TV TECHNOLOGY: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2020 NAB Show?
ERIC GALLIER: At this year’s NAB Show, we can expect to see several key technology trends. A major highlight will be around public cloud and cloud-native solutions that are increasingly being used for a broad scope of media workflows, including file-based workflows and live streaming for OTT and broadcast applications. Combining on-premises and public cloud resources for many of those workflows is an extremely compelling proposition moving forward, enabling better agility, more convenience for temporary usage and a faster time to market for new video offerings, among other benefits. This applies to all cloud, hybrid cloud and appliance applications.
At the show this year, there will also be a strong focus on any type of technology that makes streaming as good as broadcast delivery, especially for live sports events. Some of the issues that the industry is looking to tackle include latency, scalable delivery and video quality.
Moreover, hybrid broadband and broadcast services are improving quality of experience (QoE) for viewers, and I expect that trend to continue, as well as the use of cloud and the internet for distribution—replacing satellite. Also, multicloud and multi-CDN solutions have emerged to improve the scalability and security of OTT distribution.
And last but not least, SMPTE ST 2110 (up to UHD) with NMOS-04 and NMOS-05 support is another technology that helps streamline and quickly deploy any studio and playout workflow.
We already have production deployments that extensively make use of all of those technologies.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
GALLIER: Our product portfolio is structured around on-premises solutions and two fully managed, cloud-native platforms targeting live OTT streaming as well as channel origination. At the 2020 NAB Show, we will unveil new and important features related to the technology trends mentioned above. Some of the enhancements we’ll show include more scalable video delivery for OTT services, hybrid on-premises and cloud playout workflows, media workflow portability to the cloud and SMPTE ST 2110 for any type of signal, including UHD HDR and state-of-the-art ASTC 3.0 capabilities.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
GALLIER: Our solutions are unique to the market because they cover all aspects of media processing, from ingesting file-based and live content, including uncompressed video over IP, to creating schedules, playing out new channels and processing all content for OTT streaming and broadcast delivery. In other words, it is about source-to-screen playout, broadcast and OTT, including delivery workflows.
You can deploy our solutions on-premises using video appliances or software that runs on private data centers or all in the cloud. There is absolutely no compromise on performance, as it is the same technology for all solutions. You can easily and efficiently combine on-premises and public cloud resources by migrating video workflows back and forth.
Our fully managed platforms are cloud-neutral, meaning you can pick the cloud provider you want. Plus, we are open to any third-party partners such as CMS, DRM, automation and traffic systems vendors. Many of them are already pre-integrated into our solutions and our rich, fully documented API set makes it easy to integrate new partners.
TVT: What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?
GALLIER: The NAB Show is a premiere event for our industry, attracting leading media companies and broadcasters from North America and around the world. Exhibiting at the NAB Show and participating in its BEIT conference gives us an opportunity to meet and talk with customers and potential customers to learn about their challenges and show them how to cost-effectively deliver new revenue-generating services, including live sports streaming and linear channels, with the pristine quality, low latency and scalability required for success.
