Latest from Next TV in 4k-video

Comcast Builds Video Momentum

Jeff Baumgartner — Mon, 16 May 2016 12:00:00 +0000

Bucking a trend amplified by a small but growing cord-cutting trend and the popularity of over-the-top video options, Comcast just came off a first quarter in which the MSO added 53,000 subscribers, its best first-quarter video result in nine years.

While a portion of the credit goes to X1, Comcast’s Internet protocol-capable next-generation video offering, those results are due to a confluence of efforts and initiatives that span not just the core product but also areas such as improved customer care, according to Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and general manager, video services.

Multichannel News technology editor and Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Strauss to discuss Comcast’s new video products and strategies involving X1, TV Everywhere, its new IP-delivered “Stream” product, and future 4K plans.

Editor's Note: An expanded version of this interview will appear in Multichannel News’s show dailies at this week’s INTX show in Boston.

MCN:As you look at the second half of the year, what are your top priorities?

Matt Strauss: We’re really focused first and foremost on continuing to execute against the deployment of X1. We’re seeing a lot of very positive benefits from X1, both on the churn and on the increased consumption side. We’re now at about 35% penetrated, and it’s even higher if you just look at triple-play subs — about 50% of our triple-play subscribers now have X1.

What goes hand in hand with that is that we also want to finish out the deployment of our cloud infrastructure. We’ve been deploying cloud across our footprint — both cloud streaming and cloud DVR — and we are very close to getting 100% deployment. We want to finish that up by the middle to end of this year.

Finally, we want to continue the penetration and usage of our products and services. We’ve got a very ambitious deployment for our new consolidated Xfinity app. With the upcoming Olympics [in Rio] we want to use that as an opportunity to shine a light on this new application, which we think is a tremendous value to our customers.

MCN:With respect to the pay TV momentum, how much credit does X1 get, even as you continue to improve other areas like customer care and customer experience?

MS: It certainly is contributing. When you look at X1, we’re seeing improvements in churn. X1 customers are also consuming more video. They also have a higher attachment rate to DVRs and typically they take additional outlets in their home. There’s no doubt that X1 is contributing, but I don’t know if there’s any one silver bullet.

When it comes to growing the video business, it’s really a combination of several factors and investments that we’ve been making over the past few years, in how we’ve been improving our infrastructure, moving more to IP.

MCN:What kind of usage patterns are you seeing with the Xfinity TV app? Is the big challenge getting the message out to customers so they understand the app’s full capability?

MS: I’d almost characterize it as we’re in a moment in time because we have the Xfinity TV in-home app and we have our Xfinity TV Go app. We are in the process of consolidating those into just one app, which will be the Xfinity TV app. This unification … will provide this unprecedented access to content both in the home and out of the home. And I think those lines are going to continue to get more and more blurred.

When you look at the usage of our app in general, we have about 42% penetration of our mobile app among our double-play customers on a monthly basis. On a quarterly basis, it’s almost 60% who are using one of our apps, and that’s up about 16% year-over-year.

MCN:What’s next for Comcast with respect to 4K? You’ve got the app for Samsung TVs but we’ve seen some recent reports that you’ll really be focusing more on a strategy that puts an emphasis on High Dynamic Range (HDR)?

MS: While there’s hyper-attention on 4K, when we look at the total video experience, we think 4K is part of the offering. But HDR, which is not necessarily getting the same amount of attention, is in many ways more immersive and, we think, impactful.

Instead of deploying maybe a half-baked solution, which we’re starting to see a little bit of in the market, we thought it was more prudent to deliver the complete experience … and that’s what’s being developed with our Xi6 box, which we’ll be testing this year, but it’s going to really be deployed next year.

MCN:The video market continues to be abuzz about skinny TV bundles. Comcast has been going after that segment with the Stream TV product in some select markets. What have you learned so far, and what’s next on the rollout plan?

MS: In many ways X1, we think, is satisfying the demand for how many of us watch television. The average person watches about 130 hours of video every month.

But there are changes in how other segments are consuming video. When we look at skinny bundles, we believe that they are in some ways a manifestation of the economy as anything else. It’s rare that you hear someone say that they want fewer choices. What’s more likely is that you might hear someone say they want to pay less.

We have been experimenting with skinny bundles and experimenting with ensuring we’re getting the right product to the right customer at the right time in their life, whether that’s Internet Plus or the Xfinity On Campus product, or Stream.

While Stream is, at the moment, comprised of a skinny bundle, the strategies behind Stream are much more around how we’re going to transform the overall end-to-end customer experience, and Stream is just one example of how we are expanding into that terrain.

'Perseus' Compression Can Carry 4K Video in 7-Mbps Stream

garyarlen@gmail.com (Gary Arlen) — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 17:15:00 +0000

Compression software that can pack a 4K Ultra High-Definition video stream into 7-to-8 Mbps connections -- about one-third the capacity required in most of today's applications -- will be introduced at next week's NAB Show in Las Vegas. V-Nova Ltd., a four-year old British technology company, unveiled its "Perseus" codec in London last week, calling it a "scalable end-to-end solution for mass-market adoption of live UHD."

The company said the picture quality of Perseus compression equals that of current UHD streaming systems.

Broadcom, Intel, the European Broadcasting Union, Hitachi Data Systems, Sky Italia and Sky Germany are among the 20 organizations in an "Open Innovation" consortium that is backing the project, which is currently being tested on Sky Italia.

Perseus shifts "the entire bitrate-quality curve," said V-Nova CEO and founder Guido Meardi, explaining that the compression software enables transmission of UHD video at High-Definition bitrates, HD at Standard -bitrates and SD video at audio bitrates.

"Perseus makes 4K commercially viable at scale and enables HD over 3G/4G mobile networks," Meardi said.

The system has been tested and showed compression gains of two to three times compared with H.254/AVC, H.265/HEVC and JPEG2000. It also uses less power than H.265 andH.265, V-Nova said.

V-Nova expects to begin trials in the U.S. by autumn; it has not yet identified partners for the field tests. Streaming media purveyors such as Netflix and Amazon, which are introducing UHD 4K programs, are expected to be V-Nova's prime targets, although the company has not yet indicated any deals with those programmers.

V-Nova also said Perseus technology would allow wireless viewers users to stream HD video via WiFi and mobile bandwidth in the same bandwidth now required to play audio files. This would include transmission of social media video -- a fast-rising category.

Perseus "allows our partners to differentiate their products, increase market penetration and provide new services," Meardi said.

HEVC: Ready for Primetime?

Craig Kuhl — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:45:00 +0000

High-E ffciency Video Coding (HEVC), an emerging video codec, is maturing as it gains momentum as a bandwidth-saving messiah for mobile video and dazzling 4K/Ultra HD services, but when it will be ready for primetime remains an open question.

The full potential of HEVC/H.265, initially thought to be exclusively for compression e ciency (it’s billed as 50% more bandwidth-e cient than MPEG- 4/H.264), is proving to have some additional upside for video-service providers, although there are some obstacles to overcome before it’s a musthave technology.

“There are still bugs to be worked out, but anyone wanting to do 4K or Ultra HD content, which eats up lots of bandwidth, must have HEVC,” SNL Kagan principal analyst Michelle Abraham said. “Economically, you don’t want to do them without HEVC.”

And the universe of video providers that are carefully tracking HEVC is expanding.

“The telcos are looking at HEVC to enable more HD streams for content in homes,” Abraham said. “HEVC allows a greater number of HD channels simultaneously, and expands their territory, which they haven’t been able to do in the past.”

In the meantime, MSOs are starting to set their HEVC migration plans into motion. Comcast, for example, will use HEVC for a 4K video-streaming app offered on new Samsung Ultra HD sets and is developing boxes with HEVC for its X1 platform that can decode native 4K signals.

“We’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much HEVC capabilities have matured,” Mark Francisco, fellow of premises technologies for Comcast, said. “Complexities have been reduced and problems with color-banding addressed. We’re launching Ultra HD with Samsung, and will look at tools like capacity management over WiFi delivery. HEVC can help with all of those. No doubt, there will be widespread adoption of HEVC.”

But timing the deployment and adoption of HEVC will remain tricky in the early days of Ultra HD.

“Cable operators and fiber-to-thehome deployments like FiOS and Google Fiber will be in the best positions to deploy HEVC,” Daniel Howard, senior vice president of engineering for the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, said. “But cable operators will likely wait for significant consumer demand. In the meantime, there’s important engineering going on to improve the algorithm to get the full benefit of coding gain.”

Encoding vendors such as Elemental Technologies believe HEVC will play a big role in the video technology ecosystem and reduce delivery costs as more video is delivered via IP.

“We’re seeing real-time decoding of HEVC to OTT [over-the-top] for content in 4K over cable,” Elemental chief marketing o cer Keith Wymbs said, citing the work between Comcast and Samsung as a prime example. “HEVC reduces the operational costs of IPdelivered video to smart TVs and other devices by nearly halving the bit rates. But HEVC is also good for HD and SD, especially on the cost side.”

Though challenges remain, the stage is being set for HEVC deployment. “The availability of equipment that decodes is an issue,” Wymbs said. “Today’s chipsets are limited. But that will change later this year.”

In addition to allowing more pixels to be packed into the picture, HEVC should also help operators produce better pixels.

“HEVC allows a more advanced color scheme with about 22% more color,” Joe Del Rio, associate product line director for chipmaker Broadcom, said. “It just makes all video look better, so it’s great news for all in the ecosystem. We don’t want a repeat of 3D.”

And industry players expect a multitude of devices to support HEVC, not just new TVs and traditional settops. “There are lots of gaming console manufacturers watching HEVC,” Ian Trow, senior director of emerging technology and strategy for videoprocessing specialist Harmonic, said.

Although the timing of HEVC’s widespread adoption remains a key question, there’s little doubt that the spec is maturing and poised to become a vital component of the video distribution chain.

“We’ll continue working on the product, including encoding and packaging HD content to routinely make Ultra HD available on smart TVs and set-top boxes,” Francisco said. “There’s tremendous momentum for HEVC.”