Telairity Expands to Central Asia

As we’re about to bring 2014 to a close we’re excited to announce that Telairity has recently opened a Central Asia office in Tajikistan. This newest addition to our growing list of regional offices will help us better service the growing market for broadcast equipment in Central Asia by providing the latest and most cost-effective encoding and decoding technology, as the area shifts from traditional analog to digital television services.

As a global leader in the design and manufacture of high quality encoding systems, Telairity solutions are easily adapted to handle the rapidly changing mix of SD, HD, and mobile broadcasting typical of emerging markets, like Central Asia.  Equipped with our next generation video processor, Telairity gear also comes ready to handle the next generation of compression technology, adding years of useful life to any installation. To learn more about all Telairity products and services, visit our website. Our company is also active on Twitter and LinkedIn, where we post company updates and industry news on a regular basis.

Meet Telairity at Content and Communications World

Telairity is excited to announce that it will be exhibiting at Content and Communications World at New York City’s Javits Convention Center from November 12-13, 2014. The expo will bring exhibitors together with executives in the industry including content creators, managers and distributors. There will be over 300 exhibitors and over 7,000 attendees from across the country. In addition to the expo, the event will feature two full days of conference sessions which cover such topics as OTT and Rights Complexities, A Golden Age for VFX in NYC, Key Trends Driving Media Technology Investments, and more.

We encourage attendees to stop by our booth, #865, to learn more about our products and to view our new generation of H.264/AVC encoders which we will be debuting at CCW. The new systems are based on our latest Telairity Video Processor (TVP) generation, featuring six times the compression capability of our previous generation. This means our new systems will be far smaller, quieter, lower power, faster, and more versatile than any previous encoder—even ours. Of course, Telairity continues to be the only company dedicated to video compression that controls all its own technology, from the chip through the final system design. That means we remain the only company able to respond to your video compression needs on every level.

To learn more about our products, visit our website and be sure to follow us on Twitter while at CCW with the hashtag #CCWSATCON.

Wither HEVC Part 3

In our previous blog, we raised the problem of the relative rates of:

1. bitrate reduction, due to new generations of compression technology

vs.

2. bitrate proliferation, due to the introduction of higher-resolution broadcast standards

We can easily quantify this problem with a little simple math. Let’s start in 1994, with the introduction of MPEG-2, the original digital compression standard developed for broadcast technology. Let’s set 1994 MPEG-2 compression technology to 1 and, likewise, set 1994 720 x 480 SD resolution formats at 1. For present purposes, we can assume these two forces are roughly balanced: that is to say, MPEG-2 compression technology successfully reduces the bits generated by digital 720 x 480 SD formats to manageable levels for practical purposes of transmission and storage.

Given this 1 to 1 parity between SD formats and MPEG-2 compression, as long as SD formats continued to dominate TV broadcasting, there was no great practical urgency about developing better encoding technology. And, in fact, although better H.264/AVC (MPEG-4) compression technology became available as early as 2003, there was little interest among broadcasters in the new technology over the next several years – despite its ability to cut SD bitrates in half.

Widespread interest in better H.264/MPEG-4 compression technology only began to develop among broadcasters after 2007, when the replacement of 720 x 480 SD formats by 6X larger 1920 x 1080 HD formats first become common. But, while the flood of bits generated by HD formats made the inefficiency of older MPEG-2 compression patently obvious, even after broadcasters switched to next-generation H.264 compression, the bottom line was not a return to the old 1 to 1 (SD to MPEG-2) parity of 1994. Instead, with a 6X increase in bits due to new HD formats, balanced by a 2X reduction in bitrates from H.264 compression, the new HD to MPEG-4 parity level was reestablished at 3 to 1.

The industry now faces the prospect of a second transition to a new 2X better level of compression technology with H.265/HEVC (MPEG-5).  Although adoption of MPEG-5 for HD formats would practically restore the old 1994 parity level (1.5 to 1 vs 1 to 1), just as adoption of MPEG-4 technology waited on the spread of new, higher resolution HD picture formats, significant take-up of MPEG-5 compression is likely to wait on widespread adoption of the new 4X larger 3940 x 2160 4K picture format. With 4K formats, the bottom line will not be something closer to 1994 parity levels, but rather something substantially worse than current levels, with a 6 to 1 ratio of 4K bits to MPEG-5 compression capabilities.

Future developments seem more likely to continue this progressively worsening trend than to succeed in reversing or even slowing it. Projecting forward to a new 2X better level of compression technology with a future H.266/MPEG-6 step, this advance in bitrate reduction seems certain to be more than offset by a yet another 4X larger resolution step: the 7880 x 4320 8K picture format.   In the 2020s, then, the bottom line is likely to be a 12 to 1 ratio of bits to compression capabilities, measured by 1994 standards.

Is this decade-by-decade slide in bit ratio, from 1 to 1 in the 1990s, to 3 to 1 in the 2000s, to 6 to 1 in the 2010s, to 12 to 1 in the 2020s, a worry? And if it is not something we should worry about, then why not? That will be the subject of our next blog.

Wither HVEC Continued: Adoption of New Encoding Technology

In the USA, the transition from MPEG-2 to H.264/AVC encoding was further encouraged by the 2009 official switchover from analog to digital television (DTV). Worldwide, however, the DTV switchover has yet to happen in many countries (e.g., Brazil, China, and Russia are not scheduled to switchover until 2018), and the final country on the current schedule (Cuba) will not join the DTV “revolution” until 2024. In pre-DTV countries, both SD television and MPEG-2 encoding technology retain strong holds.

If we apply this lesson about the adoption of new, 2X more powerful, but also more costly and less proven encoding technology to the new H.265/HEVC encoders that are now starting to appear commercially, following 2013 finalization of the new 3^rd generation MPEG encoding standard, it seems probable that any significant uptake by broadcasters of new H.265 systems will be slow to materialize. Just as inexpensive MPEG-2 technology remains in widespread use today for SD television, despite a 2X bitrate advantage for H.264/AVC technology, less expensive and better established H.264/AVC technology is likely to remain the popular choice for use with HD television, despite its 2X bitrate disadvantage compared to the latest H.265/HEVC encoders.

Judging by the historical lesson of the MPEG-2 to H.264/AVC transition, the driver for H.265/HEVC technology will not be any mere technical advantage in bitrate reduction over the decade-older H.264/AVC technology, but rather the widespread adoption of a new, higher-resolution TV format that multiplies picture data by a significant number. Fortunately for the new standard, higher resolution TV formats are already starting to appear.

Relatively inexpensive 4K UHDTV sets, featuring a 3840 x 2160 resolution that multiplies 1920 x 1080 HD formats by a factor of 4, are already available for purchase, with even larger 8K formats of  7680 x 4320, that multiply HD formats by an enormous factor of 16, waiting in the wings. When the spread of UHDTV sets to households reaches critical mass in another few years, followed by the transition to UHDTV programming over the next few years on the part of broadcasters, adoption of better encoding technology to cope with the rising tide of bits generated by UHDTV will become essential. But the transition to UHDTV will not be quick, let alone immediate. As a result, widespread use of H.265/HEVC is far more likely to occur towards the end of the current decade than near its middle.

Although the multiplication of video data due to the rise of 4K programming will make H.265/HEVC encoding technology essential before the end of the present decade, this latest encoding standard, able to halve the number of bits needed to generate a picture (compared to H.264/AVC technology), is obviously not sufficient in itself to cope with a 4X multiplication of bits. Even postulating another 50% reduction in bits from the introduction of still-to-be-developed H.266/MPEG-6 technology in 2023 will not help—assuming another 4X increase in bits during the 2020 decade from a move to 8K programming.

To the contrary, 21 years after the introduction of the first MPEG-2 standard for broadcast encoding, we appear to be locked into a losing race, where our best efforts to push encoding technology forward to new generations increasingly fall behind a growing flood of bits generated by the market’s appetite for higher and higher resolution pictures. We will consider this problem in our next blog.

To learn more about Telarity and our video compressors, visit our website. We are also active on Twitter and LinkedIn publishing company updates and industry news.

Wither HEVC?

The H.265/HEVC or MPEG-5 encoding standard (finalized in 2013) is the next generation of encoding technology after the H.264/AVC or MPEG-4 standard (finalized in 2003). Just as AVC stands for Advanced Video Coding, HEVC is an acronym for High Efficiency Video Coding. The 5^th generation number associated with the H.265 and MPEG-5 labels is somewhat misleading since, in fact, HEVC is only the third generation of MPEG digital compression technology developed for broadcast television. The initial MPEG-1 standard (finalized in 1991) was targeted to low-resolution video CD formats, while work on an MPEG-3 standard, intended to support HD TV formats, was abandoned after a year or so in favor of a relatively minor extension to the original broadcast TV standard, MPEG-2 (finalized in 1994).

Compared to other areas of high technology—e.g., semiconductors, where “Moore’s Law” predicts capabilities will double every 2 years—the decade-per-standard rate of advance for digital compression is surprisingly sedate. This relatively slow pace results from two major factors. One factor is a law of diminishing returns that governs all forms of compression: namely, every unit of reduction achieved makes it harder to achieve the next unit until, when some theoretical minimum is reached, infinite force must be applied to make any further gains.

The second factor is the fact that, practically speaking, adoption of a new, more efficient broadcast compression technology is tied to the adoption of a new, higher resolution broadcast standard. For example, the original MPEG-2 broadcast standard was designed to adequately support the transmission of SD video formats over available transmission pathways. Although next-generation H.264/AVC (MPEG-4) encoders were able to cut MPEG-2 bitrates in half with no loss of video quality, their appeal was nonetheless limited when they started to appear following completion of the 2003 standard. Older MPEG-2 encoders were still adequate for SD, and both more mature and less costly than the latest high-powered H.264/AVC encoders.

As a consequence, widespread adoption of H.264/AVC encoders had to wait on the spread of HDTV programming, which literally overwhelmed MPEG-2 technology by multiplying SD picture data by a factor of 6X. HDTV programming, in turn, naturally lagged behind the adoption of HDTV sets. Since HDTV sets did not reach critical mass in the USA until 2006 (when they finally passed 10% of the installed base and sales figures started climbing rapidly), broadcasters did not begin buying H.264 encoders in any significant numbers before 2008.

There is a lot to be said on this topic and we'll continue it more in our next post with information about adoption of H.256/AVC encoding. To learn more about Telarity and our video compressors, visit our website. We are also active on Twitter and LinkedIn publishing company updates and industry news.

Distribution vs. Contribution Encoding: Part 2

Continuing the discussion of source vs. contribution encoders we began last time, we indicated that, while encoding essentially involves discarding some of the pixels in an image, source encoders typically retain twice the number of pixels for each frame of video as a distribution encoder. In industry jargon, source encoders are said to operate in 4:2:2 mode while distribution encoders operate in 4:2:0 mode.

The other difference we mentioned between source and distribution encoders, besides the number of pixels retained in an encoded image, is the number of bits used to denote colors in a pixel, known as “8-bit” color, “10-bit” color, and so on.

As the name implies, 8-bit color uses 8 bits to denote each of the three primary colors used to compose pixels: 8 bits for red, 8 bits for green, and 8 bits for blue – 24-bits in total for each pixel, or enough bits to distinguish 256 distinct shades of each primary color. Since any shade of one color can be combined with any shade of each of the other two colors, the total number of possible colors with 8 bit encoding is 256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216 possible colors. Since, even under optimal viewing conditions, the human eye can distinguish fewer than 10 million colors, 8-bit color is more than adequate to reproduce every color we can possibly see. For this reason, 8-bit color (24-bit pixels) is also known as “true color”.

But that is on the viewing or distribution side. On the source or contribution side, just as it is often desirable to retain twice the number of pixels needed to accurately reconstruct an image, it is often desirable to have significantly higher color resolution than needed for viewing. By allowing 10 bits to denote each primary color, the number of primary shades quadruples, from 256 to 1024, providing a total pool of 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824 colors.

While having a billion colors available does nothing to enhance the viewing experience – the human eye is simply incapable of resolving the tiny differences between the hundred nearest shades in a billion color pallet – it can and does help on the source side, when video is edited. That is because many editing steps are “lossy”, which is to say, the edited images contain less information than the original images. By starting with a billion color pallet, however, the editing losses are generally imperceptible. Reducing a billion color pallet to millions of color does not degrade the viewing experience, since the hundreds of fine distinctions lost are imperceptible to the eye. Whereas reducing a 16 million color pallet to thousands of colors does result in a clearly perceptible loss of color fidelity.

The same argument holds for the desirability of starting the editing process with twice as many pixels as actually needed for viewing. Losing half the pixels from a 4:2:2 image does not result in any significant loss of image quality. Whereas losing half the pixels from a 4:2:0 image does noticeably degrade the image.

At Telairity we support both distribution and contribution encoders and all our designed and manufactured in the US. Visit our website to learn more.

Distribution vs. Contribution Encoding: Part 1

As television technology continues to improve, broadcasters want to ensure that viewers are getting a crisp, clear image. This is where special contribution encoders come into play, as distinct from the normal sort of distribution encoder, used to render images for end-user viewing.

The main difference between the two is how color, the essential attribute of a digital picture element or “pixel” is treated. There are two separate issues here. One issue is the number of bits used to denote the color of a pixel, generally referred to as “8-bit” color, “10-bit” color, and so on.

The other issue is the number of pixels that are retained in an encoded picture. The terminology used here is a bit more obscure. 4:4:4 encoding means that 4 out of every 4 (i.e., all) pixels are retained in the encoded image.  As a rule, encoders do not support this mode, since the essential function of an encoder is to reduce the number of pixels needed to reproduce an image. 4:2:2 means that 2 out of every 4 pixels are retained in the encoded image. As a rule, this mode is only supported by source encoders. Distribution encoders instead support 4:2:0 mode, in which only 1 pixel is retained out of every 4.

Perhaps surprisingly, retaining just a quarter of the pixels in an image is sufficient to allow the image to very accurately reconstructed during the decoding process; indeed, few people can detect any difference between a 4:4:4 image, a 4:2:2 image, and a 4:2:0 image. As a consequence, for purposes of viewing, the extra pixels retained in 4:4:4 and 4:2:0 can be regarded as simple overhead, better dispensed with in a distribution encoder, since the fewer the bits that need to be transmitted or stored, the lower the cost of digital video.

Source encoders, however, are not designed merely for viewing pictures, and so the rules for them are different than the rules for distribution encoders. In our next blog, we will consider this issue in more depth, along with the issue of “8-bit” vs. “10-bit” color.

Meet Telairity at the NAB Show

This week we’ll be exhibiting at the NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center and showcasing our new line of products. The NAB Show is the world’s largest electronic media show with over 93,000 attendees and over 1,550 exhibitors, covering everything from filmed entertainment as well as the development, management and delivery of content. In addition to the exhibits, the show offers an array of sessions, including workshops, speakers, and conference series.

Telairity will be located at booth SU11306 where we’ll be featuring our video processing solutions for the broadcasting, backhaul, mobile, government, and related markets. We offer a full range of H.264/AVC encoding solutions, the newest built on the next generation of our exclusive TVP video processor and direct-execution AVClairity compression software. We’ll also debut a new “Pegasus” product line of portable encoders at the show, so be sure to stop by our booth to catch up on all the latest developments.

For additional information about Telairity, visit our website and be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates on all the latest media industry news.

The Evolution of News Gathering: ENG, SNG, and Digital Broadcasting

When you turn on the TV to catch the local news, it’s easy to overlook all of the steps required to get the picture you’re seeing from the news truck to your TV.  These include initial video/audio capture, signal encoding, and transmission back to the station, decoding, editing, re-encoding and re-transmission to your set. Within the industry, this process is known as ENG or Electronic News Gathering (an industry term for the use of video technology to allow live reporting from remote field locations).

Closely associated with ENG is SNG (Satellite News Gathering). Whereas ENG typically relies on local microwave links to transmit audio/video data from regional field locations back to the studio, SNG makes use of satellite links to distribute data to distant locations. Between them, ENG and SNG allow local TV stations to provide live coverage of news events anywhere in the world.

Just as magnetic tape technologies replaced older film technologies in ENG news reporting, ENG no longer captures video data in analog form on magnetic tapes but in digital form as arrays of pixels. These can be compressed for file storage and transmission and decompressed for editing and viewing. While digital technology has many advantages over its analog predecessor, including the elimination of ghosting, snow, and other types of signal interference, the most significant difference is simple economics. Because digital data can be highly compressed, it is possible to transmit better pictures and sound using less bandwidth, and to store images and sound more compactly. The bottom line here is lower costs and higher quality – a double win that quickly made digital technology ubiquitous in the TV industry after its introduction in the late 1990s.

But the digital revolution that began in the last decade of the 20^th century is far from over in the second decade of the 21^st century. The drive to reduce costs and improve quality continues today with, if anything, increased urgency as traditional broadcasters compete with an ever-broadening range of audio/video services available to consumers on smart phones, tablets, notebooks, and other screens connected to a wide variety of wireless and wired networks. For example, many broadcasters are now aggressively moving to adopt inexpensive, universally available Ethernet technology for signal transmission over IP (Internet Protocol), replacing older dedicated broadcast network standards like SDI (Serial Digital Interface) and ASI (Asynchronous Serial Interface).

Telairity gear has been designed from the beginning to help broadcasters stay competitive by providing the industry’s most cost-effective equipment for digital video compression, transmission, transcoding and de-compression. From the beginning, Telairity encoders have provided not merely traditional SDI and ASI interfaces but also Ethernet outputs as standard features, so broadcasters could move to adopt IP technology whenever ready without either the expense or the disruption of replacing or upgrading existing equipment.  Most recently, in 2013, we added a built-in modulator to our ENG line of encoders, eliminating the need for a separate piece of gear to generate radio frequency signals for transmission over a microwave or satellite link – an integration that not only reduces costs for our customers but also saves space in a crowded ENG or SNG truck.

In 2014, there will be lots more improvements in Telairity gear designed to help broadcasters reduce costs and improve quality, ranging from incorporation of new compression standards like HEVC to new, portable form factors that reduce cost and lower power consumption. Be sure to check back for more discussion of industry trends, and hear about our latest insights and solutions.