Greetings from the NAB show (not to be confused with National Australia Bank, which would have been a much longer flight, but rather the Broadcast shindig in Sin City). It’s really amazing how 150,000 show attendees don’t even make a ripple in Las Vegas; walking the boulevard, one would hardly know NAB was in town.
Anyway I thought I would share some of the key takeaways from the various themes discussed at the show.
Forget 1080p – That’s So Last Year
Isn’t it amazing how our insatiable appetite for high quality video causes us to take for granted 1080p? It’s not so long ago when watching YouTube that I could barely make out the characters without standing 20 feet away from my device. Now, of course, High Def is the norm and content providers and owners are looking at what’s next.
The underlying theme is that 4K Video is next. In July 2010 YouTube began streaming certain videos at resolutions of up to 4096 x 3072 (4K), so for all you video dweebs, registered users at YouTube are allowed to upload videos with a resolution higher than 1080p. This seems to be the next step in the High Definition arena and consumes up to 12Mbps versus the standard 5 Mbps 1080p.
So not only are the amount of smartphones causing AT&T to witness an incredible 8,000% increase in data traffic over the past 4 years, but even if carriers don’t grow their smartphone subscriber base, the shift to higher quality video will see that traffic double again. Oh, and did I forgot to mention Ultra High Def, which has 16 times the resolution of 1080p? Hold onto the rails, it’s going to be a wild ride for you carriers out there.
The Future is Cloudy
So where is all this content going to be stored? Well, I can tell you that Content is moving into the cloud and that juggernaut will not be stopped. Verizon, Comcast, Vivendi Mobile, et al, clearly embraced this direction at the show. They are actively embracing cloud technology as well as welcoming cloud providers into their ecosystem, albeit begrudgingly on the latter. Just look at Microsoft’s announcement that 90 percent of its $9.6 billion R&D budget will be spent on cloud strategy this year.
On a related note, the 800lb gorilla is still in the room, that of Digital Rights Management (DRM), and the providers’ legal exposure from the content. It’s amazing how many lawyers were at the show… looks like a feeding frenzy on the horizon.
Wireless Carriers Will Have All the Fun
So while I was listening to Comcast rant about DOCSIS 3.0 and how it’s an all-IP response to the cable companies’ competitive pressures, it struck me, “Forget cable, the fun is going to be with the wireless carriers.” So according to Multimedia Intelligence, mobile video is expected to exceed $15 billion in worldwide revenue by 2012.
However, mobile video presents huge challenges due to the physical limitations of the radio interface (yes, even with the pending LTE efficiencies). Wireless networks are handcuffed to operate within a defined radio interface and spectral restrictions, so carriers cannot throw more fiber at the problem. Managing traffic is thus a critical requirement for network operators.
It seems to me that Continuous Computing’s Adaptive Traffic Shaping architecture is the perfect play here. I also think you will start to see more and more ubiquitous Video Optimization platforms where transcoding and transrating dramatically improve the Quality of Experience. Either way, it’s going to be a fun ride in the wireless video arena.
