Ericsson used this week’s NAB Show to bow a variant of its cloud-based MediaFirst platform that supports Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range.  

The offering features and integrates Ericsson’s AVP System Encoder (supporting MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and HEV), the MediaFirst Content Processing system, and the MediaFirst Video Processing platform for VOD and live, linear TV.  

Ericsson didn’t announce any initial takers for the UHD-capable version of MediaFirst, but Bell Canada recently inked a deal with Ericsson for an upgraded TV platform that will support multiscreen video services.  

RELATED: Bell Canada Rings Up Ericsson for Upgraded TV Platform 

Bell Canada has been using Mediaroom, the IPTV platform Ericsson acquired from Microsoft in the fall of 2013. MediaFirst is a next-gen, cloud-powered IP video platform from Ericsson that covers TVs as well as web browsers, smartphones and tablets and targets MVPDs as well as OTT service providers. Other announced MediaFirst customers include J:COM, Japan's largest cable operator, and Canada's SaskTel.  

In late January, Ericsson announced that One Equity Partners would acquire a majority stake in Ericsson's Media division, which includes Mediaroom and MediaFirst.  

Las Vegas -- Comcast Technology Solutions, a unit of Comcast that targets multiscreen video distribution and ad-tech services, generally has cut its teeth in the domestic market, but is now looking to take an even bigger bite as it pursues more business around the globe. 

That’s one of the priorities being engaged by Bart Spriester, the industry vet who was gamed GM of video platforms at CTS earlier this year.

RELATED: Comcast Technology Solutions Hires Bart Spriester as GM, Video Platform

“We have a good brand domestically,” Spriester said of CTS, which also handles X1 syndication, during a visit here during this week’s NAB Show. But the opportunity is ripe, he added, to help the content community around the world deliver and monetize their content via OTT and other IP-based distribution systems.

A “critical” part of the mission there is to accelerate CTS’s ability to drive its tech and services to more industries. “I want to bring more of that out,” Spriester said.

Comcast launched Comcast Technology Solutions in the fall of 2016 as a division that combined three of its media and tech businesses – Comcast Wholesale, thePlatform and This Technology.

Another key priority for CTS is live services, including live event broadcasts, alongside with advanced ad insertion capabilities. Spriester said CTS will invest more in this area throughout the year.

RELATED: NAB 2018: Comcast Unit Offers Live-to-IP

CTS will also invest more in the automation of workflows that gets content ingested, prepared, packaged and distributed to multiple screen types. Part of that work, which aims to take the pain out of traditional manual processes, will mean implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence to those processes. CTS doesn’t necessarily own all of those building blocks, but does see itself helping to orchestrate how all of the pieces and components work together.

Another key focus is CTS’s multi-CDN strategy in a way that selects the right CDN based on components such as business rules and performance. In this arena, CTS recently announced a partnership with DLVR, a company that has real-time CDN switching capabilities that are integrated with Quality of Experience analytics systems.

“Customers should have [CDN] options,” Spriester said. Notably, CTS has its own video-optimized CDN.

Comcast also used NAB to trot out a set of new products and components this week.

In addition to the enhanced live-to-IP offering for efforts such as events, CTS introduced PDK 6, a new web-based video player that aims to bring a fresh turn to a segment of the market that the division believes could use some freshening up.

PDK 6, Spriester noted, is the result of work in which the player was developed from the ground up using HTML 5 to deliver faster start times and improved client- and server-side ad insertion capabilities.

Corporate cousin NBCU is among those that will be moving to the new player, which is part of CTS’s broader mpx video management system.

CTS also introduced AdStor, a new cloud-based ad delivery system that handles both storage and distribution as well as orchestration and management. That product is being targeted to programmers and other content providers, and to advertisers.

Among its claims, CTS said AdStor can whittle processes to minutes compared to what would typically take 24 to 72 hours using manual systems. 

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Facebook, one of several major online video players putting its weight behind AV1, a new royalty-free codec, has posted test results showing that AV1’s bitrate efficiencies are exceeding expectations.

RELATED: Royalty-Free AV1 Codec Turned Loose

As a backdrop, AV1 is being billed as a codec that is 30% more efficient than current-gen codecs, such as HEVC and VP9. The Alliance for Open Media, the group behind AV1 with members that include Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon and was founded in 2015, released the 1.0 version of the codec last month.

NAB 2018: Hardware Support a Big Step Ahead for AV1

In a blog post, Facebook software engineer Yu Liu said the results are 50%-plus when Facebook tested AV1 using about 400 of the most-viewed public videos (primarily with SD and HD files) on the social media platform versus performance on “standard reference software encoders.”

“Our test examined AV1's performance vs. practical open source video encoders that can be deployed to a practical production system, rather than merely testing efficiency vs. standard reference software encoders (i.e., H.264/AVC Joint Model or JM),” Liu noted. “By structuring the test this way, we were able to show how the codec will perform in a true production environment compared with current widely used alternatives, such as x264 and libvpx-vp9.”

In those tests, AV1 surged past its stated goal of 30% better compression versus VP9, and achieves gains of up to 50.3%, 46.2% and 34.0%, compared to x264 main profile, x264 high profile and libvpx-vp9, respectively, he added.

Though the tests focused on SD and HD, Liu said the conclusion is that that AV1 will deliver “even higher efficiency gains with UHD/4K and 8K content.”

As for next steps, he said Facebook will “gradually” serve up AV1 content on the web for popular Facebook videos as Chrome and Firefox browsers implement support.

AV1: Origins and the Road Ahead

Facebook released those results Wednesday just as a large panel consisting of AOMedia members gathered at the NAB Show in Las Vegas to shed more light on the origins and plans for AV1.

As for those origins, Gabe Frost, AOMedia’s executive director and principal engineering manager for Microsoft’s operating systems group, said the conversation got started more than three years ago when it was doing some work around codecs that led to conversation with Google about another royalty-free codec, VP9.

He said Microsoft was struggling with the notion of pouring R&D into products that used video codecs and stymied by the speed of adoption.

“We felt we had to create a new way of going forward…and a new business model,” he said.

Matt Frost, AOMedia’s founding board member and head of strategy and partnerships at Google, agreed that there was a need for a royalty-free, next-gen codec that could scale across web technologies, with the codec itself serving as the foundation for companies to innovate on top of and apply to products that compete in the market.

A royalty-free approach brings a level of certainty to business models and enables companies to go “all-in” and build the ecosystem, noted Zach Hamm, an AOMedia founding board member, and director of media and display strategy and planning at chipmaker Intel Corp. (initial AV1 implementations of AV1 will be done in software; support on chips and other hardware is probably two years out).

“I’d say free is a really great price,” Mark Watson, another AOMedia founding board member and director of streaming standards at Netflix, said.

Netflix, which offers 4K content and is interested in more efficient codecs to help it lower streaming costs and deliver higher-quality streams in parts of the world with more limited bandwidth connectivity, expects to start delivering AV1 streams on web browsers later this year, Watson said.

Google’s Frost also acknowledged that codecs that use royalty-based models will be paying attention to AV1. “Are they going to be affected by this? Yes they are,” Google’s Frost said.

It’s still not clear what the other codec-facing patent pools think of AV1. “We haven’t heard much from them…so it’s hard to get into their minds,” David Rudin, AOMedia founding board member, and president, Joint Development Foundation LLC and assistant general counsel at Microsoft, said.

In the meantime, Frost said Google is optimizing its encoding technology for VP1 today as well as for software decoders for Chrome and Firefox to help with video playback for the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Facebook.

Software-based implementations will give AV1 a rolling start, though time will tell how that limits capabilities like refresh rates and resolution. “Hardware will be a key enabler” for AV1, Intel’ Hamm said, predicting that hardware rollouts will arrive within 18 to 24 months, starting on the decoder side.

Also in the early going AV1 will focus on OTT streaming applications and won’t be aggressively pushing for adoption in the broadcast TV sector, Google’s Frost said.

At the same time, there has been interest from broadcasters and discussions are happening, he said. Notably, ATSC 3.0, the next-gen broadcast transmission standard, does aim to support OTT-like capabilities, so there could be some potential alignments with AV1 further down the road. 

Las Vegas – SES now counts more than 30 U.S. cable operators, telcos and other pay TV partners that are now receiving TV signals in 4K as it starts to move those efforts into Latin American and begins to eye up some future activity in Canada.

SES is offering a dozen channels in 4K (four per transponder), including its own promotional channel to partners using a soup-to-nuts distribution platform that handles everything from ingest, encoding and distribution to the set-top box. SES also has access to a growth transponder that could expand its 4K lineup to 16 channels.

Those on SES’s 4K partner list include Armstrong Utilities, Aureon Network Services, Dish Network, enTouch Systems, EPG Chattanooga, Foothills Communications, Guadalupe Valley (GVTC), Highlands Cable Group, Hotwire Communications, Frontier Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, KPU Telecommunications, Sjoberg’s Cable TV, Buckeye Broadband, Margaretville Telephony Company, Marquette Adams, Midco, Midwest Video Solutions, Oneida Cablevision, Service Electric Cable TV, Skitter Inc., Wherever TV, and WideOpenWest.

Verizon Fios and Frontier Communications are also testing 4K TV with SES.

RELATED: Frontier Joins SES 4K Trials

For the commercial rollouts, SES and those partners have focused on 4K to the set-top box, using transport streams over QAM and over IP, depending on the service provider, and tests are underway to deliver 4K transport streams over DOCSIS, Steve Corda, vice president, media platforms North America at SES Video, said.

Works is also underway to provide IP video using adaptive bit rate (ABR) to deliver 4K streams to tablets and other types of IP streaming devices, he said.

Currently, SES is using HEVC to deliver 4K streams at 18 Mbps.

There’s no commitment from SES to support AV1, a new royalty-free next-gen codec that’s expected to play a bit role in OTT video, but Corda said its encoding system could be set up for AV1, which will start out in software and not likely to be baked into chips and hardware for a couple more years.

“We’re pretty agnostic. We would welcome being able to deliver the same quality at lower data rates,” he said.

As potential rollouts go, some MVPDs are looking to offer 4K in a premium tier or as part of a technology-focused service package.

With the rollout well underway in the U.S., SES is now starting to move 4K activity into Latin America, with the 2018 FIFA World Cup as a driver. No partners in that region have been announced, though SES will be looking to work with area cable operators as well as telcos and direct-to-home providers.

The solution for that market will kick off with four 4K channels, including NASA TV, SES’s Ultra HD demo channel, Fashion One, and another to be announced. It will also seek out new channels from content providers in that region.

The SES-6 satellite will provide dedicated delivery to Brazil, and SES’s NSS-806 satellite will serve the rest of the region until it is replaced by SES-14 later this year.

All of this 4K-facing work also ties into a broader strategy at the company to transform itself beyond being a satellite operator to a B2B services company that can help broadcasters and other partners accelerate and enable new services.

Part of that links into MX 1 (not NX1, as previously reported), a SES subsidiary created following the acquisition of RR Media, a digital media services company.

Though some large companies have that expertise in-house, SES can help others with integrated services that provide the “glue” for 4K and other types of services, including OTT and TV Everywhere offerings, explained Deepak Mathur, executive vice president of global sales at SES Video.

One example is Cell C in South Africa. SES is working with Vubiquity there to enable Cell C to offer a pay TV package for handsets. Using licensed programming from Vubiquity, content is delivered via satellite to cell towers and then distributed to customers. 

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Las Vegas -- AV1, the royalty-free, next-gen video codec from the heavily backed Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), is initially targeting web browsers, including Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome, and a small but growing amount of content.  

But a major move that will deliver widescale adoption major move – support in hardware and chipsets -- is about two years out.  

Hardware support will likely come in 2020, as chip development typically takes two to three years, Matt Frost, head of strategy and partnerships for Chrome Media at Google, one of AOMedia’s members, said here Wednesday as an opening keynoter at the NAB Show's first Streaming Summit.  

AOMedia, which issued the 1.0 release of VP1 earlier this month, has strived to optimize the new codec to make hardware adoption easier, even if seeing it appear in chips won’t happen overnight, he explained.  

RELATED: Royalty-Free AV1 Codec Turned Loose 

He expects AV1’s path to be similar to the one taken by VP9, another royalty-free coded originated by Google that was released in 2013 and initially added to popular browsers like Chrome and Firefox, followed by adoption by Google’s corporate cousin, YouTube, as well as Netflix.  

Frost said small volumes of video in the AV1 format, largely for testing purposes, is already available via YouTube.  

The 1.0 release is the first stage in this important process. “We have the code; it’s frozen,” Frost said.  

AV1 is being billed as a next-gen codec that is 30% more efficient that current-gen codecs such as HEVC and VP9.  

Dan Rayburn, the conference chairman of the NAB Streaming Summit who moderated the discussion, said he views AV1 as a successor to HEVC, rather than a replacement.  

Frost acknowledged that it’s a “pain” to switch to a new codec, and that it’s costly to support multiple formats. But he likewise believes that the value will come from the bit rate efficiencies that will come with AV1. YouTube’s adoption of VP1, he said, enabled faster start times, smoother streaming and, in some cases, a way to bump up the resolution that consumers received on their devices. 

“And to do all of that while saving money,” Frost said, adding later that the APIs and tools for VP9 and AV1 share some helpful similarities and could help ease that transition path.  

As for the bandwidth-saving potential for AV1, Frost noted that Netflix showed off 720p streaming at a mere 207 kbps at the AV1 launch party.  

Still, a big question many have about AV1 is whether it will become the target of lawsuits from other holders of intellectual property.  

Frost said there was a major aim to avoid potential legal entanglements with other patent holders and patent pools, as AV1 does not use any patents that aren’t derived from those involved in the AOMedia organization, which includes Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook among its members.  

AOMedia has also done its due diligence and put “a lot of rigor” into the intellectual review of AV1, Frost said, noting that there was a deep review done internally as well as another level of review with dedicated outside counsel.  

And here’s the just-in-case -- AOMedia and its members have also set up a fund for the defense of AV1 against any possible lawsuits suits that emerge and allege patent infringement.  

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Las Vegas -- The origins of PlayStation Vue, initially launched to a set of U.S. markets about three years ago, are rooted to PlayStation 3 and 4 consoles, but adoption of Sony’s OTT TV service has rapidly expanded to other supported streaming platforms.  

In fact, about 70% of streaming of the PS Vue service now takes place on non-PlayStation devices, Dwayne Benefield, VP and head of PlayStation Vue (pictured), said here Wednesday (April 11) at the NAB Show’s inaugural Streaming Summit. 

In addition to the PS3 and PS4, PlayStation Vue, considered a whole-home offering because it allows for up to five simultaneous streams per account, is supported on Android TV devices, Apple TV boxes, Amazon Fire TV devices, Roku players and Roku TVs, Chromecast streaming adapters, web browsers, and Android and iOS mobile devices.  

Among other stats, Benefield said PS Vue subs average five hours plus per session, with live TV making up 80% of viewing time on the streaming service.  

Looking back, Benefield recalled that PS Vue started in select cities where it could offer access to certain local TV broadcasts, but later launched a version of the service under the “Slim” moniker that provided PS Vue a national reach (and included next day VOD access to certain broadcast TV shows) and way to enter markets where PS Vue didn’t offer live locals.  

Slim, which cost $10 less per month, was “surprisingly successful,” Benefield said.  

Local TV is “valuable, but it’s not a make-or-break…I think [OTT TV] services can succeed without broadcast,” he added, noting that many consumers still have the option to get those channels with an antenna.  

PS Vue offers four pay TV packages, but also tries to differentiate with its cloud DVR service, multi-view capability (allowing viewers to watch up to three linear channels at once), and by offering a la carte access to services such as HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Fox Soccer Plus, and Epix Hits.  

“There is value in the bundle,” Benefield said in a keynote conversation with Dan Rayburn, conference chairman of the NAB Streaming Summit. “As it does fray, you’ll see us add more a la cartes.”  

Benefield was also asked about the challenges ahead as PS Vue faces off with a growing number of virtual MVPDs that today includes DirecTV Now, Hulu, YouTube TV, fuboTV, with a couple more on deck from T-Mobile (via its acquisition of Layer3 TV) and Vidgo.  

RELATED: Vidgo IDs Two OTT Tech Partners  

While the addition of new players raises awareness that consumers have live TV streaming options, he likewise he doesn’t expect many more to jump into the game.  

“This is not a faint-of-heart business,” Benefield said.  

RELATED: PlayStation Vue Mobilizes More Features 

He said PS Vue, which continues to add more live local TV feeds in various markets, has plans to bring more enhancements and features to the service, but declined to detail them. However, he said PS Vue updates its apps every two to three weeks.  

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Despite this being the “Golden Age of Television,” Benefield also expects there to be a winnowing of some channels that are unable to put in the investment to continue creating enough high quality content to sustain a 24/7 offering.

He also pointed out that MVPDs, including OTT-delivered ones, are also benefiting from stacking rights of TV show that are continuing to pivot more toward the pay TV ecosystem and away, to some degree, from SVOD services. 

Las Vegas -- Speed and agility are hallmarks of any over-the-top video service, but striking a balance between full independence and a collaborative relationship with CBS News have also served as key tenets at CBSN, the digital, 24/7 news service launched in 2014.

CBSN is, at its core, a digital, over-the-top news service that features live feeds and covers breaking news alongside on-demand access to past news stories. In addition to being available as a free, ad-based standalone offering via apps for mobile and TV-connected devices, it is also offered via CBS All Access, CBS’s subscription-based streaming product.

“We’re set up to take advantage of the fact that it’s a digital stream,” Christy Tanner, executive vice president and general manager at CBS News Digital, said here Tuesday in a keynote conversation with Will Richmond, editor and publisher of VideoNuze.

CBSN, which is expanding into Canada, emerged as a dedicated digital property in part because CBS saw a market need for it, but also because CBS did not have a full-time cable news outlet.

“That was freeing in a way to start something new,” Tanner said, noting that CBSN didn’t have to worry about cannibalizing a 24/7 cable news outlet. Launching the service was “a bet we could take that was relatively low risk,” she added.

However, CBSN pays its own way. “We can more than support ourselves in this [digital] space,” Tanner explained.

CBSN operates separately from CBS’s broadcast TV news organization, but, in a collaborative twist, the digital entity will, on occasion, produce elements for the TV side of the house. A guest on CBS This Morning, for example, might appear for two minutes, and then head over to CBSN for a 10-minute segment on the same topic.

“We like to go a little deeper sometimes,” Tanner said, noting that those segments do end up getting some play on the CBS Evening News.

“We do coordinate extensively with all the [CBS] shows,” including 60 Minutes, she said.

“For the most part, what we have is a new model for a news organization,” Tanner said. “It our shop, everyone’s digital…we’re all intertwined. That’s how the future news organization will be structured.”

And that structure will continue to evolve. The CBSN news operation “will be a lot different two years from now,” she predicted.

CBSN’s demo tends to skew younger, with an average age of 38, than CBS News, whose audience is 20 years older, on average.

“We certainly do see cord-cutters tuning in,” Tanner said.

Though the situation can change on the time of the day or the day of the week, about 50% of CBSN streams come way of TV-connected devices like streaming players, smart TVs and gaming consoles, with 20% coming from mobile devices, and 30% from desktops/PCs.

In addition to getting usage on its own apps via those platforms, CBSN is also getting some traction with Xumo and Pluto TV, two ad-based streaming services that aggregate content into digital “channels” via a wide range of sources, including CBSN.

CBSN, so far, has not focused on carriage with virtual MVPDs [multichannel video programing distributors] such as Sling TV and DirecTV Now, but is not necessarily closing the door on that form of distribution. In fact, carriage of CBSN tied into a broader distribution agreement between CBS and fuboTV, an OTT TV service, that was announced last year.

RELATED: CBSN to Launch on CBS All Access, fuboTV

“We’re talking to everybody,” Tanner said.

CBSN, she said, has strived to remain non-partisan with respect to the political landscape.

“We made a conscious choice to be based on fact, not opinion…and knowledge, not debate,” Tanner said.

As for the future, Tanner said CBSN is getting pitched hard to integrate its service with voice-based navigation and search platforms.

“It’s a huge opportunity, as we are both video and audio news service, but it raises a lot of questions about how to choose from results…I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in this space.”

CBSN, as a standalone app, will remain a free, ad-supported service (CBS All Access, the paid OTT service, includes CBSN as an added benefit). CBSN is also available to local affiliates to embed the service into their own digital properties.

“We’ll see how it evolves,” Tanner said of the service’s business model, adding that CBSN does think about what kind of content that consumers would pay for. “But right now we’re providing so much value [with] breaking news that you don’t want to put a pay wall in front of that.” 

Though there are lingering questions about pricing, packaging and a precise launch date for an OTT TV service being developed by Vidgo, the company has revealed two key technology partners – Float Left and Harmonic – in tandem with this week’s NAB show in Las Vegas.  

Among them, Float Left and its Flicast platform will help Vidgo bring its coming virtual MVPD service to major platforms such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, web browsers, and iOS and Android mobile phones.  

RELATED: Fragmentation Remains a Major Factor in OTT Video World 

Vidgo has also tapped Harmonic’s VOS media processing platform, including encoding and transcoding via the vendor’s VOS SW Cluster, to help underpin its OTT services. It will also use Harmonic’s PURE Compression Engine, a software-based media processing technology that will help Vidgo deliver high video quality across screens at the “lowest possible bitrates.”  

Though specifics about Vidgo’s offerings are yet to come, it does plan to offer a lineup of more than 40 linear channels and a “robust” VOD library under a no-contract model that’s also free of box fees. Vidgo, which had once planned to introduce services sometime in 2016, currently expects to launch a beta version of the service this summer across “all major platforms.”  

Still unclear is how Vidgo will be able to differentiate amid a competitive mix of virtual MVPDs that includes Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, fuboTV, and Hulu.  

Las Vegas – Looking to stay ahead of what could be a new wave of streaming piracy focused on ultra-premium content, Friend MTS has launched a 4K variant of its “ASiD” digital watermarking and video security platform.  

The launch complements Friend MTS’s video security services for standard- and high-definition content. Friend MTS’ core business is focused on live sports and other forms of premium entertainment, and uses fingerprint-based content recognition that is invisible to the viewer.

Friend MTS is pitching the new 4K variant as part of its overall security-as-a-service offering, which can be customized based on the distribution or content partner. The company didn’t announce any takers for the 4K component early on, but possible candidates could come way of its existing customer base, which includes NBC Sports, DirecTV, Univision, the Premier League, Sky, beIN Sports, and Foxtel, among others.  

RELATED: DirecTV Sets Slate of Live TV in 4K and HDR 

The new 4K variant, like Friends MTS’s other video security services, aims to identify and lock-down pirated streams within minutes, not hours. That small window is critical, especially with live sporting events, which diminish in value soon after they are concluded.  

The scale of streaming of sports piracy is “staggering,” Neil Sharpe, product marketing director at Friend MTS, said here at a press conference, noting that digital rights management and conditional access systems aren’t enough to take down this growing and increasingly sophisticated threat.  

He said the impact among rights owners and broadcasters is significant as they tend to deal with “thousands” of illegal streams over any given weekend.  

Automation and the ability to identify and deactivate illegal streams within five minutes is paramount. “The scale of this task is not appropriate for manual intervention,” Sharpe said.  

And while 720p resolution today is the most popular format for illegal streaming, because it delivers a “good enough” HD experience for big screen TVs without much worry about buffering, he said 4K-level streaming piracy is on the horizon as more events are produced and delivered in that format alongside the emergence of faster and faster broadband services.  

Friend MTS this week was awarded an Emmy for Technology and Engineering for its efforts around video identification technology used to protect content value and copyright.  

Sharpe also noted that digital video piracy has becoming increasingly sophisticated amid threats from illegal streaming devices and Kodi plug-ins, mobile apps, social media outlets and websites that are purveyors of ill-gotten content.  

RELATED: TV’s Scary New Threat (subscription required)  

At the same time, these pirate services have become more professional-looking and are branded to mimic legitimate pay TV channels and services, making it a struggle for some consumers to realize the difference.  

Comcast Technology Solution, a unit of Comcast focused on multiscreen video distribution and advertising technologies and services, has introduced an “enhanced” live services offering that includes a new live-to-IP capability that enables partners to reach consumers on a wide range of devices.  

CTS said the enhanced offering serves as way for video content providers and operators around the world to deliver linear and live events using a turnkey system that ingests content via satellite, fiber or over the internet, manages and protects the content, and then distributes it to targeted end devices.  

The offering also includes Linear Rights Metadata Management services that, it notes, ensures the accurate delivery, entitlement and representation of content across digital screens and live multichannel broadcasts. 

“Comcast Technology Solutions has years of experience delivering live content via broadcast and now we can enable customers to benefit from this expertise across all screens,” Bart Spriester, GM and VP of Comcast Technology Solutions, said in a statement. “With our broadcast-quality infrastructure and flexible, modular solution set, content providers are equipped to meet rapidly evolving consumer demands for live content.” 

RELATED: Comcast Technology Solutions Hires Bart Spriester as GM, Video Platform 

Among customers, ESM Productions, a company that specializes in music concerts and special events, uses CTS’s live services platform in support of events such as the Meadows Festival, Vic Mensa and Cardi B concerts, Reform 2018, as well as for the WNBA. 

Comcast launched Comcast Technology Solutions in the fall of 2016 as a division that combined three of its media and tech businesses – Comcast Wholesale, thePlatform and This Technology. 

RELATED: Comcast Snaps Up This Technology  

Ahead of this week’s NAB show in Las Vegas, the Ultra HD Forum said it has released the Phase B Guidelines for UHD, spanning areas such as dynamic metadata, higher refresh rates, lower bandwidth requirements and next-gen audio. 

The Phase B Guidelines, covered in an 80-page technical document, aim to “de-mystify” five areas involving the future of UHD: Content-aware encoding, dual-layer HDR technologies, Dynamic HDR Metadata Systems (Dolby Vision and SL-HDR1), high-frame rate (100/120 frames per second0, and next-gen audio (Dolby AC-4 Audio and SL-HDR1).  

RELATED: NAB 2017: Industry is Ultra Bullish About Ultra HD 

“Phase A Guidelines address technologies that were solidified in 2015 and 2016, then in the summer of 2017 we ran a survey with Operators to guide the choice of the next phase of technologies,” Madeleine Noland, chair of the Guidelines Work group, said in a statement.  

She added that the aim is to “remain strongly focused on backwards compatibility,” and that Phase B will soon add workflows for all distribution systems, including over-the-air, MVPD and OTT.  

The Ultra HD forum will show Phase B technologies in action at NAB at the Futures Park, located in the North Hall (booth N1131FP) at the Las Vegas Convention Center.