Ericsson Addresses Multi-formats
April 17, 2012, NAB, Las Vegas—We talked with Simon Frost and Fabio Murra from Ericsson Television. The company has been supplying equipment to the broadcast industry for many years. They produce a number of product lines to address all phases of broadcast operations. Now they are helping networks move TV into a full digital flow from acquisition through delivery, and even onto multiple screens with adaptive rate delivery. These capabilities help broadcasters increase consumer value.
In addition to basic broadcasting and editing equipment, they also provide services and system integration. Their managed services include 500 million cell phones under management for various carriers. They are moving other services into television do their Technicolor managed service division.
They have a line of compression products that help broadcasters translate formats and reduce data volumes through non-broadcast media. Over time, everything going into the house will be H.264, because there are now over 1 billion MPEG 2 devices in consumers products today. Over time these devices will transition to H.264.
One new technology that they think will be very disruptive is adaptive bi-rate data transfers. This technology will enable thinner end-user devices, and move functions from clients to operators. The different capabilities will allow end-platform specific delivery encoding standards and low-loss variable bit rate transmissions. Now, even though everything is AVC (H.264), the Apple stream format is the de facto standard.
The new generation of flexible, software defined receivers will be part of a toolkit for content delivery. The evolving standards can have increased commonality with a strong push from informed consumers. Already, we are seeing changes in streaming formats. YouTube is using Adobe flash for the videos and HTTP for the control interfaces. As the technology evolves, we will see seamless adaptive streaming that its client driven, and can time sink streams on multiple screens.
For more information about the products and services, go to their website at www.Ericsson.com/television.
