ATEME, the emerging leader in video delivery solutions for broadcast, cable, DTH, IPTV and OTT, announced today that CJHello, the largest cable operator and a leader in Korea’s media industry, has successfully deployed its TITAN Live software solution for MPEG-2 HD transcoding for delivery of high-quality video services to its viewers.

TITAN Live is a hardware agnostic, real-time multi-channel/format solution designed for processing SD, HD and Ultra HD content for any screen. TITAN Live enables CJ Hello to deliver a premium experience to its customers while providing the following major benefits:

·      Lower OPEX: based on ATEME’s High-Efficiency MPEG-2 (HE-MPEG-2®), CJ Hello is able to save bandwidth and add additional HD channels to existing transponder

·      Flexible operations: ATEME’s software is server-agnostic and can run on any private/public and on/off-premises cloud infrastructure with the same benefits and value proposition.

·      Future-proof solution: TITAN Live benefits from ATEME’s continuous research and innovation in video quality, allowing for future evolutions of the solution

South African music festival, Rocking the Daisies, was powered by an end to end Blackmagic Design workflow, featuring Blackmagic URSA Broadcast and ATEM Constellation 8K.

The 80s … who doesn’t like remembering that decade? From a fashion perspective, it may not have sparkled, but musically the 80s undoubtedly had a lot to offer. 

Thomas Gottschalk, who once again gathered a who's who of 80's cult stars at the TUI Arena in Hannover for Gottschalk's Big 80s Show, also clearly thinks that. Performances by Kim Wilde, Paul Young, Thomas Anders, Marc Almond and many more could be experienced on the set's four show stages, with the concert broadcast by ZDF.

Lighting cameraman / gaffer for the production was Michael Donecker. Frank Hofmann — better known as FH — from Scan Design Berlin was responsible for the show lighting design of a production that lasted for several hours. FH, who developed a penchant for lighting design early in life, today works predominantly for TV productions. He was clear from the outset exactly what requirements this special show would place on the production lighting design. "As the name implies, this was about the 80s and everything that made this time so exciting,” he said. “Therefore, I wanted to imitate the looks of those days but using modern technology."

Four-fifths (80%) of broadcasters are considering implementing ads tailored to the consumer but are increasingly falling behind streaming services due to hesitance around adopting cloud technologies, according to research carried out on behalf of ATEME, the emerging leader in video delivery solutions for broadcast, cable, DTH, IPTV and OTT.

The survey of those in middle management positions or above within the realms of TV and broadcast also found that 96% of broadcasters feel there is a demand from customers for more personalized services. As over a third (34%) of broadcasters currently generate revenue through adverts, offering personalized adverts could help them increase this revenue. Consequently, over a quarter (26%) are currently looking into how to offer these services to customers.

“Our research found that more than half (58%) of broadcasters are investing up to 20% of their budget in trialing new customer content or services as they prioritize personalization to offer customers enhanced viewing experiences,” said Remi Beaudouin, Chief Strategy Officer, ATEME. “By using technology and the data available to them to tap into this trend, traditional broadcasters will be able to create a tailor-made viewing experience and potentially open up new revenue streams,” he added.

Statistical Multiplexing (Statmux) is now available with AWS Elemental MediaLive, Statmux is a technology used in live broadcast workflows that allocates bits in real time among multiple live video channels. It instantaneously adjusts the bitrate of each channel in the statmux pool to make the best use of total available bandwidth and combines the encoded outputs into a single transport stream. This maximizes network efficiency by optimizing picture quality for a group of channels within a fixed total bandwidth.

Using AWS Elemental MediaLive with Statmux, customers can now deploy linear video processing and playout in the AWS Cloud for broadcast, cable, or terrestrial distribution.

Media companies, such as national broadcasters, originate live content and simultaneously share that content with their distribution partners. Traditionally, this has been accomplished by preparing channels for distribution using purpose-built, on-premises hardware encoders. These systems can take months to procure and configure, require extensive engineering to operate reliably, and cannot be repurposed once deployed. AWS Elemental MediaLive with Statmux lets broadcasters and content providers build and manage broadcast video workflows on fully managed AWS services and gain flexibility, reduce hardware and management costs, and deliver excellent picture quality with built-in reliability.

Key benefits of AWS Elemental MediaLive with Statmux include:

• Cloud flexibility—Add, remove, or update live channels based on evolving audience and business needs, easily introduce new codecs, prioritize resources on a per-channel basis, and take advantage of multiple codecs and resolutions.
• Built-in resiliency—Resources are automatically allocated across multiple availability zones for high availability and fully managed failover.
• High video quality—Statmux for MediaLive lets you maximize video quality while optimizing for fixed satellite or cable distribution bandwidth. And, you can tune quality settings on a per-channel basis without disruption to assure that the highest-priority channels maintain the highest quality.
• Operational efficiency—Build broadcast distribution workloads in minutes, without on-premises hardware, and deliver channels more efficiently over fixed network bandwidth.
• Monitoring and metrics—Integrated Amazon CloudWatch monitoring enables real-time views of video metrics and multiplexer performance.
• Unified headend—For content providers that distribute traditional broadcast video as well as multiscreen linear video, Statmux for MediaLive can deliver both through a single architecture. With the increasing importance of OTT delivery, having one system to manage all encoding can dramatically simplify operations.

Learn more about how customers are saving time, reducing overhead, maximizing low-cost cloud resources, and maintaining optimized picture quality with AWS Elemental MediaLive and Statmux here: https://aws.amazon.com/medialive/features/statmux.

Nevion, award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, announced today that Riot Games, the publisher of the most-played PC game in the world and the organization behind League of Legends Esports, used Nevion’s software-defined media node Virtuoso as part of its remote production of the recent League of Legends World Championship Final. In doing so, Riot Games became one of the very first organizations in the world to leverage the ground-breaking JPEG XS encoding technology. 

The League of Legends World Championship has been described as one of the biggest events in esports history, with the 2018 World Championship Final garnering an unprecedented 99.6 million unique viewers. This year’s event, which took place in Paris (France) on November 10, 2019, involved two remote (or at-home) production sites: the English language show was produced at Riot’s European headquarters facility in Berlin (over 1,000 km or 620 miles from Paris), while the world feed was produced in Los Angeles (around 9,000 km or 5,600 miles away). JPEG XS achieves high-quality compression with ratios up to 10:1 at sub-millisecond latency, i.e. a fraction of a video frame– allowing gaming fans and players watching at home to see the action faster.

Videosys Broadcast, a leading supplier of quality camera control systems, RF links and camera backs to outside broadcast providers has announced that it has supplied two DTC 4K AEON-CC digital video transmitter systems to Cloudbass, a leading provider of broadcast solutions.

Specifically designed for high-quality wireless camera applications the AEON-CC uses DTC’s next-generation HEVC encoder technology facilitating UHD images. The system consists of one single 4K transmitter unit from DTC coupled with a built-in Videosys Camera Control system. The advantage of the AEON CC with Videosys’ camera control receiver built into the unit is a reduction in the equipment count and the complexities that come when managing 4K transmission and camera control simultaneously.

Cloudbass have been successfully using the systems on UHD, 3G and HD setups across a variety of live Outside Broadcasts, including both SKY Boxing and BT Speedway in UHD, on the British Touring Cars for ITV Sport, and The Lord Mayor’s Show for BBC Events.

Bannister Lake announced today that it has successfully added QR codes to "Today's Shopping Choice" (TSC, tsc.ca) on-air graphic presentation, creating exciting new purchase possibilities for viewers. Bannister Lake has a long-standing relationship with the popular home shopping broadcaster, having created and implemented software solutions that are integral to the channel's production workflow.

Bannister Lake's established BL XPF Generator solution automatically pulls all the visual assets associated with featured products that are scheduled during a specific TSC segment and in turn generates a Ross XPression graphic sequence that can be taken to air instantly. By adding QR codes to the asset mix through Bannister Lake software, TSC can drive additional sales while providing audiences with supplementary product information.

TSC viewers scan the QR code with their smartphones and are taken to a corresponding webpage to learn more about the product and make the purchase. This provides an additional path to purchase and is welcomed by tech-savvy viewers.

Mongolian broadcaster TV8 Television has expanded the PlayBox Neo playout system at its headquarters in the national capital, Ulaanbaatar. This latest project includes upgrading the existing system to latest-generation Neo-19 software.

"PlayBox Neo provides highly reliable solutions which our staff have used for many years and find very easy to work with," comments TV8 Technical Consultant, Buriad Ganbat. "Especially important is the ability to insert live content or newly-created interstitials between prescheduled programs when an important news story breaks while we are on air. The user interface provides the information needed for each step of the creative process and alerts the operator ahead of transmission if a significant element still requires attention. PlayBox Neo also gives us the ability to advance into UHD transmission if required at any time in the future."

"Our Neo-19 series software includes all the refinements needed to allow full integration with the operating procedure at TV8 Television," details Iulian Ionescu, Regional Sales Director, PlayBox Neo Asia Pacific. "Every step of the workflow from ingest, playlist preparation and graphics creation right through to transmission can be handled quickly and easily with any desired level of automation."

www.playboxneo.com

ATG Danmon announces the completion of a full broadcast-quality news studio facility for Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. The project coincides with a relocation to new city-centre premises situated next to BBC facilities. Cardiff University will use the facility to train the next generation of television, radio, online and printed-media journalists. Herefordshire based CJP Broadcast Service Solutionsprovided the installation services for the project.

"We were invited to propose a turnkey solution based on an outline specification provided by the university," explains ATG Danmon Managing Director Russell Peirson-Hagger. "The project comprised a large TV studio and dedicated gallery, a smaller TV studio with its associated gallery, plus a broadcast newsroom. Both galleries connect via SDI to Vizrt media, graphics and automation. Avid iNEWS is also integrated."

"The system links to a news presentation suite where a remotely controlled camera and two-way video feed allow the newsreader to talk to a newsroom reporter. The systems simulate the functionality and processes of a real broadcast environment, the output being used for academic review."

"We worked in partnership with CJP and Cardiff University staff to design and integrate a complete solution that kept within the budget and provided the specified level of functionality that is required by the teaching staff. This was successfully achieved before students returned after the summer recess.