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Bingo. The internet is about to become TV. And VOD via the internet is the new DVD. Designing REDray with a low bit rate isn't about saving hard drive space.
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Guess Who Holds the Keys to 4K Television and Broadcast?
- Thread starter Peter Moretti
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Bingo. The internet is about to become TV. And VOD via the internet is the new DVD. Designing REDray with a low bit rate isn't about saving hard drive space.
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Peter Moretti
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One thing I don't quite get is does the internet have the bandwidth to become TV? Even at 1080P, isn't it already constrained and VOD too heavily compressed? I'm not arguing; I really don't know the answer to this ?.
While I "sort of" agree with that statement, I would also offer a bit of a reality check. In my house I have "turbo" cable Internet service that under most circumstances tests out at over 20Mb for download speed. And yet when I watch Netflix at various times of the day (usually around 8 PM, which would be 11PM on the East Coast) I get numerous interruptions. And if I call up Hulu Plus, I usually can't play more than the "medium" quality without getting repeated hesitation. The fact seems to be that without a really serious infrastructure overhaul, the current Internet technology is almost completely incapable of sustaining the kind of rates needed for anything above around 5Mb, at least on consumer level connections. And even at that rate, the average consumer is going to be going back to their rather flawless (at least in terms of service interruptions) television feed very, very quickly.
I would venture to say that IMHO, the average consumer is far more interested in having entertainment material actually play properly than they are in nicer pictures.
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Jeff Kilgroe
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Everything in the "pro" market but Avid MC supports 4K.
This discussion is kinda pointless.
Avid will have quad-HD and 4K support soon. Fully expecting to see it in full swing at NAB. This is long before there will be any mainstream 4K TVs out there. Most of the first 4K TVs won't hit store shelves until later this year. Like with HD, it will take some time to adopt.
I personally don't buy the argument that broadcast standards will be hard to change this time around. First and foremost, there is no digital transition to undergo like the last time. 4K can be adopted as a broadcast spec (oh, wait, it already is within ATSC spec)... Broadcasters can choose to support it and add it as a channel within their digital spectrum. Viewers can choose to watch it or not. There will be no forced transition as we saw going to digital/HD. Adoption will be rather slow and only done at consumer demand. Broadcasters will eventually have to make such upgrades to keep viewership. 4K is going to hit pretty hard from IP distribution sources, cable and satellite providers, home theatre distribution.
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Jeff Kilgroe
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Most of the bandwidth bottlenecks are with Tier-3 service providers -- or the last leg between your home/office and whoever you get your service through. Providers will have to step up their game to increase bandwidth or their customers will go elsewhere to get what they want. In the past, most ISPs were deadlocked by local telcos who managed all the wiring infrastructure and competed for a share of the ISP pie. With LTE and WiMax seeing massive rollouts and also promising increased speeds over the next couple years, there's some competition. It will pick up.. For now, people aren't thinking on this level in the broad sense... Most are willing to put up with crap response time and streaming rates from YouTube. We've been conditioned to accept it. But people aren't as complacent when it comes to streaming via NetFlix or Hulu as paid services. And people aren't going to put up with paying $30~$60/month for an ISP that can't let them watch what they want to watch...
Just to be clear, there was not, is not, and never has been a forced transition to HD. The mandate was digital broadcast, not HD. And there are still many stations in this country, as well as many cable services, that are delivered in standard definition. Not to mention the millions of consumers who watch stretched SD pictures on their HD sets and think they're looking at HD images.
Denizhan Nacar
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Houston we got a-VID problem :chillpill:
Stuart English
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Bingo.
Blair S. Paulsen
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Join the BANDwidth
Join the BANDwidth
The next few years are shaping up as a battle between "TV" delivery and OTT IP delivery. At the point that IP sourced motion content at 4K can be delivered seamlessly, then "broadcast" will have to keep up with the Joneses. Until then, as many have noted, satellite/cable/OTA are likely to continue to push out overly compressed crap as there is no direct financial benefit driving them to do anything else.
That said, I do think we will see 4K mastering for high value content and a marketing push for 4K theatrical releases no later than the end of 2013. Theatrical has a history of touting, true or ginned up, the superior quality their exhibition vs TV and 4K seems destined to join Cinemascope, 3-D, etc... in that role.
IN the short term there are some powerful forces looking to limit bandwidth until they can effectively monetize every byte coming down the pipe - artificial scarcity employed to manage the market value of their product/service. Cross ownership of content and distribution appears to be a part of that delay strategy as well. All that said, time and technology march on and as Mark P. has said, more bandwidth is on the way. If, for no other reason, because so many business models need bandwidth to achieve their goals.
Cheers - #19
Join the BANDwidth
The next few years are shaping up as a battle between "TV" delivery and OTT IP delivery. At the point that IP sourced motion content at 4K can be delivered seamlessly, then "broadcast" will have to keep up with the Joneses. Until then, as many have noted, satellite/cable/OTA are likely to continue to push out overly compressed crap as there is no direct financial benefit driving them to do anything else.
That said, I do think we will see 4K mastering for high value content and a marketing push for 4K theatrical releases no later than the end of 2013. Theatrical has a history of touting, true or ginned up, the superior quality their exhibition vs TV and 4K seems destined to join Cinemascope, 3-D, etc... in that role.
IN the short term there are some powerful forces looking to limit bandwidth until they can effectively monetize every byte coming down the pipe - artificial scarcity employed to manage the market value of their product/service. Cross ownership of content and distribution appears to be a part of that delay strategy as well. All that said, time and technology march on and as Mark P. has said, more bandwidth is on the way. If, for no other reason, because so many business models need bandwidth to achieve their goals.
Cheers - #19
Nick Morrison
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Jeff I kinda agree with you, and I kind don't. I agree that "adoption will be rather slow and only done at consumer demand".
Exactly.
I've been freelancing at AETN for 10 years, and no matter how digital our deliveries are getting, everything still needs to be mastered to tape. Digital makes cable companies like AETN extremely skittish. How do you master digital? How do you archive it? How do you even transport it safely (how many hard drives have failed already?). SSD drives are still extremely expensive.HDCAM is still the pre-eminent archival finishing deliverable, and HDCAM-SR is the best version of that. All international, split masters are delivered HDCAM-SR. And all broadcast masters are delivered HDCAM. What airs goes out on DVCPROHD at 720p. At least here.
Point is, until SSD's become much cheaper, or 4K can be mastered effectively, I don't see broadcasters shifting to 4K for at least another 5 years. Hell, we've just switched to HD as the dominant format for little over 16 months. We're still sending up SD copies of our promos!
And laying masters to SSDs still has its issues. Quite frankly, is still faster to pull material off tape with accurate timecode. On SSDs you'd have to copy the whole file over, and then that brings up the question of storage space. We are already drowning in digital media. They can't handle the digital media that's come in as is. And that's still 1080. I can't imagine how they could ever handle everything coming in at 4k. You have to understand, we have 20 edit rooms here. That run day and night. With 24-hour turnarounds. We don't have time to offline. This place would explode if it were all 4k. We'd get nothing done. 1080 is already bursting the seams.
4k exponentially makes all file sizes and requirements more complicated. Cable covers hundreds of channels across the dial. Expecting all of them to migrate to 4k anytime soon would necessitate so much infrastructure change that I don't see this happening for minimum 5 years.
I expect them to broadcast 1080 in 3.
We need to be realistic. Its easy when we are talking about 30sec commercials. Its entirely different when were talking about hundreds of cable channels that broadcast content 20 hrs a day. I'm sifting through dailies right now shot on 3 Alexas for new Lifetime Series, and each hard drive is 1-2TBS. Every week. Imagine if it was 4k!
And again. It would still need to be laid to tape.
So many, many hurdles to go....And many infrastructure hurdles to overcome.
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Jeff Kilgroe
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Sure that is the situation many broadcasters are in right now. I have to say it though, the broadcast world is about to get a serious wake-up call.
When it comes to 4K, the cameras exist, the post solutions exist. Archival, mastering, transport, etc.. all exist. The TV's capable of displaying it exist and will be available at big-box retailers in the USA later this summer -- at a premium, of course, but still cheaper than when 1080p arrived. I know of two 4K/QHD models with MSRP of less than $6K for screens about 55" in size. Blu-Ray is standardizing their 4K format as we speak, it was shown at CES and is to be released by the end of this year. RED RAY 4K players will be released this year. YouTube already accepts and can deliver 4K content. Vudu, Hulu and other VOD services are prepping for 4K now. Whether people view in 4K or not, how will these broadcasters, networks and cable companies survive the IP/VOD transition? How do they plan to provide services when channelization is no longer the status quo?
And what will broadcasters do when all the gadget-savvy people decide they want 4K and have other sources to get it? These are serious questions... Questions that I think most are not asking themselves or considering as a potentially serious situation.
As for storage and archival, SSD's are not a viable option. First and foremost, they are no more reliable than hard drives, generally speaking. Sure, they are far more resistant to shock and vibration, even electro-magnetic fields to some extent. However, they still are not designed for, nor are they capable of, truly long-term storage. They don't have longer lifespans and they don't guaranty any better MTBF figures. A damaged SSD cell is their equivalent to bad sectors on a hard drive.. I discuss digital systems with people in AETN's situation all the time. Storing digital information really is no different than storing most formats they are comfortable with -- HDCAM, DVCPROHD, etc.. In fact, once you get them to realize that HDCAM, DVCPROHD, DV, DVCPRO, etc.. and just about everything since DigiBeta is in fact digital, they tend to relax a bit. For long-term archival, one of the most preferred mediums out there is LTO tape. It's as robust as any other tape format out there. Fuji makes and ships more LTO tapes each year than all other tape varieties [that they make] combined.
I totally agree with everything else you said about their situation. I see similar situations around here, almost everywhere I look. All I can say is, God help them... Because the reality of it is, many broadcasters are tied to expensive hardware and legacy systems, old workflows and a multitude of other factors that will make a transition to 4K difficult, if not impossible. As you point out, 1080p is proving to be a nightmare for many, and yet it shouldn't be. It's cheaper to archive, across multiple copies and locations, digital footage, even common 1080p formats, than it ever was for film or analog formats, even older digital formats (digibeta, DV, etc..) when they were the incoming standard of sorts. Granted, the quantity has increased, but so have the number of channels and media outlets and potential advertising revenue streams. ...That's another discussion altogether and another I chalk up with flawed business model. But hey, the market will shift and settle where it needs and ultimately, I don't see channelized cable services and serviced driven by conventional 15 or 30 second ad spot interruptions being the norm in another 10 years. Oh sure, they probably will be as long as the major networks cling to their current ways...
Exactly. A sad reality, I'm afraid...
Nick Morrison
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Ha, I agree with everything your saying. It reminds me of where the music industry was almost a decade a go when MP3s came out. The truth is, though I work in cable, I have a hard time understanding why Netflix streaming is $6, whereas my cable bill is $120. I don't see $114 extra value in cable over netflix!
And, as I'm sure you've noticed on deadline, there is a new monkey on hollywood's back right now. Young men. Don't go to theaters anymore. That was one of the shocking revelations this summer. A lot of big budget action movies tailored towards men flopped. I'm thinking of the Conan remake specifically, but I know there were many more. Now some of these movies may have sucked regardless, but that's not the point. The point is that beyond that, something like 20% fewer young men were going to movies this summer than last year. Don't quote that metric, but its something astronomical like that. The point is that young men basically have a better viewing experience at home on their computers than they do in the theater. Or they are stealing the content. Either way, that tension of old legacy systems vs what Youtube/Nextflix/New Media can provide is everywhere. You are right.
However, a comment on HDCAM. Here I don't agree with you. Yes, its digital. But that's as far as I would equate it to a hard drive. I have personally seen HDCAM and DIGIBETAS thrown across rooms, tossed about, and treated like crap. They are incredibly durable. I have spots archived to digbetas from 10 years ago and they are spotless. And those tapes have really been thrown around.
I think HDCAM is an amazing format. That's why AETN feels so comfortable mastering to them, several times. They are robust, and can handle years, possibly decades of transport and use.
I believe strongly in tape as a finishing solution, and am looking forward to Sony, Panasonic or anyone to create a 4K tape based archival solution.
I've never used LTOs. Except at BBC, where they never seemed to work. But I'm sure they are good if you say they are!
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Peter Moretti
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For broadcast, no they don't. And that's a huge honking issue.
I actually had an opportunity today to talk with someone working on GoogleTV. I asked him some questions about 4K. He said that streaming will be a challenge, but download and then playback won't be. He feels that there will be surprising abundance of "affordable" 4K TVs out sooner than most people realize. He also has the feeling that the big Japanese consumer electronics companies will be pushing 4K quite hard and that there will be a need for 4K content. However, in the beginning, 4K programing is going to be offered a la carte via download, not by either 4K streaming or traditional 4K broadcast. But these will come.
The transition to digital and 4K are not really analogues. Codecs are important but a lot of streaming performance depends on how the servers are configured.
IMHO, 3D is going to help pave the way for 4K. As, isn't it true that true 1080P 3-D is one half the same frame size as quad HD 2-D?
Stuart English
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I sort of agree with you, but I'm puzzled why you focus on NLEs and severs as opposed to cameras, routing switchers, and production switchers....
Probably because there is very little live television these days except for news and sports. Anything that isn't broadcast live - i.e., anything that goes through a post production step - requires equipment beyond cameras, routers, and switchers.
One more note. People here constantly talk about "1080p" as a broadcast format. I don't know any entity that's broadcasting any 1080p format. All on air HD that I know of is either 1080i (50 or 60, depending on where in the world you happen to be) or 720p (once again, either 50 or 60).
Nick Morrison
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Exactly.
Think about reality television. I worked on the promos for Ice Road Truckers years ago, when that first came out. I remember even then their ratio was something ludicrous like 1000:1. One thousand hours of shot footage, for every 1 hour of television. There is so much shooting going on in cable. So much hard drive space being used up. And you are totally right. AETN broadcasts 720p, and deliverables are as you say, 1080i. There is no 1080p (though most things are shot 1080p).
So we are still a long way from 1080p, and even further from 4K. The amount of infrastructire required to handle 4K on a massive scale is just not there. Whether its at the post houses, internally at the networks on their servors, the MSO's. I just don't see it. Also, there would have to be enuogh 4k content to justify having an entire channel go 4K. And that won't happen for eons. They are still trying to post convert all their back catalog so that one day, in the far future, they'll have a a History or A&E 3D channel. But even that is goign to take forever. For that to happen, they are going to have to post convert hundreds of hours of material. They need at least a month or two of assets. Same for 4k. For a 4K channel to exist, you'd need months of daily assets. You can't just switch one channel from 720p to 4K whenever you like. And also I don't see the MSO's/Cable companies forking out all the money to host 4K data, and pipe it out to 100's of millions of people.
Again, I'll say it till I loose my breath, we can barely handle 1080i/720. There are 20 edit rooms here drowning in digital dailies. We are constantly, every day, being asked to erase projects because the ISIS is full.
There is no infrastructure for 4K, nor are there any plans for it. I haven't heard a peep. They are building a new facility here, and as far as I know the plan is still to send up promos 720p.
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Jeff Kilgroe
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Yep. I'll put LTO up there too. Lots of similarities, especially on the inside of the tape cartridge. The stumbling block with LTO is it's been a tape medium to fit blankly into a commodity deck. So for years we have put up with proprietary software and incompatible tape solutions. There have been ways to standardize somewhat -- like using UNIX TAR archive format on tape and then marking the start position. This is getting better, we're finally seeing unified tape structures, which should have materialized LONG AGO. For some reason no one ever did though. The near future is LTFS on LTO, beyond that who knows and a true replacement won't come along until someone invents something better and more reliable than a tape. Everything else has fallen short, IMO... At least in the durability and longevity department.
But don't kid yourself in regards to HDCAM tapes. Sure you can toss them around and whatnot, but they're still just as vulnerable as anything when it comes to electromagnetic fields or heat. They still suffer the same form of magnetic dispersion that we see on HDD platters or any other digital tape format. Over time, they will degrade and eventually be unreadable. None of the HDCAM tapes out there are old enough to start testing theoretical age limits, which start to kick in at about the 25-35 year mark. Same with LTO. But like anything else, there will be a point where these digital archives need to be migrated and consolidated to more current media. That is the way with anything digital and if treated right, it can be viewed as a strength or opportunity to regularly create an exact duplicate with no generational loss to yet another medium, increasing its persistence.
And you're spot-on with the music industry comments. So far everything that's happening to video has happened with music. And yet so many people don't see it. I may be slipping on NDA a bit here, but to me this is like totally obvious -- I know of a product that does for TV exactly what i-heart-radio does for music/radio. You can build your own channels, choose which shows come on when, set up movie marathons based on director, actor, theme, genre, etc.. It's coming this year and the only roadblock (but a major one) is securing all the rights for content and working out pricing. It's going to happen, no way around it.
And Peter points out that cameras etc.. don't exist for broadcast. Like has been addressed by others, it would be the "live 4K" cameras and switchers. But those are coming too. I'm expecting to see such things at NAB this year. Actually there were mentions and not-quite-functional prototypes last year (of live switchers). Personally, I think these are dead-end products with little regard for what the future seems to hold. Once again, we're looking at IP-based topology within the working environments for transport. Why build live switching components that are fixed around a certain format? Seems silly to me. Why not build a an IP-based data transport that can use existing network hardware? 10G Ethernet or InfiniBand have plenty of configuration options and bandwidth to run 4K REDCODE all over the place or 4K from the Sony F65, for that matter. Oh, wait, 6K, 8K, etc.. are here now. No problem same switching setup. Future switching operations in a live broadcast studio will just be running 10GoC or similar from each camera into an off-the-shelf (and relatively cheap) ethernet switch. Switching can be controlled from any capable computer on the network. RED was already on this track when they build the RAW interface module for the RED One, which they never released. It was designed to transport uncompressed 4K over 10G Ethernet (single mode fiber). All we need now is that very thing, in DSMC module flavor, but this time around it transports REDCODE compressed streams of 4K/5K...
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Jeff Kilgroe
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Food for thought here on the bandwidth and storage required for 4K catalogs... Along with 4K comes newer and better compression, not just from RED, but others as well. HDCAM SR is 880Mbps at it's top end. That's 110MB/s... RED One 4K 16:9 at RC36 is roughly 48MB/s with quad-channel audio (so less than half). R3D-RGB / RED-RAY targeted for delivery does 4K visually lossless with (I believe 8 channels last I heard/read) audio and in a container of less than 20Mbps. That is less bandwidth than miniDV or common 720p HDV and quite a bit less than what AETN is pushing out from 720p DVCPROHD as broadcast. That is a small enough bandwidth profile to fit into two of DirecTV's 1280x1080 over-compressd slots.
With the better compression comes a larger requirement for CPU horsepower. But that is getting here rapidly, as it always does. Computers will be more than powerful enough to handle 4K playback before most people even realize they can buy a 4K TV...
People haven't figured it out yet, but both RED-RAY and the upcoming 4K variant of Blu-Ray disc both put out 4K at a lower stream bit-rate than current Blu-Ray video (which is 54Mbps max). BD4K will place 4K content on the same dual-layer 50GB discs and will be able to store more video content than current 1080P AVC discs can.
With the better compression comes a larger requirement for CPU horsepower. But that is getting here rapidly, as it always does. Computers will be more than powerful enough to handle 4K playback before most people even realize they can buy a 4K TV...
People haven't figured it out yet, but both RED-RAY and the upcoming 4K variant of Blu-Ray disc both put out 4K at a lower stream bit-rate than current Blu-Ray video (which is 54Mbps max). BD4K will place 4K content on the same dual-layer 50GB discs and will be able to store more video content than current 1080P AVC discs can.
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Peter Moretti
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BTW, I think one of the first ?'s that needs to be answered for 4K broadcast is "What is 4K,?" in the context of broadcast. I'm assuming it means quad-HD. So looking at it from an Avid-centric perspective, I'm assuming that would mean having quad-HD versions of both project format and DNxHD.