Kitz Forum
Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: Bowdon on June 18, 2018, 10:31:32 PM
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https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2018/05/11/bbc-predicts-all-ip-future-says-it-will-evolve-into-an-internet-broadcaster/ (https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2018/05/11/bbc-predicts-all-ip-future-says-it-will-evolve-into-an-internet-broadcaster/)
The BBC’s technology chief has predicted that all media will be delivered over the web in the not too distant future and called on the UK industry to come together as we move into this IP era.
Speaking at the DTG Summit in London yesterday, the BBC’s chief technology and product officer, Matthew Postgate, said that the BBC’s current 11-year charter period will be “one of transition” and said that change is already underway.
While the BBC will continue to cater for both people who watch and listen to traditional linear channels and those who use the web as their premium consumption method, Postgate said that the question is “not when, but how we will make the transition to being an internet broadcaster”.
“We believe that the days when all media will be distributed over the internet are not too far away and there are many reasons we are optimistic about this next phase of our industry,” said Postgate.
“The impact of on-demand is already apparent. That is only the beginning. TV is going to evolve into something more immersive, more pervasive, more interactive and more personalised. We already see the beginning of this shift.”
“For the BBC the question about our IP future becomes not just when, but also how. Not only about how quickly we can get there, but how best and under what conditions.”
An interesting article I just found. I wonder if some of the TV license fee will go in to helping build the fibre network that the bbc will rely on.
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TV license fee will go in to helping build the fibre network that the bbc will rely on.
Interesting thought, but I doubt it.
Any investment will be on servers/bandwidth/CDN at their end. As with transmitters the BBC don't own or maintain those, they just pay their share along with any of the other broadcasters. Arquiva (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqiva) don't care how the broadcasters are funded they just charge the broadcaster per MUX.
So eventually they will be paying more money to the CDNs. I think they have their own and also use a couple of the biggies such as Akamai.
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Bit more information about BIDI here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8c6c2414-df7a-4ad7-bd2e-dbe481da3633).
BIDI uses LINX to peer to most of the UK ISPs. Doesn't say who the "commercial CDNs" are that they use, other than imply there are at least 2.
In all fairness the BBC R&D have put a lot of ££ into early development of multi-casting and IPTV. I was one of their trialists about 14yrs ago for multicast.. and if my memory serves correct their IPTV trials a year later was called IMP.
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Interestingly when I watched england yesterday on iplayer, it was probably the best ever quality IPTV I have ever watched. No signs of compression artefacts, no stuttering, and resolution was high enough that I noticed no pixelation, text super sharp etc. The bandwidth usage was not particularly high (12mbit/sec average) so I wonder if some newer codec has been used with superior performance metrics.
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Interesting thought, but I doubt it.
Any investment will be on servers/bandwidth/CDN at their end. As with transmitters the BBC don't own or maintain those, they just pay their share along with any of the other broadcasters. Arquiva (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqiva) don't care how the broadcasters are funded they just charge the broadcaster per MUX.
So eventually they will be paying more money to the CDNs. I think they have their own and also use a couple of the biggies such as Akamai.
Do the BBC need a CDN? I mean they peer at LINX, their viewers are in the UK and just about every UK isp also peers at LINX.
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Interestingly when I watched england yesterday on iplayer, it was probably the best ever quality IPTV I have ever watched. No signs of compression artefacts, no stuttering, and resolution was high enough that I noticed no pixelation, text super sharp etc. The bandwidth usage was not particularly high (12mbit/sec average) so I wonder if some newer codec has been used with superior performance metrics.
strangely when i tried the live game on iplayer the quality was absymal, way less than SD quality on DSAT.
it certainly wasn't HD and was way below normal SD standard.
maybe it's hit and miss as to which stream you get.
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strangely when i tried the live game on iplayer the quality was absymal, way less than SD quality on DSAT.
it certainly wasn't HD and was way below normal SD standard.
maybe it's hit and miss as to which stream you get.
I'm surprised at that.
I've watched most of the BBC games in 4k UHD and the picture quality has been astonishing.
I haven't seen iplayer buffer or drop the picture quality in months.
There is no "stream" you get with iplayer.
They have crazy amounts of bandwidth at their disposal.
The picture plays at the quality your internet connection can support.
My old Sony 32" HDTV (about 7 years old) is shocking with iplayer, but it's a very old version that hasn't been updated in a long time.
My other tv's and STB's play perfect 1080 24/7.
Possibly hardware related?
I very much doubt it's the BBC's end.
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I wonder if some of the TV license fee will go in to helping build the fibre network that the bbc will rely on.
Hasn't this already happened with BDUK been funded, in part, by the TV Licence.
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I'm surprised at that.
I've watched most of the BBC games in 4k UHD and the picture quality has been astonishing.
I haven't seen iplayer buffer or drop the picture quality in months.
There is no "stream" you get with iplayer.
They have crazy amounts of bandwidth at their disposal.
The picture plays at the quality your internet connection can support.
My old Sony 32" HDTV (about 7 years old) is shocking with iplayer, but it's a very old version that hasn't been updated in a long time.
My other tv's and STB's play perfect 1080 24/7.
Possibly hardware related?
I very much doubt it's the BBC's end.
remember though that the UHD is just a trialand is not available to everyone. those that can watch in UHD are a very small section of users which apparently the end-user has no control over, even if you are able to watch it.
i did get the previous UHD trial which was a West Brom game i think, wasn't overly impressed.
non-live content was fine.
however i can assure you that when i watched it live via iplayer the quality was sub-SD.
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non-live content was fine
however i can assure you that when i watched it live via iplayer the quality was sub-SD.
One point worth making is, whereas iirc iPlayer used to have HD/SD in settings, these days it is meant to auto adapt. That is, if I have it right, if it thinks the data rate won’t sustain HD, it falls back to SD.
Bear in mind that even if you have a full 80Mbps, or even fibre broadband, if your TV were connected via imperfect WiFi rather than wired, or even with wired if your router or switches were saturated, then iPlayer may decide to fall back to SD.
But speaking as a person who commented “me too” on a recent “I hate football” thread, I can offer no direct experience of this particular phenomemon. ::)
Having said all that, I do often find evidence that the Beeb’s servers are sometimes bandwidth limited. :-\
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for reference watched in chrome and from sport website although thats portalling to iplayer i think
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Do the BBC need a CDN? I mean they peer at LINX, their viewers are in the UK and just about every UK isp also peers at LINX.
Absolutely they do. That's why the BBC designed BIDI all those years ago.
Whilst they may use BIDI for the UK ISPs who peer via LINX at Telehouse, their website is global and why they also use at least another 2 CDNs. There will also be some resiliency for the UK consumers with them also using 2 commercial CDNs in addition to their own.
Without checking the history dates of the CDNs, iirc BIDI was serving the UK content at around the same time that Amazon AWS was just getting off the ground in the US, perhaps even before. Akami was the daddy... can't recall when they entered the global market, but CDN was specifically invented to tackle the problem of video streaming. Today practically all the largest websites use a CDN and not just for streaming content. CDNs handle something like over 50% of internet traffic.
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Hasn't this already happened with BDUK been funded, in part, by the TV Licence.
hmmm actually now you mention it you may be right and I do recall something in the past - not sure if they still do though.
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BDUK funding profile
Digital Switchover Scheme 230.5m
TV Licence Fee 300m
In addition, the TV licence settlement that was agreed in October 2010 covers the period
up until 2017, so a further £150m in each of 2015/16 and 2016/17 is available for BDUK
funding if required.
Section14.3 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78021/BDUK-Programme-Delivery-Model-vs1-01.pdf)
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Absolutely they do. That's why the BBC designed BIDI all those years ago.
Whilst they may use BIDI for the UK ISPs who peer via LINX at Telehouse, their website is global and why they also use at least another 2 CDNs. There will also be some resiliency for the UK consumers with them also using 2 commercial CDNs in addition to their own.
Without checking the history dates of the CDNs, iirc BIDI was serving the UK content at around the same time that Amazon AWS was just getting off the ground in the US, perhaps even before. Akami was the daddy... can't recall when they entered the global market, but CDN was specifically invented to tackle the problem of video streaming. Today practically all the largest websites use a CDN and not just for streaming content. CDNs handle something like over 50% of internet traffic.
Thanks, I suppose I was looking at it in the way that CDN's only purpose was to provide content local to the end user, so e.g. a CDN can make traffic originating from the states be served from a server in the uk, but CDN's have other purposes to which is why the BBC have one.
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Absolutely they do. That's why the BBC designed BIDI all those years ago.
Whilst they may use BIDI for the UK ISPs who peer via LINX at Telehouse, their website is global and why they also use at least another 2 CDNs. There will also be some resiliency for the UK consumers with them also using 2 commercial CDNs in addition to their own.
Without checking the history dates of the CDNs, iirc BIDI was serving the UK content at around the same time that Amazon AWS was just getting off the ground in the US, perhaps even before. Akami was the daddy... can't recall when they entered the global market, but CDN was specifically invented to tackle the problem of video streaming. Today practically all the largest websites use a CDN and not just for streaming content. CDNs handle something like over 50% of internet traffic.
Thats true but these are mostly global services, This is why I thought there as no need for a CDN for the BBC as all its viewers are in one country (forgetting BBC global services).
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I can't find the post where I think BBC iPlayer was mentioned. But I was reading this daily mail headline;
BBC iPlayer CRASHES in the last five minutes of England's quarter-final clash with Sweden meaning fans MISSED Three Lions' victory moment (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5928081/Streaming-delay-make-England-fans-using-phones-irate-waiting-overdue-flight.html)
It seems iPlayer crashed in the final minutes of the game. They also added a 20 second delay to the feed.
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We watched it via iPlayer, we had problems at the beginning and it then played perfectly until somewhere around the 90 minute mark. At this point I switched to an app on my phone (www.tvguide.co.uk) which I think may use the iPlayer stream and this played OK until the end. iPlayer did kick back in after a few minutes though from where it left off. I just thought the problem was broadband/WiFi related.
I'm surprised it's only a 20 second delay, nothing is strictly live, there is always a delay, even on satellite. The system with the least delay is the satellite system they use in bookies - I'm going back a few years now, but I doubt much has changed. Quite often the delay is intentional, to allow swearing to be bleeped out for instance, or a streaker to be blurred out.
If watching just for pleasure then a 10, 20 or even 60 second delay is really irrelevant.
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I have both terrestrial and satellite, maybe its just my devices but the sat feed is always a good 10-15 seconds behind. Always just assumed satellite should be behind, I know the 72000km only takes ~250ms but with buffering/processing each side figured cables/beams to local terrestrial stations have to be faster.
They didn't add 20s of delay to the feed, iplayer is always way behind live from other sources, or do you mean 20 seconds more than the usual minute or so delay? I guess it probably depends on which CDN is serving you.
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I noticed it and at first thought it may have been my connection. It was playing OK and only crashed during the extra time, so the match result was practically guaranteed, but it was a bit annoying to just see a spinny circle on the screen whilst waiting for the whistle to blow. I tried to get bbc weather in another window and that was also slow to load so I just assumed it must have been demand.
They also added a 20 second delay to the feed.
That's not new news. :-\
1) As Ron says, live is seldom ever live and most tv and radio has a delay.
2) An additional delay for streaming (-v- over the air) just can't be avoided due to several things such as internet &network conditions (latency & bitrate) and also the time taken to compress and upload to the CDNs. Its not just the World Cup or the BBC, same happens for all broadcasters who stream, so I don't know why they are making a big deal out of it.
If its so important then use bog standard TV or sky. That said, even satellite lags about a second or so behind terrestrial TV.
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I watched it on UHD without any issues, however there is about a 90 second delay on the UHD stream v terrestrial.