NZVN September 2014

SEPTEMBER 2014

Vol 206

Media Technology Pacific Conference – Auckland, July 2014

The Panel: Sam Irvine (Freeview), Trevor Bird (Seven West Media), Paul Spain (NZ Tech Podcast), Khush Kundi (Ericsson) and Gerry Smith at the podium.

I must say right at the start that I was more than a bit sceptical that this conference was going to be centred around industry insiders telling each other what they already knew and that it would reveal nothing that was of moment or interest to our readership in the production and post production industry in New Zealand. Well, I was very wrong and I hope that I do some justice to the important information presented to the conference by my coverage here.

hand, there were ideas put forward that offered clear insights into what might lie in our media future. The value in having it all presented together was that common threads emerged and fanciful projections became obvious in their isolation. I have witnessed drama in media conferences verging on name calling but, in this instance, although there were differing views offered, there was a great sense of co-operation and understanding expressed at all times.

The content was varied and included some that was so technical that I let it wash over me but, on the other

Right, that's enough introduction, now for the reporting – and I beg your indulgence as I attempt one of my seldom

efforts at real mainstream journalism ( or as close as I'll ever get! ) Yes, I'm not giving you two days of transcription – just my take on the highlights but with a couple of interviews so you don't get the false hope that I have changed my style.

Lastly, my apologies in advance if I got my notes wrong – check for yourself – I'm still learning. Ed. Gerry Smith, the conference host, introduced the conference by saying that this is New Zealand’s first media conference for many years.

It’s an exciting industry, one that’s facing change and there is a need to adapt and grow beyond mainstream “free to air” television. The conference is themed around this changing broadcast world and has a range of presenters giving us their insights into the media world of the future.

I counted over 100 attendees at the 2 day event with the first presenter the Minister of Broadcasting, the Honourable Craig Foss.

He began by talking about the opportunity that the digital era in New Zealand offers. He said that he was more the Minister of Distribution of Content than of Broadcasting, because “broadcasting” was an old term.

Nowadays, with the range of offers out there, it really is all about means of distributing content. The changes that are happening in the industry are going to happen regardless of what the government will do.

The NZBC and the structures that were put in place and the rules that were put in place by the government in those days are long, long gone.

He stated that the industry is only going to get smarter and the public now obviously have more choice. They have the choice to change channels, to go online, or turn the television off.

He spoke quite a bit about the changeover from analogue to digital and how there was immense cooperation within the broadcasting sector group; the communication to the public was such that 99% knew that the changeover was going to happen, 98% switched in time and, for some of those who didn’t, quite a few of

those might not have bothered because they were accessing material online. He then went on to talk about content providers having more challenges; that New Zealand is above the average in terms of broadband rollout and we are within the top 10 countries in the OECD in terms of wireless coverage. He stated that his obligation is to make it possible that New Zealanders can access the new forms of distribution.

One of the issues the government will face is online funding issues, because he’s also the Minister for New Zealand On Air. There are issues of quality and censorship that, in the online world, are quite different from broadcasting. He stated that the government has provided a budget to transfer about half a million hours of TVNZ material to the Film Archives, so we are preserving our television history unconnected to TVNZ. He finished off by saying that there are lots of new challenges and opportunities and they’re all in front of us in our industry.

Go www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news.

P24 Dunedin Heritage.

P29 You can Now visit Protel in Auckland.

P31 Lightbox by Spark launched.

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The first industry speaker was the Spark Ventures representative, Mike McMahon, talking about Lightbox.

He began with some general comments about VOD ( video on demand ) as opposed to linear material providers – that there are many opportunities for broadband providers to get into the space and still have News, Weather, etc. In terms of Lightbox, the Spark offer is such that it is ISP agnostic, so you don’t have to be a Spark customer to sign up to Lightbox. In structuring any ISP offer, the monetisation is a major issue.

Another big issue is what infrastructure is necessary. He did have some kind words to say for normal television, that the killer app on TV is TV itself, and he came to this conclusion after a whole lot of VOD trials of red buttons and other variables, that people do just like to sit down in front of a TV and blob out. It is about entertainment; the entertaining "me" is not quite as challenging as entertaining "us" – a group. This is much easier with linear.

When you talk about entertaining "them", you’re talking about entertaining children, so the ideal presentation is one that can entertain "me, us and them."

Next to speak was Paul Spain from Gorilla Technology and NZ Tech Podcast.

I retreated to my interviewing comfort zone and nabbed him after his presentation.

Ed: Paul, I’ve got a couple of questions for you. The first one – you made the comment “there is a growing segment for which current TV is dead.

There’s not a lot of opportunity to monetise through vehicles such as YouTube.”

So what’s the future, how can they get the money to pay for this method of delivery?

Paul: Well I think that there’s going to be some reduction probably in terms of income through traditional types of channels, so I think that was why I talked a little bit about some of what has gone on in the music industry. Really the bottom has fallen out of some parts of that in terms of where the revenue is.

What they’ve had to do in that area is recognise that now the monetisation actually doesn’t come from the music product; it comes from live shows and merchandise and other things. Obviously, it's quite different in a broadcast and a VOD space and I think that with some of these "over the top" services there will be a push to more fresh local content that people will pay for in some way. There will always be some audiences that just won’t pay anything, and they’ll get whatever they can get for free and they’ll work out whatever they can do to avoid the ads and anything that generates any monetisation. I think that’s just the world that we’re in now – it’s a digital world, there will be that segment that you can earn very little from.

Ed: So the iTunes model, where you pay per download, that doesn’t seem to be the way the providers are going for the video content?

TV can be personalised by delivery to personal tablets.

The problem with the incumbents in any of these broadcast situations is the legacy infrastructure.

There’s a lot of legacy capital involved which will hold back their development.

In preparing to launch Lightbox, the major criterion was that content was king.

It was really important to have a high quality catalogue; the interface had to be clean and simple and to the point, and had to cater to the whole family with its ease of use. In terms of a payment model, they decided that subscription was the most natural to consumers. He made a comparison between iTunes and Spotify in the music world, in that iTunes, on a pay per download basis, is losing ground to Spotify, where you pay one fee and you get as much music as you want. The challenge that he put to the Lightbox development crew was "can we make it two clicks to entertainment?" The architectural philosophy they looked at was that it had to be Cloud based, and this was for operational simplicity. It had to be modular; an end to end solution is a myth, you need the ability to evolve. Efficiency had to be such that the content was automated, that it was device independent.

Go to www.sparkventures.co.nz

Paul: No, in fact it’s drying up for iTunes as well. So, Apple have seen that, where they had a window of time where they’ve been earning some reasonable money and artists have been earning good money on that … that’s drying up now as we move to the equivalent of the subscription video on demand, so in the music space that’s the Spotify type services and Pandora and so on. Those are really taking over and with those they really deliver back to the content creator, the musicians in that case, sort of "pocket change" for their work. So it’s not particularly good from a business perspective.

Ed: And it’s not particularly good for keeping these people doing what they’re doing, going forward?

Paul: No – I was at an event a few weeks ago and was hearing from some people in the area of filmmaking and they were talking about a "race to the bottom" in that area as well. We’re almost at the stage of becoming something like your local amateur theatre where there’s segments of the film industry operating on the smell of an oily rag and the people who are participating are doing it because they’re passionate about it, not because they can make a living from it.

Ed: Wow, and I guess the last question here – you say that people are going to choose the content that they want to watch. Now this sort of brings me back to when broadcasters had a responsibility in the old days; that it was a government run channel and they had social responsibility. There was a balance between entertainment, sport and education. It seems to be that this particular Internet model means that people can just choose pure entertainment?

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Paul: Yes, I think you had the broadcaster there being the gatekeeper that had that very important role to fulfil in creating that sort of balance and making sure that there was a fair variety of things that were available to the audience. But now, as long as the content suits someone, then it’s going to be available in some form digitally – where it’s a small podcast aimed at a niche audience, and I’ve come across people who will produce a bit of niche content for maybe under 100 people, up to obviously big broadcast content that’s seen by millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and people will now choose what they want.

Ed: But there you’re talking about people who can make intelligent choices. It’s sad to say that there’s a mass out there who don’t make intelligent choices – just choose continuing episodes of The Kardashians?

Paul: Absolutely, and I guess that’s a sad state of affairs for where we’re heading potentially in terms of News delivery and so on, is that it becomes personalised and if someone’s got extreme views, in the future, they can pick and personalise “this is what I want” and they get a personalised delivery of the TV News which just shows them what’s of interest to them.

They potentially become more extreme individuals because of what they consume, and we already see that today to a fair degree, because there is so much content that can be consumed from so many different sources.

Ed: Even the Chinese Government regulating what their people see?

has

trouble

Paul: Yes, I think those days of being able to control what people see – good, bad or otherwise – are virtually gone.

Go to www.gorillatechnology.com Julia Allen from HWW Australia spoke about why metadata matters.

As television content providers, your job is to help people make an informed choice as to what content they watch, so you have to get the metadata right. Good metadata enhances the customer’s experience and this is done by better data display and ease of access, allowing customers better choices. Now I didn’t record a lot of what Julia Allen said, because it was about metadata and getting your metadata right, but it was certainly something that the broadcasters and net providers there took a lot of interest in. This was emphasised by some later comments that Julia’s company, HWW, did a fantastic job in cleaning up and repurposing metadata from overseas productions for their particular station … that you have a station, you have a certain look, but you’re getting content from a whole lot of different providers.

They will provide

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metadata but it won’t be in the same look. So basically, you have to take that metadata, strip out the material that has come with it and repurpose it to the look of your particular station, and HWW seem to do that particularly well.

Go to www.hww.com.au Paul Sheridan from Optus Satellite explained that Optus has been around in New Zealand for quite some time, providing primarily broadcast services for Sky NZ and Freeview via Kordia and now expanding into two way broadband services with Wireless Nation. Delivery by satellite is, and will continue to be, more cost effective to rural and remote areas than terrestrial delivery, as it enables 100% coverage.

They are looking at launching a new Optus satellite, Optus 10 – it is coming soon and will provide additional capacity and resilience to the existing fleet of five satellites. Other developments in the satellite industry include more efficient coding with the H.265 MPEG encoding and DVB-S2X modulation scheme, which should allow 4K or even 8K material to be delivered by satellite.

see any sort of flick in the picture, or loss of picture as satellites change. He explained that this technology would probably be more of a commercial solution rather than a consumer one.

The future challenges for Optus? With the delivery to the satellite, it makes sense to uplink once and have a good geographical spread in your satellites. He believes that linear television is still viable in the future, because it’s controllable, you can put high quality signals through broadcast television, whereas your next generation online material is virtually uncontrollable as it’s the viewer’s decision, where, when and on which device they view it. He sees potential with the hybrid networks, such as HbbTV. They can be very intelligent

Another interesting development with satellite manufacture, a little bit off the track but still something of interest, is electrical propulsion which is used instead of big rockets putting them up into geosynchronous orbit. The rocket is going to get them to a certain height and then using this much slower electron propulsion, will push them up into the orbit where they need to be and will keep them there. He explained it was a little bit like the electron beam in an old cathode ray tube, but you take away the screen and just a steady little beam of electrons will push a satellite very slowly where they want it to go. The new Optus-10 satellite will have electric propulsion for station keeping, allowing Optus to gain experience.

Also on the satellites, there is potential for lower earth orbit satellites; you get much less latency with your transmission, but you have to have quite a number of them because they move out of range and you have to switch to another one, and that’s quite a technology challenge in itself, because the viewer doesn’t want to Page 8

and he sees, of course, that the future of the industry is in co-operation with satellite providers, such as Optus.

Go to www.optus.com.au Trevor Bird from Seven West Media in Australia gave, probably to my mind, the best presentation of the lot.

Trevor announced that he’s an old time broadcaster and that Seven Network is in that ilk. They make more content than any other broadcaster in Australia and that is a very important ingredient to their success.

He made the comment that the apps section of TV receivers does not carry all TV broadcasters content and is dependant on broadcasters and manufacturers negotiating a deal so not all TVs carry all broadcasters’ content.

This fragmentation by manufacturers can cause customer upset as not all content is available if the deal stops, and the content they used to see is no longer available. The answer is that broadcasters have to provide a standards based approach to this broadband content delivery and play the game at a higher level than net providers to deliver a broadcast like service over broadband links. The difficulty there comes of course when you have the hybrid system which Seven

West Media is trialling, where viewers can move seamlessly from broadcast delivery to broadband delivery and consequently have much greater content choice. You turn on your television and you have a choice of broadcast channels or broadband channels or VOD services. In this case, the customer might not accept a lower quality from the internet delivered material than they get from the broadcast service. The challenge in the industry is for seamless integration with free to air broadcast TV and the Internet. Both have to be easily useable and the transition between them has to be seamless.

HbbTV is a European hybrid standard and Seven West Media is giving the viewers a choice of broadcast

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see catch-up content from all broadcasters, in one location, by simply pressing the green button on the remote control.

Basically your TV display allows an internet browser to overlay content over normal broadcast TV. One comment Trevor did make which got a lot of laughs, was about shopping channels when he said "shopping channels are a waste of spectrum space, so they are not mentioned in any of the slides that I am showing today."

television or they can link to an Internet stream by allocating a logical channel number to the URL of the streaming service. This gives the opportunity to offer content to a more niche market than could be serviced by broadcast technology.

An example relating to sports broadcasting could allow multiple courts of a tennis tournament to be streamed so tennis fans could see preliminary rounds or matches that would not normally be available to a free to air audience.

Catch-up television is also available allowing viewers to see programs they may have missed by simply accessing that content through the broadband service.

Freeview-plus is the industry service allowing viewers to

One of the ways the Australian consumer is ahead of us in New Zealand is that every television set sold in Australia from now on has HbbTV in it, whether anyone uses it or not. There is a potential in New Zealand for a dongle type situation where we can have an external box or plugin that will allow this, but our TV sets don’t currently have the ability to take hybrid TV. The big question that Trevor posed was the potential bill shock to Seven West Media if the consumer decides that Internet is the way they want to view TV, because they are charged on a pay per viewer basis by the content delivery network vendor. The normal broadcast model is a fixed cost distribution model as the cost of transmission does not change depending upon how many people are watching. The opposite is true for internet delivery.

This means the content must be monetised at a rate higher than the cost of delivery if the model is to present a reasonable business model for the future.

Go to www.sevenwestmedia.com.au

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Angus Swainson G.M Media for MetService and MetraWeather told us how the Meteorological Service of New Zealand (“MetService”) has gone global in the form of MetraWeather.

They are selling their class-leading Weatherscape weather presentation software and expertise all around the world and customers include the BBC, TG4 and Aura in Europe, TVB in Hong Kong, Channel 5 in the Philippines, Channel 3 in Thailand, and Channels 7, 9 and 10 in Australia. Angus started off by saying that the barriers to having weather as part of your broadcast service have come down. The recently launched MetraWeather ClipStore portal enables News producers, programme makers and editors globally to review, purchase and download highquality, location-specific weather clips for any service from as little as $20 per clip. As a broadcaster itself with a well-equipped studio MetService is producing up to fifteen shows daily for MetService TV and regional channels including Maori Television.

Access to international data sources and local weather observations is now enabling MetService to create fullypresented weather shows for broadcasters anywhere in the world. Clips are updated depending on client’s requests and you can order clips to suit your particular needs, or you can take generic clips. One of the key messages that Angus gave was that having an experienced MetService Meteorologist as the presenter adds tremendous value to any weather presentation, because they can interpret the weather data so that the viewers can understand what they’re talking about. In other words, put the technical weather information into layman’s terms.

manufacturers so that Freeview is built in and TV will continue to be a "lean back" experience. He stated that high value content is required for free to air television, but individual broadcasters might offer "value added" extensions. It is possible of course, to provide free material via the Internet at the moment, but the quality that the users prefer to experience is currently better serviced by distribution through satellite or terrestrial.

He was the first to talk about the social component to the television experience … people are gathering to watch and the content has a chance to present society’s values. He stated that there is quite a high degree of inertia with television viewers that tends to support the current model.

In other words, people don’t like change. However, we must continue being free to view and to improve or eventually we’ll be rolled over. He then went on to talk about the difference between Freeview in New Zealand and Freeview in Australia. He said that, in New Zealand, we had a burning platform to contend with. Sky Television thought they’d be in every house when New Zealand went digital, but that was the incentive for the broadcasters in New Zealand to come together and say " we’re going to do something about it" – and they did, so Freeview is continuing to be a major way New Zealanders watch television ( 62% of New Zealand homes use at least one Freeview device for their TV viewing.)

Go to www.freeviewnz.tv Aaron Oliphert from Kordia discussed how the merging of broadcast platforms and the Internet presents opportunities for a wide variety of content providers to reach new audiences.

Through hybrid TV solutions that Kordia has been demonstrating and plans to launch this time next year, content providers will have access to the big screen experience in consumers’ living rooms.

Go to www.metservice.com Sam Irvine, the general manager of Freeview New Zealand gave us the statistic that, in New Zealand, users of linear TV are 97% currently.

Even in the UK where they’ve had more offers for longer, linear TV still takes up 94% of the market. A comment has been made from a UK source that their view on linear TV is that it means you’re part of the nation – in other words you’re watching the same thing that everybody else is watching and it’s a way of bringing people together.

The USA is quite different, because a lot of content, including linear broadcast, is paid for; you don’t get much free stuff in the States. Further statistics he stated were that 75% of people in New Zealand will have ultrafast broadband by 2020. He sees this as an opportunity for Freeview. The nature of content is the value the viewers want. He stated that we’ve had no broadcasting regulations in New Zealand for 20 years, so where does Freeview fit into New Zealand?

Sam said that Freeview was not tied to any particular infrastructure provider, so a Telco Internet provider could also be a distribution network for VOD and streaming content over IP. They do work with TV

Kordia is the premier provider of content distribution services in New Zealand including itinerant events, media distribution from production to studio and digital broadcast transmission. Kordia also operates the third largest telecommunications network by reach in New Zealand and has been the driving force in assisting content providers onto the Freeview platform.

Go to www.kordia.co.nz

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more on page 15

Brian McCausland Brian McCausland passed away on 15 July 2014 after a short battle with cancer.

Brian was a stringer for TVNZ for 30 years and a keen fisherman.

He is survived by his wife April, and son Grant.

Brian will be sadly missed by his colleagues from TVNZ and the wider Broadcast family with whom he shared his time and experience.

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and 15 billion of those will be able to connect or distribute video. This could work out to be 35 connected devices per person, which probably does seem rather a lot.

But here he was talking about things like washing machines and toasters even, which will be connected devices within your home.

He stated that, in the broadband market, IP is fuelling the device race.

He said that the mobile is going to be the biggest game changer in this industry and then stated that how we use this content is going to be a different experience.

Then he posed the question "is the mobile going to be the ultimate set top box?" In other words, do you actually have to have a box in your media centre where your media is recorded or stored or whatever … is this going to be replaced by your mobile phone providing all of these services?

His comment about collecting data from all of this, is that the data that’s generated by how consumers use devices can be accessed to improve the experience for the consumer.

Go to www.ericsson.com

Mobile broadband growth will increase faster than fixed line broadband.

There’s going to be more cross-media consumption; that extends the game watch time, allows discussion, allows betting, playing games – all sorts of things with your media delivery device.

Matt Moran from the Platform, a subsidiary of Comcast, said that their means of doing business is that they deliver content to new platforms. Matt started talking about the trends and one is that video capable devices will outnumber the world population by 2017.

The advantage of presenting digital only ads online is measureable and it’s trackable and when online content is the same as the broadcast content, ads can be swapped out. So you can target ads for people who are viewing digitally through handheld devices for example.

People have expectations of premium quality video when consumers are viewing online, and one of the ways of doing this is to provide rich metadata; another is to provide personalisation with recommendation engines.

So rather than a personal recommendation, the software knows by the sort of programmes that you’re watching, the sort of things that you might be interested in. He thought that satellites and QAM ( which stands for Quadrature Amplitude Modulation which is used in cable networks ) were outdated because both are difficult and expensive to upgrade. If you deliver online, you can roll out new features much more quickly. Perhaps the best way to go, however, is a Cloud based hybrid architecture; with a new user interface design, mobile apps will be implemented much, much faster. One way of extending the content value of broadcast and catchup programmes is with additional content windows when you deliver over the Internet. Talking about older programming, early episodes of a popular current series can be monetised by pay per view or premium subscription.

He concluded by talking about "the elephant in the room" with any of this online delivery – DRM or digital rights management and this is a reason that it’s unlikely that we will see set top box type recording on mobile devices in our future.

Go to www.theplatform.com

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Eugene Razbash is the managing director of CombiTel who are IPTV experts.

Eugene started off by saying that recording TV programmes is not as simple as it sounds. The standard use is with set top boxes, such as Sky. If you go to the Cloud, a PayTV operator may provide ( or subsidise ) a low-cost set-top box or no device at all ( i.e end users may watch on their own tablets, phones, smart TVs, PCs, etc.)

It gives greater flexibility, software designed, lots of storage. While US-based and Australian Cloud services “experienced legal challenges”, there may be future options for time shifting recording in the Cloud in New Zealand; they have done it in Canada and there are 7,000 subscribers in Ontario alone. Personal video recorders can fast forward and rewind; the Cloud based material can’t.

You have to use repositioning and any of you who have played a YouTube clip for example, where you have to go on a slider and put the cursor on a particular position and it will play from that, that’s what they mean by “repositioning.” It’s not quite so easy just to go back to see something you missed and you can’t pause successfully exactly where you want.

There are various new technology paradigms; there’s the possibility of increased virtualisation in the Cloud; also software, you can improve your media ( increase resolution and/or reduce bandwidth and storage consumption ) by using the H.265/HEVC codec and thirdly, increased use of open source software.

In summary, Eugene talked about PVR ( personal video recorder ) manufacturers facing competition from the Cloud, so they must increase the value that they put into their recorders. PVRs are now becoming “home gateways” with new features such as home security.

On the other hand, HbbTV may be all that consumers want.

HbbTV’s catch-up TV functionality, which is usually implemented by broadcasters themselves, may serve as a PVR replacement for many consumers, who may not want to bother setting up their recordings at home.

Cloud based recording is not an obvious trend in our market because of all the legal issues around content rights. Finally Eugene said that services must have a recording capability ( either device-based or cloudbased ) to time shift, or they may fail.

Go to www.combitel.com.au Bruce Hume from Switch Media presented a case study on Foxtel Go, covering the “TV anywhere” strategy which is when subscription TV providers deliver content via the Internet rather than a conditional access network.

This is almost always as a companion app – not to be confused with Netflix. Austar, acquired by Foxtel in 2011 lead the way in Australia in TV Anywhere; they chose Adobe Flash to securely deliver content, both streaming and as download.

The London Olympics app in July 2012 was built and delivered by Switch Media; this was seen by many globally as the tipping point for TV Anywhere.

Following this success, in November 2012, Foxtel launched “Go” on the iPad and in March of 2013 they launched “Go” on the iPhone. For users, front of their minds is the data cap that they’re faced with and when you’re talking about 678 Megabyte per 45 minutes as the normal average, that’s quite a bit, and users need a very large cap. Bruce went on to say that everything was delivered as a linear stream and downloads might be possible in the future. With the integration to users of Foxtel PVR, one can control recording at home.

Go to www.switch.tv

Page 16

Mark Blair from Brightcove talked about using the Cloud to deliver a monetised high quality video content to many platforms.

MPEG-DASH has the potential to emerge as a common video technique across most vendors bar Apple who will likely remain focused on HLS.



Online video raising the broadcast expectations.



Broadcast level transcoding moving to the cloud.

standard

to

meet

Go to www.brightcove.com Matt Kossatz, the vice president of Accedo said that television has already changed; device fragmentation will continue to drive the evolution.

The DASH format along with CENC ( Common Encryption ) is getting pulled into a broader W3C initiative for DRM protection for content in browsers using the Encrypted Media Extension framework, an HTML5 standard.

A key benefit of the CENC approach is a single encrypted asset but with the ability to support multiple license key management providers. His key comment was that hybrid broadcast is going to be the catalyst to provide the equivalent experience of broadcast television online – so yet another presenter who really came out and said that this HbbTV, the European standard, is looking like the way to go, certainly for the broadcasters to maintain their position in the market.

Mark pointed out three technology shifts that we can look forward to –



Emergence of open DRM with broad device / platform coverage.

He asked how content providers are using IPTV to create opportunities. He talked about the Netflix factor.

It’s easy for Netflix to roll out into Australia and New Zealand.

It’s interesting that they’re looking at local content in other markets, which has been one of the criticisms of Netflix, that it’s only content from America.

However, if for Australia and New Zealand they included local content, it’s obviously going to become a major challenge for any local player, such as Lightbox and

Page 17

Sky. He said that Australia was already a crowded house with lots of subscription video on demand offerings and many more coming, including, BigPond Movies, Presto, Quickflix, BBC iPlayer, EzyFlix, Dendy Direct and others.

Matt’s final thoughts were –



The market will continue to grow rapidly with no maturity date in sight.



Device fragmentation is here to stay, although some new front runners are emerging.



Partnerships are key ( both in your own end-toend solution and in your content offering for the consumer.)



Consumers want quality, variety, accessibility and personalisation.

He finished off by saying that there are many areas in broadcast where problems can occur and this is true for OTT/Multi-screens type web transmissions as well, when you have adaptive bit rate.

Some test equipment does not check all parts of the workflow – obviously Tektronix does; Sentry for live monitoring, Cerify for offline file-based quality check and wide tools of baseband SDI/HDMI content integrity checks.

Go to www.tek.com

Go to www.accedo.tv Klaven Siow from Tektronix reiterated the other speakers’ comments that there’s been a boom in video enabled devices, but he asked how many owners actually used the video portion of those devices.

What is really important in any of these applications is Adaptive Bit Rate( ABR ) which is the underlying technology necessary for mobile devices.

Paul Feenstra, Media Strategist and Audio Consultant, was mainly concerned with 5.1 surround sound and dispelling the myth that it’s actually difficult to mix; it isn’t. He clarified that High Definition Sound is a marketing term and it’s loosely qualified as “better than CD audio.” Therefore if audio data compression is used in transmission, it cannot be High Definition audio. Certainly MP3 encoded audio cannot be High Definition. In 5.1, you have five channels of full range audio and one low frequency channel. The Mixer can distribute audio to the five plus one speakers in a predetermined way.

He said that, in general, when you’re talking about customers, not all customers who are dissatisfied will complain. Non-complaining customers are more likely to switch brands or stop watching the channel. You’re lucky if 1 in 100 calls you if there’s a problem with your transmission.

You need some way of monitoring customer satisfaction, which is very similar for any customer based analysis of what’s going on.

The unfortunate thing is that there are no credible books on how to mix in 5.1, just on how to set-up equipment and software. It’s all learned by trial and error, or by socialising best-practice.

There are two parts to monitoring what the customers think of you – one is QOS or Quality of Service, and that is a technical measure; and then there is Quality of Experience, QOE and this is subjective by the customer and is measurable by Tektronix.

Paul went on to say that a 5.1 mix can be easier to mix than stereo, because it’s simpler to modify a mix to adjust for loudness restrictions. He also said that New Zealand, broadcasters need to take on 5.1 standards as normal, and enforce them. 5.1 for TV is really about subtleties – we don’t want the viewer distracted from the picture. What we see is what we expect to hear.

What’s important is that you monitor these at the right stages of the workflow. This is important for isolating and quickly repairing any problems – reducing Mean Time To Repair ( MTTR.) If you only see it at the end, you don’t know what part of your workflow caused the problem.

However, international markets demand audio content is delivered in 5.1 to a specific format, so something needs to be done to promote its use in New Zealand where Mixers can be more familiar with it.

In 5.1, dialogue always originates from the centre speaker at the screen, therefore dialogue driven content can be more pleasing to listen to, yes, even the news and weather.

Surround sound allows the Mixer to

Page 18

create better imaging – for example, where the sound actually appears to come from – its left/right/front/rear placement in the audio image. A tip for those people mixing 5.1 live is, when you’re monitoring, listen in the audio format that most of your audience will listen, but switch occasionally.

Ed: Paul, do you see 5.1 as a way for broadcasters to make a point of difference when comparing broadcast television to Internet television?

Paul: At present yes. It is added value and has an edge over streamed audio as many people are not equipped to listen to their audio from the internet in 5.1.

Ed: If you broadcast 5.1, do you have to also broadcast a stereo signal for those sets that cannot receive 5.1?

Paul: Encoding 5.1 into “AC3” allows the listener the option of decoding and listening in 5.1 or in Stereo, if they have the software or hardware. The same file provides the listener with an either/or option, which can be transmitted through the Internet as an AC3 encoded Dolby Stereo file and is done automatically.

Ed: So you’re saying 5.1 can be successfully deployed over the Internet?

Paul: Yes. Go to www.paulfeenstra.com Cees van Egmond from SeaChange talked about monetisation in the hybrid OTT world.



Hybrid TV enables new business models.



It merges the best of both advertising worlds.



It opens the door for paid-for content.



It requires rethinking the viewer relationship tools to manage the viewing experience as well as the business relationship.



Tools to measure and monitor monetisation are as important as those to manage and control. All cross-platform.



The expected QOS ( Quality of Service ) will require broadcast grade systems.

Go to www.schange.com To finish the conference off there was a panel discussion with Sam from Freeview, Paul from Gorilla, Khush from Ericsson and Trevor Bird from Seven West Media.

I finished off by asking Darren Kirsop-Frearson from Gencom and host Gerry Smith what they thought of the show.

Ed: Gerry, you’ve got a smile on your face, so obviously it’s worked for you?

Gerry: It’s been fantastic, I mean we’ve had two days of it, the speakers have been excellent, the Minister came along and did the opening, there have been challenging new things we’ve heard from Channel Seven Australia that are fantastic – talking about linear television and free to air being alive and well. We had Mike McMahon from Spark giving us lots of insight into the Lightbox offering just a few days before it launched.

That was fantastic.

Ed: So that’s it, there’s been a wide spectrum here hasn’t there, from the broadcasters through to the IPTV people?

Gerry: And that’s what we wanted to do. That was the whole theme of it, beyond television, to try and send out questions to the people and prompt people to think about what is the future of broadcasting.

Ed: Now Darren, has the conference been positive from an industry point of view?

Darren: Absolutely. I think what’s happening is that the industry has changed. We recognise that our traditional customers have got new challenges, they have to change, they have to adapt and of course for us to support those customers we’ve had to change as well and I think this is a great event for us to come and show how we’re changing and how we can provide solutions for these customers. The timing of this event I think has been perfect, with Spark making announcements this week, the Minister saying various things are going to happen … the timing has been brilliant. With people saying “what do we do next” it’s been absolutely ideal.

Ed: And from a Gencom point of view, obviously here are the people who have come along to this event, they’re the ones who are looking to you for the services to provide them with this move into IPTV and broadcast, and the hybrid version possibly?

Darren: That very much seems to be the flavour of the discussions that we’ve been having with people here so yes, let’s hope so, let’s hope they come looking for us.

Ed: Has anything emerged that you think “this is the way it’s going to go”?

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Darren: There’s still lots of questions out there, which is why the conference has been so vibrant and with lots of discussion.

I wouldn’t want to pick a particular winner, but certainly the HbbTV thing seems to have had everybody talking.

It clearly still has some kinks that need to be ironed out, but it does look like, from a broadcaster’s perspective, that this was something very positive, and of course there is already a standard, it’s not lots of people trying to get the different standards.

So I think lots of discussion about HbbTV. Ed: Now Gerry, in terms of running a large conference like this, it must be an expensive operation but a number of key suppliers in New Zealand and overseas have come together and made this possible?

Gerry: There’s a core of suppliers that have made the thing possible and stumped up with the money, along with our Exhibitors and Sponsors, like Gencom, Switch Media, Brightcove, Accedo, Ericsson and Techtel.

Darren Kirsop-Frearson and Gerry Smith.

These are the companies that have sponsored events, helped us with the luncheons, helped us with the catering and those sorts of things, to bring it all together. It’s enabled us to keep the cost down for the people sitting in the chairs – the delegates that we want to attract along here.

So those sponsors and those exhibitors have been fantastic from that point of view.

Ed:

Do you think there’ll be another one?

Gerry: I think there will be another one and I think there should be another one.

Ed: You might need a bigger venue?

Gerry: Hopefully we will need a bigger venue we’re very, very excited by the number of people who have come along.

Ed: So watch this space – in another two years’ time we might all meet again?

Gerry: Absolutely.

NZVN

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Page 23

Dunedin Heritage We are now in a very nice old building, No 8 Dowling Street, the former Dunedin production centre of TVNZ many, many years ago, but now occupied by three companies – Animation Research, Taylormade Productions and the focus of this interview today, The Video Factory managed by Graham McArthur.

Ed: Now Graham, you were actually in this building in the TVNZ days I understand?

Graham: Yes, I started my career here as a technical trainee and spent a significant amount of time with TVNZ finishing my career with them as the editing manager Dunedin. Then in 1991, one Friday afternoon, I walked out of one door of the TVNZ building, Garrison Hall Dunedin and on the following Monday morning, I walked back in to The Video Factory via the downstairs door. We had a pile of equipment which we had taken a deep breath and purchased to try and keep making television programmes independently, and had, I think about a month to get an operation up and running and deliver our first on air show. For that year 1991, we made a children’s programme called Wild T. Ed: So that was obviously a stressful time and it’s been smooth sailing ever since?

Graham: since!

That’s right … it’s been very stressful ever

Ed: Well that’s life in the fast lane isn’t it – there are not many out there who are having a cruisy time of it currently?

Graham: You start with one or two problems and then just keep adding to them basically.

Ed: But you’re still here, so you’re obviously doing something successful?

Graham: Well, over the years, you get to know a few people in the industry, and we had a pretty good run with New Zealand On Air funding. We haven’t had any for the last 5 or 6 years I suppose, but prior to that, I think our best run was 10 seasons of the children’s programme Squirt which was, Video Factory, Animation Research Limited supplying the motion tracking and Taylormade producing it. Since then, there hasn’t been anything like that back on New Zealand television …

Ed:

You mean good children’s programming?

Graham: I mean that particular type of good children’s programme where it was a good combination of real people and a computer generated character Spike, who basically ran the thing. Actually, that series ironically finished at the same time as an iceberg floated up from Antarctica off the Otago coast. We took Spike out in a helicopter and put him on the iceberg to take him home and we’re thinking maybe we’ll see him again sometime. You never know, these icebergs have a habit of cruising round a bit. Since then, we’ve been really relying on our local clients and also local connections to be able to do quite a variety of things.

Ed: You’re still doing things for mainstream broadcast television, the big channels?

Graham: Yes, when the opportunity presents itself.

We’ve been involved in a few docos over the years,

again nothing much recently. We do a little bit Newswise as the TVNZ Newsroom is just across the road from us …

Ed:

So you provide stringer services?

Graham: We help them, yes, as they need it; and we make the occasional TVC, although these days, we seem to be making more for Australia than for New Zealand. We’ve had to diversify quite a bit, so we’ve had a good hard look at 3D and, in fact, in 2009, we were part of the group that put a 3D short movie into Ed Hillary Centre, in The Hermitage at Mt Cook, which has been running there ever since and that gave us good early experience in 3D. We used a 3D correction and post system written by ARL and since then we’ve done a bit with 3D – along with ARL, the story of Maui for the Auckland waterfront Waka during the Rugby World cup, we post-produced and finished a 3D movie called Yakel shot in a village in Vanuatu and we’ve shot the last two Wearable Arts shows plus other bits and pieces, but we see 3D as needing to be quite specifically targeted. In my view, it’s not for everybody’s lounge, it’s much more for a theatre that you’ve got control of and there needs to be a purpose for it too. Often it’s a bit of overkill and 2D can work just as well.

Ed: That sounds like a very refreshing and sensible business decision?

Graham: Well I don’t know how many of our business decisions are either refreshing or sensible. We seem to just keep going with the flow. Things have been fairly tight for the last few years, but we’ve found that it’s actually made more sense to make sure that people are working, so that’s led to us being able to try quite a few things that perhaps we wouldn’t have tried in the past, and also to be able to co-operate with other individuals or groups and help where we can, where budget isn’t the main consideration.

Ed: You do have a business relationship Animation Research and with Taylormade?

with

Graham: Yes we do. We see them as being sister companies, and they see us as being a sister as well, and so from time to time, there are projects that Animation Research have that we provide services for both sound and video.

Similarly, there are some projects we pick up where there’s an animation component that ARL are able to provide us material for as well.

Page 24

Ed: What about Internet services? There are a lot of people looking at that as the future – broadcast television’s on the way out, we’ve got to get providing material for Internet television. Is that something that you’ve got underway?

Graham: We see the potential as being very exciting.

I mean, everybody says that, but I’m not sure that they always know what it is that they mean when they say it.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to programme producers and directors about ways of being able to control your own output …

Ed:

You mean to “monetise” the output?

Graham: Well that would be nice too, but that’s also easier said than done … but certainly not having to work through the traditional channels where you’re having to work to a broadcaster’s requirements and specifications.

Ed: Is that because those specifications are now quite outdated?

Graham: Well I’m not meaning in the technical sense; I’m meaning more in the programming and production sense.

When you think about it, the broadcasters are there doing the best they can for their channel and for their audience and that doesn’t necessarily always match up with what a producer or director’s views of how a particular topic should be covered are.

Ed: Maybe they need to question their thinking as to what their audience is wanting. To try other ways to make programmes that are not currently regarded as mainstream.

Now there’s a much wider scope for getting stuff on air through the Internet, so it should be

opening up the whole system for new people – producers with new ideas and ways of doing things?

Graham: Yes, I completely agree. There are people around who have pet schemes that are now becoming much more possible and, to that end, we’ve been involved in making content for the Internet. We’ve also been involved in streaming various events and we believe we’ve got a reasonable handle on what’s possible currently and what the limitations are currently.

But the way it’s looking, from that perspective, it can only get better. Whether there’s a good way to make money out of it or not, I think really depends on the project, but one of the great things about it is that the audience that you’re looking at is obviously not just limited to New Zealand. You can be looking at a very tight and quite specific audience, but it’s now become much bigger because it’s a worldwide audience. That has to provide opportunities; it’s really a matter of finding the people or being able to do it ourselves to start moving those opportunities forward and turning them into a reality.

Ed: Do you agree with the thought that the Internet option also gives you the opportunity to continue using current gear – that the quality level of what is possible to be streamed is actually lower than the technical level of a lot of the broadcast quality equipment that you currently have, so there’s no real need to invest in new technology?

Graham: I suppose you could look at it like that.

We’ve sort of found that it is sensible to make use of the broadcast quality equipment that you’ve got, whatever it is that you’re doing, if you can, because it actually ends up by making life a bit easier. But, having said that, over the last five years especially, equipment has changed, especially cameras have changed so much, that it’s really hard to define what is “broadcast quality” anymore and so I suppose the way I would look at it is probably how you started that question, and that is that it certainly does provide the opportunity to be able to use equipment that is sitting round because it’s getting a bit long in the tooth; and if that means that you don’t have to rush out and buy a couple of new cameras, then that can’t be a bad thing in today’s world. Having said that, many production facilities that we’re competing with at the moment are able to make use of the latest equipment that has cost little. I mean, for ten grand, you get a camera and an editing system and you’re out there competing. We had to find half a million to get started in ’91. It still sounds like quite a lot of money; in ’91 it was a real hurdle for us, and I mean not just us, there were others out there doing the same thing. For that money we were able to put together an edit suite and a couple of field cameras.

We took quite a bold step at the time and went with Panasonic, M2 as a tape format and that actually served us very well. I think we were lucky in that we were in a fairly small market locally, so we were able to be selfsufficient with the equipment that we had. In those days, to be able to get our programmes out, we needed to transfer to one inch but, because we were in the same building as TVNZ, and had a relationship with them, that really wasn’t a problem. All the way through we’ve managed to maintain that relationship and we have had a really good relationship with Panasonic right from the start. They looked after us, they did things like where we bought one camera, they imported two, and held the second one as a spare. So we made our

Page 26

able to have input from multiple numbers of cameras and edit that as quickly as you can from a few cameras, has made quite a change in the way that we see programme making.

In some ways, that’s raised the bar a bit, but in other ways, YouTube has lowered that bar again so I’m not quite sure where we are there. I think that you just have to decide what market it is you’re in, and pitch yourself accordingly.

Ed: And there’s certainly a premium for experience in this industry?

Lisa and John in the 3D suite.

decisions and it’s worked out pretty well for regard, which has sort of got me away competition thing … nevertheless, I think it different landscape now to what it was started.

us in that from the is quite a when we

Ed: You do really have to look at that new technology because it’s smaller, it’s lighter, it’s got a better workflow and it’s providing some of the codecs that you need for some of those streaming options straight out of the camera?

Graham: Yes that’s true. I think in some ways the thing that we forget is just how much more difficult editing was when we were doing it tape to tape.

Ed:

A “time base corrector” – what’s that?

Graham: Well that’s right, yes. These days, if you can use a word processor, in theory you can use a nonlinear editing system – well certainly a lot of people think like that. Whether that makes an editor or not is another thing.

Ed: It’s the difference between perception and reality isn’t it?

Graham: It is, yes. But I think that being able to try things and just put things together really quickly and be

Graham: Well I like to think so, but then I’ve been around long enough to think that I’ve got some experience and certainly you do see some people that are fairly fresh in the industry who are making all sorts of wonderful mistakes and you know, if they ask for help, we’re certainly here to help, but people seem to have to make their own mistakes – I suppose I did, so that’s pretty much the way of it.

But also, the other side of it is that you’ve got to look at those people because there’s lots of fresh ideas there and they’re seeing things differently to the way that I’ve seen things, because you know, all they’ve known is the Internet for instance, and that’s still relatively new in some of our lives, so the possibilities that they see are quite different. If we can help them realise some of those possibilities, then that works for both of us, so I’m happy to do that.

Ed: Hopefully there’s work for old dogs and young dogs?

Graham: I think so. I mean it’s like anything you know, you can’t approach it in a conservative …

Ed:

Luddite?

Graham: yes …

Well I was going to say that but … manner,

Ed: They’ll be able to look it up in a dictionary somewhere – no, they’ll Google it – L-u-d-d-i-t-e boys and girls …

Graham: But you know, I think that if you’re prepared to see the opportunities through somebody else’s eyes, and sometimes it does require a bit of a deep breath and sometimes you think things aren’t going to work and often they don’t, but the industry we’re in has always been a 10 percenter – 9 of the 10 ideas that you have don’t go anywhere at all and, for the 10th one, you have to work really hard to make it go somewhere and even then, there’s no guarantee that it will, even with that hard work.

So from that point of view things haven’t really changed that much.

Ed: Work hard and be good to your mother eh?

Murray shooting Warbirds over Wanaka.

Page 27

Graham:

Always.

NZVN

You can Now visit Protel in Auckland ... ... because you can park.

What an excuse for a party!

Host for the evening, Tyrone Payne, takes up the story with assistance from his dear friend Pinot.

Ed: Now Tyrone, we’re at a new premises and everyone’s very happy here … it’s not just the free drinks, it’s that you’ve a c t uall y go t p a r ki ng .

Naturally, there are always plenty of reasons to visit Protel, but what possibly kept people away in the past was the one and only parking space at City Road in Auckland. Now you’ve got EIGHT carparks! This has got to increase your customer visits?

Tyrone: All free for customers.

Everybody who walks in here has mentioned the carparking, because we’re all pretty busy and you don’t want to have to go around and find a carpark and put money in the meter or whatever it is. It’s easy just to pull up, do your business …

Ed: But that’s it, it makes such a difference if you want to come and have a look at something – just the ease of getting there; it’s why inner city business doesn’t seem to do as well as people who are out in the suburbs, so it’s got to be good for you. And you’ve got more space?

Tyrone: It’s been a good move. We’re very happy to be here, there have been good comments from people, so I’m really happy.

There were some undesirable aspects of that K Rd area …

Ed: ... well it depends on your bent doesn’t it?

Tyrone: That’s right … I don’t know what else to say. It’s not just about the location here, it’s the fact that all the staff are a lot happier coming to the office every day because they go against the traffic, they don’t go with the traffic and that means they’re a lot more available to the customers and, when customers come in, they’re tending to spend a longer time here.

Ed: Now before Ken’s had too many beers, we’d better ask him what he’s looking forward to in these new premises. Ken, I see your office is much bigger, and it’s right by the door – is there a reason for that, so you can get out quicker?

Ken: No, it’s not the escape route, but it means the customers can just come straight into my office and buy as much as they like.

Ed: Wow. Do you offer layby?

Ken: Yes we do.

Ed: Are you looking forward to summer?

Ken: Absolutely, I can zip home at lunchtime and have a swim.

Ed: But the lake’s just across the … you know … you’re very close?

Ken: Yeah – it’s a bit treacley …

Ed: It’s more of a boating lake is it?

Ken: Yeah, there’s a lot of floaters.

Ed: Alright, so you’ve got a workshop here, what about a good sound room?

Ken: All the speakers are on the far side of the offices.

We have put some soundproofing up, but not that many people need to listen to them full volume.

Ed: Because that’s it – you come to Protel for either sound or video or both?

Ken: Yes, exactly.

Ed: And your big seller at the moment is …?

Ken: ... Livestream would be it.

Ed: Now one of the new brands that I’ve seen on the Protel ads is Lewitt?

Ken: Lewitt microphones – Rene’s the man to talk to about them, but yes, it’s a new brand of microphones, our own exclusive brand in New Zealand.

Ed: You can try out the known brands and some unknown brands and decide what you like?

Ken: Yes, decide which one suits your application. They’ve got different models to suit – live, band …

Ed: I think it’s time for another beer Ken. Ken: Yes, I need a good strong dark one!

Ed: Was that beer, not women?

Ken: All I can say is it’s just as well my wife doesn’t read your articles.

Ed: She might learn something about you. NZVN Go and learn something yourself by visiting Protel’s new Auckland premises, opposite Carl’s Junior at 76 Paul Matthews Road, just off Upper Harbour Drive.

Page 29

Lightbox by Spark launched Further to Mike McMahon's presentation at the Media Conference, I went to a specific Lightbox launch the next evening.

There weren’t terribly many journalists there, but it was a very well catered event, as one would expect from Telecom – soon to be Spark.

They emphasised that this was a Beta launch, so the aim was to put it out there, get people to use some of the initial content so they could get feedback and so make changes before the real launch. It was going to be an invite only trial, where those invitees could test the interface, could see whether they actually like the content and make the comments before they did the major launch to the public.

There were many things they were going to add as time went on, but they were fairly cagey as to what they were, because they kept saying “well we want to see how the Beta goes.” What is happening from Day One, is that Lightbox will have no ads or interruptions. It will be Internet based, so you need to have your computer; you can’t connect directly through your television. For $15 per 30 days, you can take all the content that you want. It starts with a 30 day free trial and your broadband connection can be to any provider. However, the broadband data download that you use is at your cost, so whether you’re with Spark or any other, you pay for that as well as your $15 for 30 days. Initially iPads, PCs and Macs will be the medium that you can use. At some later stage, there will be more devices that will be supported. They say that they’re not dipping their toes into this, it’s full on and they will have some first run exclusive shows. The Head of Programming, Maria Mahoney, stated that they would have Vikings, Live Another Day ( 24 ), Mad Men, Louis, Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, Homeland, Black List, Orphan Black, Masters of Sex, The In Betweeners – as just some of the shows. They would also have in the kids’ section, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Wiggles, Dora the Explorer.

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Amongst the first run shows that nobody else will have, will be Arrested Development, Alpha House, Beaters and Outlander. The resolution will be up to 1080 and the bit rate up to 5 megabit per second, although they will be delivering an adaptive bit rate.

I asked them if there was any local content, and yes, it’s coming and it will include documentaries. I also asked if there was a special deal for Spark customers and the answer was that there will be, and it will be announced at a later date, but not what it is going to be. They finished off by saying they were interested in 4K, but nothing yet. There was nothing in the system that will preclude its use in future times.

My conclusion is that, if you want VOD entertainment of the genre they are offering at the uncertain quality of streamed adaptive bit rate and you are happy paying for the data as well as $15 per 30 days, why not?

It's not an offer that's going to improve the social fabric of our nation but it might keep more potatoes on their couches and off the streets of an evening when the more enlightened might look for theatre parking.

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Pay by cheque or direct credit to ANZ # 010242-0160111-00

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