Posts Tagged ‘file-based workflows’

Impressions of IBC 2009

broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Sep 17 2009

I am just back from spending a week at the IBC show in Amsterdam.  During the four days I was at the show I had about 50 meetings with vendors, broadcasters, bankers and other industry folks.  Here are my quick impressions.

The story from many vendors was the same — the first half of 2009 was terrible, with sales down between 15-40% depending on the company.  A few went as far to comment on the impact on their profit — e.g. one told me that at 20% drop in revenue resulted in a 50% drop in profit.  However, one or two told me that things had picked up since June.

Although attendance was down just about 7% versus last year, there were big differences in how this impacted the lead counts of individual exhibitors.  Most vendors said that their lead counts were down — a few told me that their leads were down 40% versus previous shows — while others said they were busier than ever.  And of course, I often heard the old refrain “the show is smaller but the quality is high because anyone here is here because they have a project, and the tire kickers stayed at home.”

Many vendors reported that although their sales were way down for the year, that their pipeline had not gone away.  Instead projects were being constantly delayed as broadcasters evaluate their capital budgets.  So many vendors said that they are optimistic that there will be pent up demand when the economy finally turns and that things will improve quickly once a recovery starts.  In the meanwhile however, many vendors have found reduced demand combined with project postponement has made their sales very lumpy, and in most cases extremely difficult to predict.  A few people commented on how difficult it is to forecast demand in the current environment.

There were a few bright spots.  Just about everyone whose business involves saving money and improving efficiency for broadcasters reported that things went well at IBC.  And Ross Video was quoted in the IBC Daily News saying that their sales were up 8% during the first ten months of their financial year (perhaps due to their OverDrive production automation system, which reduces headcount and saves money for broadcasters).  A couple of magazine publishers also reported that orders for display advertising in Q4 had come in higher than expected during IBC.

Following on from the above it seems, as TV Technology twittered today “What do you think was the dominant theme at#ibc09? My pick? “Doing more with less.” Not particularly original, but a sign of the times.”

I agree with TV Tech, but I think there’s more to it than that.

The broadcast industry in the midst of significant structural changes.  We’ve in the middle of the worst recession in memory and technology is changing at a rapid pace.  There are significant implications to the combination of customer budget cuts and new technology.

A while back, I posted an article called  HDTV… just a “pause” on the path to transition to IT-based broadcasting? which said that the transition to HD (much of which had to be done with hardware), put back the move to IT-based broadcasting by about five years.  During the biggest years of the HD transition, many vendors grew very rapidly, including a few that went public.  Today, the transition to HD is well underway, and the focus of the customers is all about efficiency.   So it makes me wonder whether when the recovery does happen, who will reap the biggest benefit — the traditional hardware vendors, or providers of efficient IT-based systems.  I think we will see some new players emerge, while some established players continue to struggle.

This leads to the (not new) observation about the high degree of fragmentation among the broadcast technology vendor community.   What is new is what I think we will see next – vendor consolidation and a pretty active M&A market in the broadcast technology space.

Why? Well for one thing there are just too many vendors in a variety of product categories, and they are seeing their business change.  Many of the small players may be forced to merge or sell over the next few years.

And of course, when you combine the premise that it’s likely to be some of the newer companies (who provide a bridge to the file-based future) that are going to grow fastest for the next few years, with the premise that many of the established hardware-based vendors don’t actually have a file-based solution to offer their customers, it’s likely that we’ll be seeing more M&A activity in the near future.

HDTV… just a “pause” on the path to transition to IT-based broadcasting?

Uncategorized | Posted by Joe Zaller
Jul 13 2009

I had an interesting conversation recently with a broadcast technology vendor about how the transition to HDTV has impacted the move to IT-based broadcasting.

Their proposition was this:

Before the move to HDTV really took off, the broadcast industry was moving towards IT / file-based workflows.  Then a variety of  external structural forces (e.g. government intervention, analog switch-off etc) caused it to change course and focus on the transition to HD.

This caused the industry’s focus shifted away from IT / software-based systems and back towards hardware, which was better able to handle the increased data rates of HDTV.   This was good news for traditional hardware vendors, many of whom saw big spikes in their businesses, and some of whom managed to go public on the back of this trend.

Fast forward to today.  The transition to HD is well underway, and completed in many areas.  Broadcasters who have made the move to HD are now are looking for ways to increase their efficiencies, and do more with less.   At the same time, IT-based systems have made tremendous strides, and have in many cases caught up with hardware systems. 

So, this vendor concluded, we’re at a major industry inflection point, and the next transition in the broadcast industry will be driven by software, not hardware.

If this vendor is right, (and they very well may be), it’s going to be an interesting time for the hardware-oriented vendors who don’t have fully-fledged IT-based solutions that deliver what today’s customers want — the ability to do more with less, the promise of greater efficiencies, and above all a way to increase revenues.  It’s doubtful that “traditional” vendors will go away, but it’s likely that we will see new leaders emerge, along with an increase in M&A activity.

The broadcaster’s view of technology trends

market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Jun 23 2009

I’ve recently been looking at how broadcast technology trends vary by geographic region, based on the research data from the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey. The examples I have shown previously look at the differences in technology trends based solely on geography. 

Now it’s time to get a bit more granular and look at how just broadcasters view these technology trends, and whether there are regional variations in their opinions.   Approximately 1,400 broadcasters participated in the study.  Each was presented with a list of 15 industry trends and asked to choose the three trends from the list (ranking them 1-3) that they feel will have the most significant impact on the way they do business over the next 2-3 years.  The chart below shows their responses, which are weighted based on how they were ranked by the respondents.  If a trend was ranked most important, its weight=3; if a trend was ranked #2, its weight=2; and if a trend was ranked #3, it is weight=1.  

 

The broadcaster's view of industry trends by region

The broadcaster's view of industry trends by region

 

In general it appears that broadcasters around the world are roughly aligned in terms of overall opinion of technology trends, but there are a few regional variations. 

Just as with the overall market, the transition to HDTV and tapeless workflows are the top trends for broadcasters, followed by multiplatform delivery and file-based workflows.  Interestingly, broadcasters in EMEA rank the move to file-based workflows higher than their counterparts in the Americas and Asia, while ranking multi-platform content delivery lower.

Otherwise, it is broadcasters in Asia  who vary from their counterparts in the Americas and EMEA. 

For example, broadcasters in Asia rank the following trends differently than their counterparts in the Americas and EMEA (although some of these are still at the low end of the range):

* IP content delivery (lower)

* automated worflows higher (higher)

* 3DTV (higher)

* Set-top box PVR (higher)

* Network PVR (higher)

 

Once again, some of the trends that we often read about in the trade press — e.g. the transition to 3Gbps and 3DTV — are relatively far down the list of business priorities for broadcasters (#9 and #11 respectively), which implies that broadcasters are continuing to move to HDTV operations while striving for efficiency in their operations rather than pursuing new technology. 

 

Here’s the full list of technology trends from the study, in the order that they were ranked by the broadcasters:

  Broadcasters — Asia Broadcasters — Americas Broadcasters — EMEA
1 Transition to HDTV Transition to HDTV Transition to HDTV
2 Tapeless workflows Tapeless workflows Tapeless workflows
3 Automated workflows Multi-platform delivery File-based workflows
4 Multi-platform delivery File-based workflows Multi-platform delivery
5 File-based workflows IP content delivery IP content delivery
6 IP content delivery Automated workflows Automated workflows
7 Advanced encoding techniques (e.g. h.264) Advanced encoding techniques (e.g. h.264) Advanced encoding techniques (e.g. h.264)
8 Video on Demand Video on Demand Video on Demand
9 Transition to 3Gbps (1080p) Transition to 3Gbps (1080p) Transition to 3Gbps (1080p)
10 3D TV On-line advertising On-line advertising
11 Set-top box PVR/DVR 3D TV 3D TV
12 On-line advertising 4K production 2K production
13 Network DVR Set-top box PVR/DVR 4K production
14 4K production 2K production Set-top box PVR/DVR
15 2K production Network DVR Network DVR

Regional Variation in Broadcast technology Trends — HDTV Still Top Trend

market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Jun 22 2009

In a previous post about broadcast  industry trends, I looked at at a ranking of top trends in the broadcast industry and made the comment that there  is considerable variation in response when you segment data by geography and customer type.  One of the really interesting things about the data in the 2009 BBS is that is can be sliced and diced in many ways, thereby providing insight through granular analysis. 

Here’s an example of how trends can vary by geographic region:

2009 BBS trends -- regional variations

 This chart shows responses to the same question as the previous post — i.e.  ”please choose from this list the top three trends that will most affect the way your company does business over the next 2-3 years” — from the point of view of people in different geographies.  Once again, a simple weighting formula was used to generate these rankings – if  a technology was ranked 1st (weight=3), 2nd (weight=2) or 3rd(weight=1).  This was done to illustrate the relative importance of  each technology trend to the respondent.  The trends in this chart are then expressed as a percentage of the total weighted votes.  As you can see, there are some interesting differences between the views of respondents in the Americas, EMEA and Asia.

While the transition to HDTV is still the top trend for all three geographies, there are differences in how important this trend is to the businesses of the respondents.  In the Americas, the transition to HDTV scores 23.79%; in EMEA is scores 21.92% and in Asia is scores 17.36%.  There are similar difference in the scores of the “file-based workflows” question.  This trend appears significantly more important to Europeans than it is to Americas and especially to respondents in Asia.

 A couple more observations:

  • Transition to HD and tapeless workflows are the top two trends in all three regions — despite the variations in importance of these trends relative to one another
  • Some of the trends that are in the news these days — e.g. transition to 3Gbps and 3DTV did not score particularly high.  Perhaps the reason we read about these trends in trade publications is that this vendors want to push the next new thing, while their customers want to complete the transition (to HD or tapeless for example) that they are in the middle of now, rather than worrying about the next new thing.
  • A few of the more “advanced” trends (multi-platform content delivery, 3D TV) scored higher in Asia than they did in the Americas or EMEA

Here’s the full list of the 15 trends from the study, ranked in order for each region.

       EMEA Americas Asia
1      Transition to HDTV Transition to HDTV Transition to HDTV
2      Tapeless Workflows Tapeless workflows Tapeless Workflows
3      File-based workflows IP content delivery Multi-platform content delivery
4      IP content delivery File-based workflows IP content delivery
5      Multi-platform content delivery Multi-platform content delivery Automated workflows
6      Automated workflows Video on Demand Advanced encoding techniques
7      Advanced encoding techniques Automated workflows Video on Demand
8      Video on Demand Advanced encoding techniques 3D TV
9      Transition to 3Gbps Transition to 3Gbps File-based workflows
10     On-line advertising On-line advertising Transition to 3Gbps
11     2K production 3D TV Set-top box PVR/DVR
12     4K production 2K production 2K production
13     Set-top box PVR/DVR 4K production On-line advertising
14     3D TV Set-top box PVR/DVR Network DVR
15     Network DVR Network DVR 4K production