Tom Ohanian, chief strategy officer at Signiant, examines the challenges and opportunities in fulfilling the IPTV digital supply chain.

Hopefully, we are well past the issue of whether or not people will consume content as part of an IPTV-offered scenario. The factual data clearly indicates that more viewers are consuming online and - just out - a new study further indicates that the amount of time that people watch content online will be equal to the amount of time they spend sleeping by the year 2013! On that, time will tell, but broadband penetration and ‘connectedness’ are both increasing and, as they do, IPTV delivered and consumed content will be just as ordinary as turning on the television set.

IPTV: Extending the consumption model
According to Media and Entertainment (M&E) research practices, broadband US penetration is hovering near 73%. But take a look at what is happening on an international basis: the US ranks almost 20th in broadband penetration. According to Point Topic, South Korea still leads all countries with 83% broadband penetration, followed by Hong Kong with 80.98%, and Iceland at 74%. It has been long debated as to whether IPTV-delivered programming is complementary and additive or cannibalistic of the existing traditional (terrestrial, cable, satellite) television audience. Initial returns on IPTV-related offerings for traditional content clearly indicate: it depends. Clearly given everything known about decreasing newspaper readership that people are looking elsewhere for ‘their news’. Yet a loyal audience will seek out additional broadband-delivered content which is not duplicative.
What does the research indicate? According to Gartner, the number of worldwide IPTV subscribers will grow to almost 49 million by 2010 with worldwide IPTV-related revenue growing from $872 million to $13.2 billion from 2006 to 2010. Clearly, the opportunity is there. How does content flow from the person or companies who are producing and post-producing the content to the companies that are hosting the content for consumption?

IPTV and the digital media supply chain
Moving content from raw form to finished form and delivering it to cable head-ends and Telco providers has its own unique set of challenges. IPTV content must be transformed in some fashion, such as various bit rates, resolutions, aspect ratios, file formats, etc. And, ultimately, all of this content movement must be tracked for eventual billing, rights management, and monetisation. IPTV represents yet another media supply chain that must be addressed and fulfilled. Solutions are necessary that facilitate moving digital assets from their raw form through a series of coordinated production processes to deliver digital assets to all required distribution channels (Figure 1 below). Each aspect of this supply chain can involve numerous sub-processes that take the form of workflows.

Figure 1: Digital assets are transformed through a series of processes to deliver the appropriate formats to the appropriate destinations.

Servicing the IPTV supply chain
To fulfill the IPTV supply chain, there are four distinct phases of supply: aggregate the content; format the content; distribute the content; and track the content. The central management of the content movement, content security, network bandwidth manipulation to ensure that service level agreement (SLA), and the automated workflow of processes that transform and package content are the key elements to the success of the supply chain.
Let’s examine a few scenarios. First, content must be aggregated from source locations. In many cases, this may equate to moving a finished file which represents a finished programme. The programme is complete and requires no additional work, formatting, etc. This file must then be moved from source location to a target location. The target location will typically be a cable head-end, a Telco, or a CDN (content delivery network). On the surface, this scenario seems fairly straightforward. But, let’s examine this simple point-to-point content movement a bit more closely. When we do, questions arise: Who determines when the content should move? Over which network? Using how much of the network? Who determines what firewall ports will be opened from the contributing organization and the receiving organisation? What are the notification methods for the sender and the receiver?
Now consider what happens when the amount of companies submitting content do not number one, but number 200 and the distribution outlets number 400? Do we have 200 open ports? 400 open ports? How do we ensure that finite network resources are used in the most appropriate fashion and that the content gets to the cable head-end in time for its scheduled consumption? And, now, consider the situations that arise when the content that needs to be aggregated and distributed is not a finished programme. A specific example is when we have content that exists in one language (English), but must be subtitled in another language and have thumbnails (picons) generated, as well as an accompanying .xml file noting start and expiration dates for playback.
Today, companies accomplish this using old-fashioned (read: human) methods of checking to make sure that the various forms of metadata and essence are accounted for. Again, a method with little hope to scale to the demands of multiple distribution venues. When we consider these scenarios, we begin to get a sense of how complicated it is to manage the IPTV content supply chain. Each of these scenarios demands a flexible approach to facilitate the ever-increasing amount of workflows necessary for IPTV-delivered content. To accomplish the demands of IPTV content delivery, companies must consider applications which centrally manage the movement of content; secure the content; accelerate the movement of content; and automate tasks that are sequenced and repetitive.
Fulfilling the IPTV supply chain involves the coordination of processes involved in content creation and distribution. Network topologies, network and data security, optimisation of bandwidth resources, and content tracking are all critical components to the complex series of relationships involving content owners and those offering IPTV-services. In the all-digital, any-content-on-any-device world that is inevitably shaping the M&E marketplace, IPTV supply chains are a critical function to be addressed and implemented.
www.signiant.com