What will the video industry look like 10 years from now?

Gilles FONTAINE

Deputy Managing Director
Director of TV & Digital Content Business Unit

Some views on the future of video from the IDATE think tank

The “Video As A Service” programme, which was managed by IDATE experts as part of the DigiWorld Institute’s Collaborative Research Programme, brought together 25 audiovisual industry professionals to explore what the future holds for the sector.

Over the course of three seminars held from September to November 2013, they discussed their views and those of the guest speakers, before establishing a consensus on the future of consumer behaviour, services and distribution. Although the complete results of the programme are available only to the think tank’s participants, we can share some of the more interesting ideas to emerge.

Lower barriers to entry

The leading media industry companies’ competitiveness used to be based on their control over three things: content, the networks and the devices. But video-on-demand offers are coming to undermine the exclusive content model, and the internet does away with the need to obtain a DTT broadcasting licence, or to negotiate with network operators that package pay-TV solutions. Added to which, the television is becoming an open access device.

Arrival of global players

If content production is already a relatively global business, distribution is still largely a national affair, controlled by national companies. But new entrants have a global footprint in mind.

Accelerated rate of technological development

For a long time, technological innovation in the audiovisual sector advanced at a snail’s pace. But the growing complexity of programme distribution today requires solutions that evolve as quickly as the internet does.

Software excellence becoming a key competitive edge

Intelligence centralised in the cloud to optimise the network, understanding where and how users are consuming their content, catering to a variety of devices, customising offers, offering the best possible user interface, making IT expertise a central part of media operators’ business.

More complex regulatory framework

Regulation that is specific to the audiovisual market, which in France is particularly strict, is not the only regulation to apply to the industry’s companies. With the increasing globalisation of both the markets and the companies that populate them, new sector-specific regulations, such as those concerning data privacy and net neutrality in some instances, or more generally the growing role played by common competition law, can result in a greater disconnect between cultural and economic regulation.

2014 Collaborative Research Programme: “What will tomorrow’s TV and video networks look like?”

In terms of screen time, traditional broadcasting networks are still the top distributors of TV programming. Depending on the country, terrestrial, satellite, cable and IPTV networks account for the majority of viewers’ screen time. But on-demand viewing is becoming increasingly popular with users, and increasingly available on portable devices.

In addition, the different networks are undergoing, and will continue to undergo performance-boosting upgrades, including the switch to DVB-T2 or DVB-Sx, the adoption of HEVC and VP9, and increased throughput on both fixed and mobile networks. Fixed and mobile internet networks want to incorporate linear multicasting.

All of which is creating new video distribution configurations. Hybrid solutions are already making the most of broadcast and unicast systems by combining fixed broadcasting and internet networks, and will soon include mobile broadcasting and internet systems as well. From a more general perspective, fixed and mobile internet networks can appear to be increasingly interchangeable, or at the very least complementary.

Further down the road, the dividing lines between the different types of network are bound to dissolve more and more: cellular networks providing last mile connections for fixed networks, the (already begun) convergence of fibre and cable, and the first forays into a unified wireless terrestrial network, capable of delivering both broadcast TV channels and unicast video services.

The longstanding configuration of TV broadcasting silos and services appears to be giving way to a more expansive view of hybrid systems, combinations that can be reconfigured according to the type of service being supplied and how mature the market is. Bringing this vision to full fruition would involve a sizeable change not only in the way spectrum is managed, but also in how technical distributors operate and how they interact with service providers.