European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Update 2021

Judy Parnall

• The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has had an unusual year, like everyone, adapting to the changed circumstances. Though this caused some restrictions as we have not been able to meet in person since February 2020, there are many other opportunities.

DVB’s Internet-Centric Vision Comes Into Sharper Focus

Emily Dubs

• Having favored online meetings for many years now, the DVB Project was well placed to adapt to life during a global pandemic. There was no let-up in pace over the past year as our members continued their consensus-based work to build new internet-centric solutions for the future of media delivery.

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Media Ops Industry Comments to SMPTE

Kyle Rose

• The transition of the media industry to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking protocols and workflows is well underway. Millions of users streaming audio and video daily believe that the transition and the hard work evolving to IP-based network transports is done and behind us, while the reality is that the revolution is far from over. Ongoing is the retooling of the entire content workflow of creation, editing, post-production, archiving, and delivery of professional media to leverage IP-based networks and protocols. This ongoing retooling handles networking situations and user demands that go well above the now seemingly mundane (but still surprisingly complex) task of reliably delivering prerecorded video on demand (VOD) content over well-behaved, reliable broadband that was seen as the “big” streaming challenge to achieve just a few years ago.

World Broadcasting Unions Committees—A 2021 Status Report

John Lee, Morwen Williams

• The World Broadcasting Unions (WBU) Technical Committee is addressing an increased number of issues as broadcasting, on a worldwide basis, has entered into a more complex, challenging era, exemplified by massive spectrum competition, rapid regulatory and technology changes, and a more threatening cyber environment.

Recent Activities of the Ultra HD Forum

Nandhu Nandhakumar

• The Ultra HD Forum was established in 2015 to accelerate Ultra HD deployment by bringing together market leaders from all parts of the industry. Broadcasters, service providers, consumer electronics, and technology vendors collaborate on solving real-world obstacles in deploying advanced media formats and publishing these solutions for broad adoption. The Forum’s Guidelines Working Group has published guidelines that describe a uniform set of characteristics for Ultra HD content and consistent methods for creating and delivering Ultra HD content.

Update from the Advanced Media Workflow Association, Video Services Forum, and Joint Task Force on Networked Media

Brad Gilmer
Over the past year, Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) activities have fallen largely into three areas.

• To improve industry understanding of where our work fits into the implementation of IP-based systems.
• To extend and evolve the range of Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) specifications and best practices for these infrastructures.
• To provide tools which make the adoption of NMOS as easy as possible.
   

Streaming Video Alliance Progress Report

Jason Thibeault

• With members from across the video ecosystem, the Streaming Video Alliance is a global association which works to solve critical streaming video challenges to improve end-user experience and adoption at scale. This organization focuses on three main activities. The first is to educate the industry on challenges, technologies, and trends through informative, publicly available resources such as whitepapers, articles, and e-books. The second is to foster collaboration among different video ecosystem players through working groups, quarterly meetings, and conferences. The third is to define solutions for streaming video challenges by producing specifications, best practices, software code, and other technical documentation.