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According to Media and Entertainment (M&E) research practices such as Frost and Sullivan, Gartner, Optimization Week, etc., broadband U.S. penetration is hovering near 73%. But take a look at what is happening on an international basis: the U.S. ranks almost 20th in broadband penetration. The worldwide movement for being connected is progressing rapidly. According to Point Topic, “South Korea still leads all countries with 83% broadband penetration, followed by Hong Kong with 80.98%, Iceland at 74%, Israel at 69.08%, and Taiwan at 64.65% penetration.”
IPTV: Extending the Consumption Model
It has been long debated as to whether IPTV_delivered programming is complementary and additive or cannibalistic of the existing audience that receives programming through traditional (terrestrial, cable, satellite) television consumption. Will it dilute the existing audience? Will it expand the audience? Initial returns on IPTV_related offerings for traditional content clearly indicate this: it depends. Clearly, within the category of News, it should now be fairly apparent given everything known about decreasing newspaper readership that people are looking elsewhere for “their news”. According to a December 2007 Gallup poll, 22% of the US audience seeks out “News on the Internet”.
If the focus is shifted from News to IPTV_delivered programming such as network_originated television shows, most television executives publicly report that the results are additive and complementary. Among affecting factors: an audience loyal enough to the show who seeks out additional broadbanddelivered content which is not duplicative and, therefore, of value and interest to that audience. Also, the promise of content created specifically for IPTV delivery can be a key deciding factor in building and maintaining a complementary and, hopefully, growing audience. Again, what does the research indicate? According to research firm Gartner, the number of worldwide IPTV subscribers will grow to almost 49 million by 2010. Further, Gartner estimates worldwide IPTV_related revenue from 2006 to 2010 to grow from $872M to $13.2B. Clearly, the opportunity is there.
IPTV and the Digital Media Supply Chain
Moving content from raw form to finished form and delivering it to cable head_ends and Telco providers has its own unique set of challenges. How does content flow from the person or companies who are producing and post_producing the content to the companies that are hosting the content for consumption? IPTV content must be transformed in some fashion, such as various bit rates, resolutions, aspect ratios, file formats, etc. And, ultimately, all of this content movement must be tracked for eventual billing, rights management, and monetization. IPTV represents yet another media supply chain that must be addressed and fulfilled. These challenges are formidable.
IPTV Challenges
Software solutions are necessary that facilitate moving digital assets from their raw form through a series of coordinated production processes to deliver digital assets to all required distribution channels (Figure 1). Each aspect of this supply chain can involve numerous sub_processes that take the form of workflows.
Four Aspects to Servicing the IPTV Supply Chain
To fulfill the IPTV supply chain, content must be moved, formatted, protected, and tracked. These generic areas can be more specifically defined as: the central management of the movement of content, content security, network bandwidth manipulation to ensure that service level agreement (SLA) delivery of content is realized, and the automated workflow of processes that transform and package content. Let’s examine each of these four areas. First, content must be aggregated from source locations. In many cases, this may equate to moving a finished file which represents a finished program. The program is complete and requires no additional work, formatting, etc. This file must then be moved from source location to a target location. The target location will typically be a cable head_end, a Telco, or a CDN (content delivery network).
On the surface, this scenario seems fairly straightforward. But, let’s examine this simple point_to_point content movement a bit more closely. When we do, questions arise. For example, who exactly determines when the content should move? Over which network? Using how much of the network? Who determines what firewall ports will be opened from the contributing organization and the receiving organization? What are the notification methods for the sender and the receiver? And exactly what happens when the amount of companies submitting content do not number one, but number 200? And what happens when the distribution venues do not number one, but number 400?
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