For Infrastructures, It's Time to Talk Revolution

摘要

In the run-up to the IBC2014 confab in Amsterdam, running Sept. 11-16, the big question is not so much whether the TV industry is facing revolutionary change in the basic technologies it uses to deliver video into the home. That is increasingly taken as a given, as a growing number of major vendors tout technologies from the IT and IP worlds that rely heavily on software and cloud-based services. The talk will really be about where that revolution takes the industry, especially when it comes to better incorporating more efficient infrastructures. Charlie Vogt, the CEO of Imagine Communications, notes that broadcasters traditionally relied on expensive, custom-built infrastructures that resembled "thousands of snowflakes," each different from the next. But in a period of rapid technology change, this capital intensive approach doesn't provide them with flexible, low-cost ways to quickly launch new services to compete with over-the-top players, who rely on extremely nimble technologies and IP architectures.