknowledged to have been a
failure
 MHP implementations have
in practice been
– stripped-down and
customised
– only nominally
independent of
platforms
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Responses to PC/STB dilemma lie along a continuum, clustered at either end
Accept that
STBs will never
be like PCs?
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OR
Demand that
STBs be PCs by
any other
name?
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Neither extreme of continuum offers satisfactory solution
OTT decoding confined to
a restricted range of
video types
Accept that
STBs will never
be like PCs?
Consumer not offered full
range of OTT services
available over the
Internet
Customers who expect
full range of Web video
services may rebel
against “walled-garden”
approach
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Neither extreme of continuum offers satisfactory solution
Technical solution
problematic: PC
architecture unlike STB’s
Demand that
STBs be PCs by
any other
name?
Implied power
consumption levels run
risk of breaching new EU
rules on ‘eco-STBs’
Even if possible for STB to
migrate to PC
universal/flexible
architecture, cost of ‘STBPCs’ prohibitive
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Connected TVs present an intermediate solution
‘Connected
TVs’ with
limited HTML
browser or
‘widget’
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
But limited services and potential non-upgradeability problematic
‘Connected TVs’
with limited
HTML browser or
‘widget’
Technologies not
standard/complete,
upgradeable only if TV
makers willing to pay
‘Widget’ does not offer
PC/Internet functionality,
potential lack of upgrades
implies limited services
Risk of consumer hostility
because ‘connected TV’
experience just another
‘walled garden’
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Responses to PC/STB dilemma lie along a continuum, clustered at either end
Accept that
STBs will never
be like PCs?
© Coypright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009
OR
Demand that
STBs be PCs by
any other
name?
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WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Rejecting PC/STB dilemma by using headend may lead to scalability problems
Headend
Consumers
Traditional
DTV
Transcoder
Traditional
DTV codecs
MPEG
Video, Audio
OTT
video
Set-top Box
MPEG-4/MPEG-2 + OTT codecs
Standard MPEG-4/MPEG-2
chipset
Place transcoders at network headend
 Can convert Web video standards in real-time into (narrow) range of
formats supported by STB
 Solves issue of making STBs dynamically upgradeable
 But introduces additional, expensive infrastructure which might prove
difficult to scale
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CONCLUSIONS
 Clearly, the digital TV industry is at a turning-point:
– Consumer expectations are changing
– Customers with broadband are creating home networks,
leading to demand for OTT video (to the TV and PC) and to
content-sharing between the TV and PC
– Video-capable devices are all being connected to
IP/broadband
 This represents a major challenge to both operators and
equipment-providers
 Properly managing CPE strategy is the key to success
(FARNCOMBE CAN HELP YOU WITH THIS!)
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INTRODUCTION
Thank you!
 For further information, please contact:
Barry Flynn
Principal Consultant
Farncombe Consulting Group
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: +44 1256 844161
Mob: +44 7720 566585
www.farncombe.eu
© Copyright Farncombe Consulting Group 2009
BBC IPLAYER AND VIRGIN MEDIA
An example of OTT viewing on the TV screen
 Virgin Media, which offers the BBC OTT
iPlayer service to its VOD cable homes,
has reported that its cable network
accounted for around a third of all BBC
iPlayer views in May 2008
 But the Virgin cable platform has a
significantly smaller universe than the
BBC’s online one
– Around 44% of Virgin’s 3.5m TV
customers were regularly watching
on-demand content at that time
(1.5m)
– But the number of regular online
iPlayer users was around 6m, on
Farncombe estimates
 This would mean viewers on the TVbased platform were each responsible
for at least twice as many iPlayer
views last May as those on the
PC/online one
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