MPJC: no visionaries

Last Thursday was the annual Mediapark Jaarcongres (MPJC) of the public broadcasting sector in the Netherlands. Not quite as interesting as last year's edition, but well worthwhile. No real visionaries, apart from the 4K contribution, but that was done last year as well. Here are a few common themes.

Trends

It was all about:

- Smartphones, tablets, touch screen, swiping

- Connected TV, TV everywhere, second screen

- Social media and social TV

- Consumer is in control

i.e. nothing really new.

Hybrid TV

UPC and others pointed out that there still is very little true integration of broadcast and broadband, despite all the connected TVs. We have come to the same conclusion (report available at 50% discount for readers of this blog), which is well worth stating explicitly, because the term 'interactivity' is used much to easily for functions that aren't really worth it. Such as pausing live TV - nothing more than a very basic feature exploring the two-way connection of an 'interactive' TV. There is still a lot to be done.

Kevin Slavin

Excellent talk from Kevin Slavin of Starling TV and Area/Code about the role of the audience. From the laffbox (LFN: laugh from nowhere - check out this) to Facebook/Twitter, parasocial relationships, the audience becoming a character (see Brand Fiction Factory), a character as the audience and finally Everyware (... is where the laughter comes from): social media replace the laugh track.

Twitters problems: hashtags are not unified; there are simply too many tweets.

RTL, Sanoma

Both are pusuing a strategy of 'follow the consumer' - not surprising.

Sanoma NL (revenues: EUR 500m) took some effort defending its takeover of SBS (3 TV channels, program guide) for EUR 1.2bn (shared with Talpa). The problem is not so much SBS's current underperformance (that's simply due to a 'cycle'), the real problem is that this is essentially a change of control where the acquirer has no clue how to run a TV company. Talpa (TV productions) is included in the deal, taking a 33% share, but they don't know how to run a company like SBS either. Which is why they will have a very hard time realising synergies.

UPC

Solid statements: Google lacks a unifying UI across all devices; social TV is still embryonic. No news on the Horizon box (see page 5 of this journal: trial coming to the Netherlands in July, commercial launch September).

Glashart Media (Reggefiber)

Reggefiber has ~700k homes passed and ~200k homes activated (for more details on the Dutch FTTH market: our FTTH NL 2011 report will be out next week - here is last years' edition). Glashart Media services 130k TV homes, of which 45k use interactive services.

Its claimed USPs: picture and sound quality; number of channels; EPG (providing access to apps); 3-D ready; content (local TV, VOD, catch-up TV, Eredivisie Live). OTT services are drawn into the managed services domain, while providing open access to all content parties (0900-TV).

2010 Was the year of 'fix the basics', 2011 is the year of 'boost the base'. A new box will be launched, allowing 3 TV sets to be connected and with a 250 GB hard disk optional. They also want to experiment with a kind of prepaid card, giving access to certain content for a limited time. Intriguing plan: an off-footprint break-out is coming, i.e. Glashart Media providing TV services outside the Reggefiber footprint.

NOS

Launch of the new site m.nos.nl/video.

NLbuzz

Some stats on Eredivisie Live: 550k subscribers, 1m unique visitors/month, 1.5m views/month, 300k live streams/year. A new site will be launched at the end of June 2011, relying completely on adaptive streaming. It will offer a single-sign-on (across devices). They see an interest in niche content, such a waterpolotv.nl (just 30k active sportsmen, but no fewer than 28-30k views per video).

TNO/Waag Society

Wonderful demo of 4K, which is predicted to come to market in 2011. What it claims to be is an even sharper image, creating the illusion of 'really being part of it'. But 4K also offer a more dynamic picture and a much better opportunity to zoom in. Japan expects 8K by 2020. SD (720x576) implies 0.4 megapixels, HD (1920/1080) implies 2 mp, 4K (4096x2160) goes to 8.8 mp and 8K to 33 mp. And then you can combine 4K (or 8K) with 3-D. Bandwidth consequences are apparent.

Public Broadcasting

The day started off with the PO (public broadcasting) commenting on government plans to reduce support by EUR 127m. This number is supported by a recent BCG report. Broadcasters (essentially production companies) will be forced to merge to reduce the field to 8 players, from 21 currently. (According to the PO, this will supply only 30% of the targeted savings and the plans will force 20% lay-offs.)

There's more sense to 4K than you might think

Last year, at the Mediapark Jaarcongres 2010, Frank Kresin talked about 4K. Afterwards, I asked him what kind of bandwidth requirements would go with it. It appeared to be: 8 Gb/s for uncompressed and just under 1 Gb/s for compressed material.

Last week, DisplaySearch published its TV forecast, stating: "We anticipate seeing the first product release by the end of 2011, with very small volumes in 2012". Herman has been doing the math, and concludes that 4K would require 240 Mb/s.

Whatever the case is (it all depends on the assumptions for the precise numbers of lines, pixels, frames per second and compression), the high-level conclusions are:

• 4K is coming. And if you want to say: forget it, people hardly see the difference between SD and HD, then I would add: that is precisely why we need 4K! HD is fine, but we need a bigger distinction to SD.
• 4K will benefit 3-D. To be sure: 4K is the evolution of HD, not 3-D. But, as DisplaySearch puts it: "There are other reasons to introduce higher resolution, even where it is not viewable. The most obvious is for passive 3D glasses. Doubling the number of lines is necessary to restore 1080 lines to each eye, and would overcome the main objection to passive 3D".

After 3-D comes 4K

If you think 3-D is the end of video developments, you should have been at last week's Mediapark Jaarcongres 2010 in Hilversum. 3-D, 4K and holography were hot topics.

First 3-D. Phil Lelyveld of the Consumer 3D Experience Lab in Los Angeles explained why headaches and nausea are issues for 3-D. The focus point is by definition on the screen, but looking at two different images at the same time makes our eyes converge at a different point, either in front of or behind the screen. This creates the 3-D experience, but for some it is hard for the head or the stomach. Hence, 3-D is to be applied in a moderate way and Phil recommends not too many images where the convergence point is way in front of the screen.

Then holography. There was some talk about Japan trying to organise the 2022 Soccer World Cup, in which case they would have holographic projections of each match in soccer stadiums around the country.

Finally 4K. If television develops from black & white to color to widescreen to HD to 3-D, then 4K could be the next step. Back in 2004, this article in the New York Times described MGM's efforts digitising analogue films in the 4K standard. The 4K standard is experimented on by CineGrid in the Netherlands, working with SURFnet and other partners. Fiber is explicitly mentioned as the medium of choice, because of the excessive data rate. Images are 4x sharper than in 3-D (i.e. a 4,096 x 2,160 resolution) and sound is recorded in 16 channels. According to this leaflet, 1.5 hours of video would require 750 DVDs or 3.5 TB of data. Each frame would be the equivalent of up to 50 MB, not mentioning what the 16 sound channels require. It was stated that a 4K stream would require a massive 8 Gb/s download speed for streaming (uncompressed), or close to 1 Gb/s (compressed). So that looks like a cinema experience, rather than a home cinema experience for now. Coincidentally, a few days ago a new 4K recording was made of Viktoria Mullova, playing JS Bach in the Holland Festival.