no date on this cribbed post from RB, donna reeves is the vp in charge of the media and entertainment division of GX i think:
The Expanding Digital Universe: Ready for Prime Time
by Donna Reeves
A decade ago, the promise of convergence between the Internet, high definition television, and other nascent technologies seemed just around the corner. The media and entertainment industry imagined a Jetson-esque world where computer-generated interactive video-on-demand could be sent instantly from content provider to consumer at the touch of a button. Production and distribution costs would plummet and time-to-market would dramatically accelerate. Most industry observers still forecast those developments, but over the past few years as technology drove efficiencies in other industries, for media and entertainment the pace of change was frustratingly slow. The ideas were there, but the technological infrastructure just wasn’t available – until now. The future that was once imagined has been tested, and it is both real and reliable – reaching standards of speed and quality many skeptics may have thought impossible.
In February 2001 Global Crossing successfully transmitted uncompressed HDTV and SDTV video between Japan and the U.S. over its fiber network. The content included pre-recorded Olympic opening ceremony footage, a baseball game, and various scenic views. Using STM-4C circuits to transmit SDTV at 270Mbps and HDTV at 1.5Gbps, the programming was transmitted more than 12,400 miles from Tokyo to Seattle with outstanding broadcast quality and no significant delays. Most importantly, it demonstrated to the industry that fiber-optic cable is a less expensive, more reliable, higher-quality alternative to satellites for real-time video transmission. Skeptics who had said “I’ll believe it when I see it” were suddenly seeing the future before their eyes.
Currently, satellites are the most common medium used to transmit live video signals across the Pacific. Since only a limited amount of transponder space is available, common practice is to compress an NTSC signal to 45 MBps for transmission -- compression that affects picture quality.
In order to enable more stability when broadcasting high-quality video, such as overseas major league sports broadcasts, in real-time, the answer is to produce bandwidth-intensive uncompressed video transmissions. The only system that can handle the need for such capacity is a super-high-speed fiber-optic network.
Live Sports Across the World Via Fiber: A Pipe Dream?
The industry has now been there and done that – successfully. In April 2001, NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation sent a high definition transmission of the Seattle Mariners opening day game via fiber across the Pacific for live broadcast in Japan. Other games have followed and the broadcasts are scheduled to continue all season.
The Olympics: A Case Study for the Pace of Change
Remember the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta? Due to prohibitive costs of sending signals from Atlanta to Japan, the sole HD broadcaster in the world (NHK) could only broadcast the opening and closing ceremonies live. Production was digital but the broadcast was analog, as was the HD network. The live HD signal was compressed and bounced via satellite from Atlanta to a downlink in California, uplinked to a Pacific transponder, downlinked again in Japan and uplinked once again to the NHK satellite that delivered the signal to the approximately 500,000 Japanese homes with high definition televisions.
In other homes, state of the art modems on new PC's were 28.8k, streaming media was a fantasy, and the various Olympic websites promised no real-time pictures or data. Under the volume of thousands of hits, website access was often slow and difficult. The same access difficulties faced the press and officials as they logged on to the digital real-time data transmissions set up for them.
Salt Lake City's 2002 Olympics will reflect the tremendous capabilities of the digital age. All production will be digital, in both HD and NTSC. The Broadcast Center will feed multiple High Definition and SDTV signals to broadcasters in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Latin America. Some are being sent to their final destination via all-fiber networks, some via hybrid fiber/satellite combinations.
Numerous Olympic web sites around the world will allow millions to log on simultaneously for streaming audio and video, to download stills, to get real time data and background information as their nation's athletes compete, even to buy Olympic memorabilia on-line. There will be constant real-time data transmissions from every venue to the Broadcast Center, the IOC office, the Press Center, to visitors centers and to other sites around the world. There’s no way to predict what other technologies may also be developed. After all, there are ten months to go, and the expansion of the digital universe has surprised us before.
What has made this expansion possible? Among the factors: the explosive growth of bandwidth made available by fiber, the reductions in transmission, storage and other user costs made possible by fiber's ubiquity and the rapid spread of broadband applications now being put into place. As the media and entertainment industry moves toward more and more digitization of content, participants throughout the industry realize they can create, collaborate on, produce, store, and distribute this content in a completely digital environment using computers, applications, servers, and networks.
Global Crossing's worldwide fiber-optic network is in the middle of this revolution, providing the foundation on which this universe is being built. Now, with the creation of its Media and Entertainment Division, Global Crossing will also take the lead in providing the industry critical value-added services for the digital age.
Global Crossing Media and Entertainment: Finally, the Future is Now
It's the 21st century and we're in the middle of a sea change. We know the future is digital: it’s interactive, it’s bandwidth-intensive, it’s user-customized.
And it’s coming fast.
Signs of the times:
FCC mandate for digital broadcasting by 2006
Similar mandates and initiatives around the world: for example Japan, Canada, Europe, and Latin America
Growth of fiber transmission of uncompressed high definition and standard television signals to digital networks
Increased integration of content between television and the Web (an estimated 50% of all websites will have streaming media components by the end of 2001)
Faster than expected rise in popularity of DVD technology among consumers
Proliferation of broadband and declining cost of fiber connectivity and storage
Firsts tests of digital transmission of feature films directly to theaters
Despite these indisputable trends, there are many unknowns. How quickly will the media and entertainment industry need to change? Probably more quickly than we anticipate. Where will the greatest future demands for digital services be? Perhaps in segments that barely exist today. Where will the greatest revenue opportunities be? We can only make educated guesses.
The one constant in this universe is that content is gold. And when that content -- the film, video and music libraries that are the foundation of the media and entertainment business – becomes "digital assets," content providers must radically rethink their business models to reflect that new reality. There are two key drivers for change in the business and revenue side of the industry:
The reality that successful companies must collaborate with complementary service providers to stay on the leading edge of digitization
The need for alliances with true partners and collaborators, not just suppliers
Global Crossing is poised to become just such a partner to the media and entertainment industry. Much more than a traditional service provider, Global Crossing has made it a point to understand the concerns of the M&E industry in the digital age. In response, it has created its Media and Entertainment division specifically to build an Extranet for the industry.
What It Means To Be “On-Net”
A virtual community of industry-leading companies operating over a secure shared infrastructure, the Media and Entertainment Extranet will offer a complete package of dedicated M&E-specific services, with Global Crossing’s core fiber network as its cornerstone. For the industry, it will mean realizing the same benefits that would normally be afforded by a private network along with greater quality of service, security, reliability, and scalability – at a much lower cost. The Extranet provides a customizable, seamless, fully managed end-to-end communications platform to facilitate content sharing within the media and entertainment sphere while protecting the exclusivity of the data speeding through the network of fiber, routers and servers. Fast, reliable, secure and cost-efficient – and tailored to the needs of media and entertainment companies.
Extranet Components: The Media Exchange
The Media Exchange segment of the Media and Entertainment Extranet is designed to address the pressing concerns facing content providers as they expand their digital operations:
Movement of existing non-digital assets to the digital universe
Protection against piracy: securing content during both delivery and storage
Integration of programming, distribution, and billing needs
On-demand delivery protocols-- enabling customers to self-select and access high quality, multimedia content anytime, anywhere
To address these issues, the Media Exchange provides clients with access to a range of applications, customizable as needed, including these basic components:
Encoding/Encryption
Security: firewall, sniffer, watermarking
Digital Asset Management: database, search, indexing, cataloging
Production: editing, duplication, special effects
Transaction Engines: tracking, billing, etc.
More than that, the Media Exchange provides its clients with the expertise and collaboration of the Global Crossing Media and Entertainment management team: a team with substantial M&E industry experience as well as telecommunications expertise; a team with a global orientation, including in-depth knowledge of local concerns; and a team engaged in on-going dialogue with key personnel at every level of the M&E industry.
Extranet Components: The Network Operations Center
The Media and Entertainment Extranet will do more than make bandwidth available. It will add the core services of storage, streaming and security -- administered by a Network Operations Center located within Global Crossing with its own dedicated M&E broadcast-experienced staff. Media Suites in key cities along the network will have the dedicated space for actual storage, streaming and security-related applications.
Sounds Great, But How Much Will It Cost?
The economics of sharing the Global Crossing network, storage, streaming, hosting and integrated services with other media companies will provide substantial savings over the costs of piecing together an ad hoc Extranet from various providers. Pricing for services is consumption/usage based. The proliferation of broadband has already greatly decreased the cost of fiber connectivity and storage, making Global Crossing's Media and Entertainment offering the most cost-effective way to expand into the digital universe.
The Network Behind the Media and Entertainment Extranet
Today Global Crossing already provides the largest wholly-owned fiber-optic infrastructure in the world: 101,000 seamless route miles built, managed, owned and operated exclusively by Global Crossing. Unlike the patchwork of owners and providers common on other networks, Global Crossing is the one company fully accountable for performance and reliability.
Our network is fast, secure, reliable and cost-efficient.
No other telecommunications provider comes close.
The network's fiber-optic cables run below the surface of the Atlantic and the Pacific moving data at the speed of light and emerging at coastal landing stations along the coasts of North and South America, Europe and Asia. Connecting to terrestrial wires, the network links more than 200 major cities around the world.
Global Crossing is also expanding each of its metropolitan networks by constructing a series of city rings to provide building-to-building connectivity.
Global Crossing’s network brawn is immense, its design intelligent. The entire state-of-the-art system is designed to handle high capacity voice and data transmissions using the latest dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) technology, allowing for easy expandability. Further specifications include self-healing ring structures, erbium-doped fiber amplifier repeaters and the use of redundant capacity ensures outstanding reliability and service. The network allows Global Crossing to instantly turn up applications and increase bandwidth requirements for a client at any time, anywhere in the world. No waiting for additional connections or bandwidth, no delays while people are deployed to install new equipment.
Importantly for the media and entertainment industry, the network's offerings include scalable bandwidth up to OC 192, uncompressed 270mgb TV broadcast capabilities to virtually anywhere on the globe, high resolution transmission of filmed content, as well as massive worldwide storage capabilities supporting complete digital asset management.
Global Crossing’s technology provides a video transmission medium that is less expensive, more reliable, and higher quality than satellites -- with virtually unlimited capacity. It also provides a protocol neutral distribution system accommodating data up to the high resolutions needed for film and all high definition formats. Platform capabilities include frame relay, ATM and IP-based services, all available internationally.
The Network’s Future Applications
To be even more responsive to the media and entertainment industry’s growing demand for digital services, Global Crossing is utilizing the full scale and scope of its broadband network. Key cities for the media and entertainment community will be connected with dedicated wavelengths, giving instant access to an array of services, including the distribution of:
DVD quality video
CD quality audio
Live event broadcasting
Feature film and commercial production materials
On-demand applications
Global Crossing’s media and entertainment division will allow companies in the industry community to “plug into” a global infrastructure with rich capacity, redundancy, and the highest level of security. As the need to select and access high quality, rich media content anytime, anywhere increases, Global Crossing will provide the capacity to meet both today’s needs for distribution of data and digital assets as well as to accommodate the future explosion in demand for broadband services.
Partners For Transition, Partners for the Future
The Media and Entertainment Markets Division of Global Crossing is committed to serving its clients not just state-of-the-art broadband technology, but also with the tools needed to make that technology work for the M&E industry. We ensure that our customers have options for the future as they deal with today's needs in a rapidly changing industry.
Our goal is to be an active partner in creating an environment that allows the industry to deliver the dynamic content the audience wants, while finding the best ways for that content to generate revenue. The profitable digital business of the will be a partnership built among content providers, service providers and the audience. Global Crossing Media and Entertainment is moving toward that future today. |
