Farewell NAB 2016, time for more TV service improvements everywhere...
It took me a while to write these two notes because it's been quite a crazy month.
I'm just recovering from what it's been a very exciting and successful NAB 2016, culminating in the 3rd successive (in 3 shows) Best of Show Award. I'm also thinking about all the months it takes to prepare a tradeshow, especially one as big and as important as the NAB Show 2016 in Las Vegas, and then, having it all happening in 4 crazy, adrenaline-fuelled days in Vegas...
That is far from the end of the story, though. After the inevitable come-down, it's about going back to the desk and making sense of all there is to do next. And there is plenty.
NAB 2016 was important for us at V-Nova. It's only 1 year since we came out of stealth with a promise of a technology that can turbo-boost the existing operators' ecosystem to enable new and better services, all while keeping costs down. And a promise it is no more...
At NAB 2016 we announced REAL solutions and REAL deployments:
- Sky in Italy is upgrading its existing IPTV deployment with PERSEUS to half the bandwidth required for Full HD services. This will allow them to reach both fiber and DSL customers (ca. 8x increase in reach), double the DVR space, reduce CDN transmission and storage costs, increase channel density and much more without the need to change a single deployed set-top-box (STB). Considering the billions of STBs in the field worldwide, this signals a great opportunity for cost-effective service improvement impossible with any other technology.
- PERSEUS was instrumental in allowing FastFilmz, an Indian OTT service provider, to launch a innovative service for the 120M Tamil speaking people of Southern India. Thanks to PERSEUS technology, FastFilmz are able to deliver video services as low as 120Kbps (bitrates typically associated with audio), hence allowing the majority of the population, who sits on 2G mobile networks, to receive a premium service for the first time. This achievement shows how all the >3.5 Billion smartphones already in consumer hands can be enabled to receive video services, regardless of the infrastructure that serves them.
- EUTELSAT is deploying V-Nova's PERSEUS to power the contribution links of 7 matches of the Euro 2016 Football Championship in 4K / UHD. The performance of V-Nova's PERSEUS-powered P.Link products - also validated by published independent research - will enable Eutelsat to add 4K/UHD feeds in the same bandwidth already allocated for HD services, without incurring any costly upgrade. This proves that 4K/UHD contribution and asset capture can be scaled cost-effectively, while the business model for service provision to the consumer develops.
These three examples cover the widest range of applications, from 4K/UHD contribution, to Full HD video over DSL lines, to any video at all over 2G networks in emerging economies. Quite a feat ... and a lot of work.
NAB 2016 is truly behind us, but if the discussions we had at the show are anything to go by, the work is only starting.
If you want to know more about what we show and what we talked about while in Vegas, here are two handy videos: