Category: Broadcast

Oct282016October 28, 2016August 25, 20210Commentby Nicolas Weil

EBU BroadThinking 2016 – The Year When Broadcasters Became Multidisciplinary Scientists

Posted in Broadcast, Open Source, OTT, Players, Streaming, Workflow

At EBU BroadThinking 2016, we conscientized that producing a modern multiscreen video experience isn’t just about embracing the most mature emerging technologies, year after year, in a smooth granular evolution. Nowadays it actually requires mastering a lot of expertise that are less and less native to broadcasters, all kinds of high-end activities like big data analysis, complex IT/network deployments, fine-grain ABR heuristics mastering, panoramic video, user behavior analysis, security policies enforcement or cloud applications development [and a lot more].


Feb092016February 9, 2016October 3, 20210Commentby Nicolas Weil

Open Media day @ FOSDEM’16

Posted in Broadcast, Frameworks, Open Source, OTT, Players, Repackaging, Streaming, Workflow

For those who don’t know it, FOSDEM is one of the legendary European events of the open source community, where free beer meets lightning talks, tech lectures and hacking sessions. It’s a crowdy 2-days event in Bruxelles, with lots of open source developers having different focuses, from Linux to databases, virtualization, security or programming languages… and of course media!
Let’s take a look at some OTT & workflow oriented projects that were presented during the Open Media devroom program.


Oct012014October 1, 2014August 31, 20210Commentby Nicolas Weil

EBU BroadThinking 2014: Forget Multiscreen, We Are Heading Towards ONE Screen

Posted in Broadcast, CDN, DRM, Encoding, Open Source, OTT, Repackaging, Second-Screen, Streaming, Workflow

This year the EBU BroadThinking Conference was sounding like a holistic swirl, a milestone in the trend of technology to define sets that are greater than the sum of their parts, through creative evolution. « Where Broadcast Meets BroadBand », you get some interesting fusion effect occurring and diluting the traditional boundaries of the screens, with the handheld devices being part of the big screen experience or extending it rather than trying to scalp it, in an environment where all the devices converge towards a restricted set of standards rather than tracing their own line.


Apr012013April 1, 2013August 31, 20212Commentsby Nicolas Weil

EBU BroadThinking 2013 – the state of the art rendezvous for OTT and Hybrid TV // DAY 2 & DEMOS Report

Posted in Broadcast, CDN, DRM, Encoding, OTT, Repackaging, Second-Screen, Workflow

Nothing was more welcome after day 1 of EBU BroadThinking 2013 than a good night of sleep, in order to reset the tech hype counters and make some mental room for two new sessions on broadcasters’ CDNs and the latest advances of #hybrid platforms. What would be the best broadcasters’ CDN architectures today, what would be their smartest (green) evolutions, would CDN-Federation standards finally bring interop reality over hopes, what would be the most advanced deployments and future of HbbTV, how it compares with YouView in the UK : day 2 agenda was looking quite attractive – and indeed the presentations were packed with valuable informations and experience feedbacks.


Mar302013March 30, 2013August 31, 20212Commentsby Nicolas Weil

EBU BroadThinking 2013 – the state of the art rendezvous for OTT and Hybrid TV // DAY 1 Report

Posted in Broadcast, CDN, Curations, DRM, Encoding, OTT, Repackaging, Second-Screen, Workflow

Geneva in late March doesn’t feel as wild as a Las Vegas boulevard, but still there was a reasonable amount of gaming excitement at the EBU headquarters, where several events were following each other, beginning with a #dash Interoperability Forum meeting which was closely followed by the BroadThinking event, where industry actors and broadcasters come to show off their latest implementations advances and/or share the results of their real-life deployments or research studies. A good way of managing the transition between TV Connect and NAB…
Where Broadcast meets Broadband : that’s the promise of the EBU’s hybrid event which flies between industry competition, standardization efforts and broadcasters’ realpolitik – all wrapped in a warm and funny ambiance provided by the various speakers and the EBU team. The 2013 edition was a major success because it allowed the participants to get a rather good idea of the general trends of the industry, and at the same time to go deep in technology when needed, while having opportunities to discover edge tech demos on the lobby attending the conference room.


Sep302011September 30, 2011August 31, 202147Commentsby Nicolas Weil

DIY BROADCAST : How to build your own Internet TV Channel with Open-Source & other goodies

Posted in Broadcast, Frameworks, Open Source, Tools

Here is our scenario : you are the technical director of a web startup, already having proven your talents with your thematic VOD streaming channel – and your boss suddenly thinks you’re a grown enough company to jump on the broadcast wagon and manage your own 24/7 live TV channel, targeting IPTV and multiplatform OTT, with a mix of some live studio shows and mainly pre-recorded programs. And of course readify it for later iTV DTT distribution. Quite an exciting challenge !

Fortunately, the web attitude has contaminated many industries with its desire to promote interoperability and avoid vendor lock-in with full-IP standard worflows. The BBC has shown the way for a long-time, funding many developments like the Dirac codec for its own needs of tapeless workflows and open-sourcing them quickly afterwards. Other TV channels like SVT from Sweden (with CasparCG) and many independent developers have jumped onboard, and by combining their efforts with your usual web video tools like FFmpeg or other free tools, you can for sure build the target platform.