Technology > in focus Digital TV Europe April/May 2015 In Brief V-Nova promises ‘video at audio bit-rates’ Al Jazeera and Skyline Video technology start-up V-Nova, which has been operat- ing in stealth mode for the last five years, has unveiled a new compression technology that it claims will revolutionise video distribution by permitting the delivery of UHD quality at current HD bitrates, HD at SD bitrates, and SD video at audio bitrates. V-Nova says its Perseus tech- nology can provide compression in the order of a factor of two or three over existing MPEG tech- nologies, including HEVC, H.264 and – for contribution applications – JPEG2000. The technology has been developed and tested over the past five years within an Open Innovation consortium of over 20 companies and organisations, in- cluding Broadcom, the European Broadcasting Union, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Intel and Sky. “This is a new way to compress video. The benefits are clear, it shifts the entire bitrate-quality curve…and it means we can offer UHD quality at HD bitrates,” said Eric Achtmann, executive chair- man of the London-based outfit. Achtmann said the technology would enable the deployment of mass-market video services in emerging markets by enabling the distribution of video over 4G, Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera has partnered with Skyline Communications in a network management deal that will see it use Skyline’s DataMiner platform. Al Jazeera will use DataMiner as the network management and OSS platform for its new global media cloud network, allowing it to transport media and data across more than 80 offices worldwide. FTTH and DOCSIS gains The global broadband consumer premises market was worth US$10.5 billion (€9.9 billion) last year, up 9% on the 2013 figure, according to Infonetics Research. According to IHS- owned Infonetics Research’s PON, FTTH, Cable, DSL and Wireless Broadband CPE report, the figures were boosted by growth in the FTTH segment, up 18%, with DOCSIS 3.0 equipment sales growing by 3%. The group said that growth had been seen from GPON and DOCSIS 3.0 sales in North America, GPON sales in China, Europe and Latin America, and VDSL sales in Europe. There was some sign of growth tailing off towards the end of the year, with fourth-quarter revenue from broadband CPE coming in at US$2.7 billion, flat quarter-on-quarter. Infonetics Research predicts that DSL will take a smaller share of sales as telcos migrate to FTTH or, in some cases, forego fixed infrastructure altogether in favour of LTE. Top broadband CPE vendors in terms of market share were Huawei with 17%, ZTE and Arris with 11% each, Alcatel-Lucent with 7% and Technicolor with 7%. 34 Achtmann (left) and Meardi outlined Perseus’s benefits at a launch event in March. 3G or even 2G networks, with standard definition video distrib- uted at sub-audio bitrates. “For the one third of the world that still has insufficient bandwidth for video…[this] means that if you can receive a call you have the ability to receive video,” he said. V-Nova claims to use standard off-the-shelf hardware and says its technology can be overlaid on MPEG, meaning that existing video distribution players can use it to provide services. Guido Meardi, CEO and founder of V-Nova said that V-Nova had stepped outside the framework of MPEG compression to use hier- archical compression techniques and “massive parallelism”. V-Nova has high-profile backers and the company has been working with Sky Italia on using its technology, initially for contribu- tion applications. Sky Italia’s head of engineeing and innovation Mas- simo Bertolotti was on hand at the V-Nova launch event to provide details of what the company has been working on. “Contribution was the perfect ecosystem where a new technology can be tested,” he said. Sky previously used JPEG2000 for contribution but is switching to Perseus, with a target date of June for the transition. V-Nova demonstrated con- tribution output at 300Mbps at the event, compared with 1Gbps for JPEG2000, based on a live uncompressed 12Gbps feed. It also showed the same live feed in UHD at 8Mbps compared with a 21-27Mbps HEVC feed. Another demo showed UHD recorded content at 8Mbps, compared with a HEVC feed at 21Mbps. V-Nova believes that the step- change in compression it offers will be compelling to broadcasters and video service providers. “We have seen lots of incre- mental changes in codecs,” said Achtmann. “The fundamentals have not really changed. Where the incremental benefits are 10-20%, the business case [for change] is hard to justify. When you show a five times improve- ment, this is no longer incremen- tal change but a paradigm shift.” Akamai buys cloud TV specialist Octoshape Akamai has bought cloud OTT and IPTV service provider Octoshape, in a move that gives Akamai access to streaming video optimisation technology. Octoshape’s services are designed to optimise the quality of video streams for over-the- top (OTT) content and to enable internet protocol television (IPTV) solutions. “With the addition of Octos- hape, Akamai intends to provide customers with the most com- prehensive suite of video delivery and optimisation technologies,” said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton. “We believe this acquisition will bolster our strategy to further the deployment of Akamai software into devices, carrier networks, enterprises, and homes, and to fulfil the promise of an internet that is fast, reliable and secure on any device, anywhere. As more video gets consumed over the internet, and on devices that can display higher-quality resolution, it is important for us to develop new ways to acquire, transform and distribute the highest-quality media for broadcast-size audienc- es. We are working to continue to extend our platform to accommo- date video throughput increases that come from the adoption of 4K, and to support a potential 100-1000X increase in network traffic in the future.” Visit us at www.digitaltveurope.net