There is no arguing the cloud and streaming microservices radically changed the way operators engineer their streaming services. Traditional .

There is no arguing the cloud and streaming microservices radically changed the way operators engineer their streaming services. Traditional broadcasting involves lots of hardware racked and stacked in data centres because those companies service viewers only within their geographic reach. Streaming, though, is a loosely-federated collection of different technologies which can be installed and operated from anywhere in the world. This makes streaming technology ideal to service viewers wherever they wish to watch content.

Although this approach to delivering content represents the future of how people watch video, it also introduces a host of new challenges, such as scale. Massive numbers of simultaneous users can, unlike in traditional broadcast, overwhelm resources if there isn’t enough capacity. That’s what makes the cloud so important to streaming.

Streaming product developers and operations engineers understand the need for the cloud which is why most of the stack is already there: encoders, transcoders, DRM servers, caches, monitoring probes, etc. Everything that can be virtualised has been so that delivery capacity is dynamic. The stack can scale up and down depending how many users are requesting content and at what bitrate--obviously, this is something impossible to achieve with hardware, on the same timeline, and with the same elasticity.

The cloud is the only feasible way streaming operators can meet regional and global demand for content without spending unpredictably high amounts of money on physical infrastructure. In that sense, the next step towards true scalability and redundancy are streaming microservices.

The cloud has evolved

Although the streaming video tech stack is an evolution of the broadcast tech stack, it too is evolving because of how the cloud is changing. When streaming operators first adopted the cloud as their primary infrastructure, it was all about virtualised instances. What they realised was that it was much easier (and cheaper) to manage, maintain, and monitor virtualised infrastructure. For example, the number of server instances could be increased programmatically in relation to demand. That’s a stark contrast to using physical servers which need hands to rack-and-stack.

The problem is, virtualization doesn’t provide the kind of scale that streaming really needs. Spinning up a new server instance still requires quite a bit of time, and in some cases, a reservation with the cloud provider (there are only so many instances available for specific configurations).

The cloud is less about virtualised servers and more about containers.

These are slimmed down operating systems tailored to run a specific application. Using Docker and Kubernetes, streaming engineers are able to quickly and easily scale technology components within the workflow. With DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, streaming technology teams have so much more control over the elasticity of their infrastructure and the deployment of the technologies in the stack. Still, scale is a challenge. Yes, containers are better at scale than virtualised instances, but there are resource constraints.

Think about it like this: a bare metal server used by a cloud service provider may be able to host 100 virtual machines, but it can host 1000 containers.

Why you should use containers and streaming microservices

Many streaming operators, if not most, have embraced DevOps and containers to develop and deploy their technology stack. However, this has only worked up to a point, with the problem being that the tech stack is growing in complexity. A combination of device proliferation coupled with non-standard protocols and codecs means a fragmented workflow where software is being continually expanded to ensure it can handle the complexity. This means bigger, fatter containers which is exactly opposite of the v...

The scheme to rate mobile phone models based on eco-friendly criteria is ready to be launched globally but there is one device maker that still does .

The scheme to rate mobile phone models based on eco-friendly criteria is ready to be launched globally but there is one device maker that still does not appear on the list of participants.

The Eco Rating scheme unveiled by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, Telia Company and Vodafone in May was initially rolled out in 24 European countries, followed by South Africa and Brazil, via Vodafone’s Vodacom and Telefónica’s Vivo respectively.

The telcos said they are now ready for global expansion, although the countries next on the launch list are all in South America: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. That those locations are next up suggests that Telefónica, which offers mobile services in all of them, is the driving force behind this next phase of expansion.

As well as rolling out the scheme in additional markets, the operators have secured buy-in from more vendors. At launch, there were a dozen phone makers on board, including big guns like Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo. Apple – you guessed it – was conspicuous by its absence and remains so, as does Google, although another three brands have joined the party: Fairphone, Realme and Vivo.

In all, more than 150 mobile phone models are now covered by the Eco Rating initiative. That’s more than double the number included at launch.

So, what does it actually do? The overriding goal of the initiative is, in the words of the telcos, “to provide consistent, accurate information at retail on the environmental impact of producing, using, transporting and disposing of smartphones and feature phones.” There’s a detailed Eco Rating methodology through which devices are scored across 19 different criteria designed to assess the environmental performance of a device through its lifespan. Theoretically, the maximum score a device could achieve is 100, although we gather that’s virtually impossible. The system also rates devices under five headings including durability, repairability, recyclability, climate efficiency, and resource efficiency.

As for which devices are scoring highly, well, that’s hard to say. A quick trawl round the domestic sites of some of the founder members of the scheme shows that the information is not readily available. I’m happy to be corrected, but I didn’t find it anywhere. When the scheme launch the telcos said it would guide customers at the point of sale, which possible means only in retail outlets. But if that’s the case – or indeed if the information exists online but is buried somewhere – then the scheme loses much of its efficacy.

In an era in which consumers are becoming much more environmentally aware, with an increasing number keen to make purchasing choices based on such criteria, the Eco Rating scheme is a big step in the right direction. But if the information is difficult to find, then this is just a CSR box ticking exercise. What’s the point?

Streaming has a dirty secret. The carbon footprint produced by fans watching a month of Netflix’s top 10 global TV hits is equivalent to driving a car a hefty distance beyond Saturn. The world’s largest video-sharing site, YouTube, is responsible for emitting enough carbon dioxide annually to far .

Streaming has a dirty secret. The carbon footprint produced by fans watching a month of Netflix’s top 10 global TV hits is equivalent to driving a car a hefty distance beyond Saturn.

The world’s largest video-sharing site, YouTube, is responsible for emitting enough carbon dioxide annually to far surpass the equivalent greenhouse gas output of Glasgow, the Scottish city where world leaders will be gathering from Sunday at the Cop26 climate summit.

While much of the focus of campaigners falls on sectors that emit the most CO2 – such as aviation, automotive and food – the explosion in popularity of services from Disney+ to Netflix is raising the question of just how bad the streaming boom is for the planet.

Every activity in the chain required to stream video, from the use of huge datacentres and transmission over wifi and broadband to watching the content on a device, requires electricity – the majority of which is generated by emitting greenhouse gases.

“Strangely, environmental impact is a very young story in the streaming industry,” says Dom Robinson, the founder of Greening of Streaming, a fledgling body that aims to address the sector’s energy impact. “People talk about the bottlenecks in internet traffic caused by the growing demand for streaming and gaming services, but there is plenty of capacity, it is actually about the growing demand for power supply.”

Netflix paid just £4m in UK corporation tax on £1.15bn from British subscribers

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Netflix has estimated that one hour of streaming by one user on its platform produces “well under” 100g of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) – a unit of measure that indicates carbon footprint. More specifically, the Carbon Trust says the European average is 55g to 56g of CO2e for every hour of streaming video. That is equivalent to driving about 300 metres in a car.

Netflix recently gave a rare insight into its most popular global hits by total hours viewed, a metric it said last week it intended to publish more frequently. It reported that fans clocked up more than 6bn hours watching the top 10 shows – which included Squid Game, Stranger Things, Money Heist and Bridgerton – in the first 28 days after each show was released.

This equates to about 1.13bn miles (1.8bn km) of travel in a car based on the Carbon Trust estimate – the approximate equivalent of the current distance between Earth and Saturn.

As for YouTube, a report by researchers at Bristol University based on estimates of the streaming site’s usage in 2016, calculated that watching videos on the streaming site produced CO2e of more than 11m tonnes a year, similar to a city the size of Glasgow or Frankfurt. Given YouTube had 1.4 billion users that year, and now has more than 2.4 billion users globally, the company’s carbon footprint will be significantly bigger today.

Earlier this year, Netflix announced its aim to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022. The move follows similar climate-friendly aspirations announced in recent years by the large Silicon Valley companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Facebook. In the UK, companies including BT, the BBC and Sky have promised to hit net zero by 2030.

Robinson says such strategies must involve major reductions in emissions rather than just investing in green projects if they are to achieve carbon neutrality.

“Net zero has become the new carbon tax off-setting, to be able to say: ‘This is not my problem.’ There has to be a reduction engineered within businesses, not just an accounting trick, to make a difference,” he says.

“We have created Greening of Streaming because we know there is sufficient appetite within the streaming sector to make positive changes to...

And they say it's the world's fastest.

It appears a quantum computer rivalry is growing between the U.S. and China.

Physicists in China claim they've constructed two quantum computers with performance speeds that outrival competitors in the U.S., debuting a superconducting machine, in addition to an even speedier one that uses light photons to obtain unprecedented results, according to a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journals Physical Review Letters and Science Bulletin.

China has exaggerated the capabilities of its technology before, but such soft spins are usually tagged to defense tech, which means this new feat could be the real deal.

China's quantum computers still make a lot of errors

The supercomputer, called Jiuzhang 2, can calculate in a single millisecond a task that the fastest conventional computer in the world would take a mind-numbing 30 trillion years to do. The breakthrough was revealed during an interview with the research team, which was broadcast on China's state-owned CCTV on Tuesday, which could make the news suspect. But with two peer-reviewed papers, it's important to take this seriously. Pan Jianwei, lead researcher of the studies, said that Zuchongzhi 2, which is a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum computer is an incredible 10 million times faster than Google's 55-qubit Sycamore, making China's new machine the fastest in the world, and the first to beat Google's in two years.

The Zuchongzhi 2 is an improved version of a previous machine, completed three months ago. The Jiuzhang 2, a different quantum computer that runs on light, has fewer applications but can run at blinding speeds of 100 sextillion times faster than the biggest conventional computers of today. In case you missed it, that's a one with 23 zeroes behind it. But while the features of these new machines hint at a computing revolution, they won't hit the marketplace anytime soon. As things stand, the two machines can only operate in pristine environments, and only for hyper-specific tasks. And even with special care, they still make lots of errors. "In the next step we hope to achieve quantum error correction with four to five years of hard work," said Professor Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, which is in the southeastern province of Anhui.

China's quantum computers could power the next-gen advances of the coming decades

"Based on the technology of quantum error correction, we can explore the use of some dedicated quantum computers or quantum simulators to solve some of the most important scientific questions with practical value," added Pan. The circuits of the Zuchongzhi have to be cooled to very low temperatures to enable optimal performance for a complex task called random walk, which is a model that corresponds to the tactical movements of pieces on a chessboard.

The applications for this task include calculating gene mutations, predicting stock prices, air flows in hypersonic flight, and the formation of novel materials. Considering the rapidly increasing relevance of these processes as the fourth industrial revolution picks up speed, it's no exaggeration to say that quantum computers will be central in key societal functions, from defense research to scientific advances to the next generation of economics.

Office Hours, a decentralized support group where anyone can meet and ask technical questions about producing audio, video, and online media, has .

Whether you're new at producing video or an old hand, imagine a tech support site staffed by the leading lights of audio, video, and online production, where you could go and ask for help whenever you wanted. It actually exists: Office Hours is an ongoing series of remote Zoom sessions for media producers that run every day, seven days per week. It launched at the beginning of the pandemic and has been growing ever since.

Origin of a Great Idea

Office Hours is the brainchild of Alex Lindsay, a 51-year-old Northern California tech industry veteran whose career includes pit stops in gaming, movie special effects, and animation. Lindsay has also done pioneering work in the field of streaming video. Many of the tech pros in the Office Hours community have known of Lindsay for years because of his association with the MacBreak Weekly podcast on the TWiT network. His video streaming clients have included Adobe, Facebook, Google, Salesforce, and the Obama White House. Shortly before the pandemic was officially declared, he was hired as head of operations at 090 Media, a live events and video streaming company in La Jolla, CA.

“This organization wouldn’t exist if the pandemic hadn’t happened,” Lindsay said of Office Hours, which he didn’t think would last more than a few months. He initially assumed that he’d be answering all the tech queries himself “What I didn’t expect was the caliber of the people who were going to show up,” he said. “Within a couple of weeks, it became less about me giving advice and us having a discussion.”

Alex Lindsay. (Office Hours)

Here’s an example. Tlaloc Lopez-Waterman, a professional lighting, projections, and scenic designer based in New York City, recently parked his Fifth Wheel camping trailer at a Walmart outside Minneapolis and went online to help shade some video cameras for a cooking show in South Africa. Shading involves adjusting a camera’s exposure, white balance, saturation, and contrast.

“I just thought, ‘Okay, we actually live in the future,’” Lopez-Waterman recalled with a chuckle.

Lopez-Waterman was in the Midwest for a freelance gig. But he did the camera shading pro bono because the cooking show’s host and her doctor husband were friends from Office Hours. Numbering several thousand technophiles from practically every continent on the planet, the community was born on March 25, 2020, as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. Lopez-Waterman, who has worked in theater and opera for 20 years, is one of the dozens of regulars who provide free advice on audio, video, and online production.

At the start of the pandemic, his company, Light Conversations, LLC, saw four months of work vanish in a few days. In a process he referred to as “trial by fire and a lot of quick learning,” Lopez-Waterman prepared for a job that involved 10 remote performers—university students in their homes and dorm rooms—with more than a thousand video cues. In subsequent gigs, Lopez-Waterman used proprietary software for Zoom developed by another regular on the Office Hours panel of professionals.

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“This is less a testament to technology and more a testament to community,” Lopez-Waterman said.

How the Sessions Work

Office Hours runs for two hours on weekdays, beginning at 7:00 a.m. PT. The first hour consists of questions put to a panel of between 15 and 25 knowledgeable tech people. While the conversation is open to everyone no matter what level their degree of te...

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has launched some new software that claims to guarantee consistent low latency for things like VR and remote control.If .

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has launched some new software that claims to guarantee consistent low latency for things like VR and remote control.

If anything is considered to be truly novel about 5G it’s low latency. More bandwidth and arguably better IoT support are merely refinements of was is already available but the near-eradication of delay across mobile networks is expected to unlock all kinds of whizzy new use-cases such as mobile-enabled virtual reality and the ability to remotely control things over 5G.

That technological new dawn has been slow to arrive, however, which is what Ericsson is seeking to address with its new Time-Critical Communication software toolbox. The vendor claims it ‘will guarantee the consistent low latency and high reliability demanded by time-critical applications and services,’ according to the press release.

“Ericsson continues to introduce innovative 5G solutions that fuel the global uptake of 5G,” said Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks. “Now we are taking 5G to the next level with Time-Critical Communication, a solution that will give our customers the tools to expand their offerings for the consumer, enterprise, and public sectors and further monetize 5G effectively.”

We were a bit surprised to learn such a thing was necessary after all the hype around 5G and low latency, so we spoke to Marie Hogan, Head of Mobile Broadband Voice & New Business at Ericsson, to seek a bit of clarification. “Current mobile networks including with 5G are built for mobile broadband type of services, optimizing for data rates or high throughputs without any guarantees regarding latency,” explained Hogan.

“In contrast, Time-Critical Communication is designed to secure data delivery within specific latency bounds with the desired reliability. By introducing Time-Critical Communication in 5G Networks, the latency aspect has been prioritized over throughput, which is a fundamental difference when comparing with enhanced mobile broadband, which is best effort only.

“Ericsson has identified six major causes of latency and interruption in mobile networks, which include congestion, radio environment, mobility, standards or protocols, power saving, network topology. Ericsson approaches Time-Critical Communication by addressing these sources of latency and interruptions while efficiently co-existing with enhanced mobile broadband and other services in the network.”

Presumably this software comes into its own during network slicing, when a customer is seeking to prioritize the low latency capabilities of the network over all others. It is, however, an add-on to the broader Ericsson RAN offering that you have to pay extra for, so it’s only available to Ericsson RAN customers.

Ericsson trotted out a few of them to talk about their low latency adventures and, suffice it to say, they all said it’s great. We’re not aware of any equivalent launches from Ericsson’s main competitors, so this could give Ericsson an advantage in this space. Having said that, many of the use-cases, such as mobile VR, are still some way from proving their commercial viability.

It’s obviously a big deal for Ericsson though, they even got the main man to do a vid about it.

UK pubcasters the BBC and ITV have announced a range of measures to deliver on climate action commitments. The BBC has set its sights on achieving net .

UK pubcasters the BBC and ITV have announced a range of measures to deliver on climate action commitments.

The BBC has set its sights on achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by pursuing a deep decarbonisation’ strategy that drastically reduces the amount of carbon produced by the organisation.

Details of the strategy include: switching to renewables and electric vehicles; reducing business travel; continuing to implement more sustainable production methods, such as BBC Studios’ use of hydrogen and battery powered generators on Winterwatch; and working collaboratively with the BBC’s suppliers to reduce emissions within their own organisations.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) also approved the BBC’s targets to reducing emissions for scope 1 and 2 (direct operations such as those from buildings and general energy use) by 46% by 2030, while the broadcaster also plans to reduce scope 3 emissions – such as business travel and those of its suppliers – by 28% over the same time frame.

ITV has agreed to the same targets as the BBC, while also becoming a zero waste and zero single use plastic business, and running a 100% sustainable supply chain.

The broadcaster said that it will introduce climate action targets into the bonus scheme, and also committed to ensuring that all programmes produced and commissioned by ITV from 2021 onwards will go through sustainable certification through BAFTA’s albert carbon calculator.

Of its pledges, Tim Davie, BBC Director-General, said: “At the start of the year we shared our ambition to reach net zero by 2030. Since then, there’s been a huge amount of work to put in place a credible and achievable plan. We are now converting that plan into action. This will be a huge collective effort. It won’t be easy, but we must act, and act now, to reduce our environmental impact.”

Carolyn McCall, ITV plc CEO, commented on the announcement: “Our Social Purpose ambition of shaping culture for good is integral to our overall strategy, informing both what audiences see on-screen and what happens behind the scenes. In the area of Climate Action, we’re making good progress on our ambitious goals, including being Net Zero by 2030.”

Damien has been a thought leader in the sector for many years. While relatively new to the sector, Nakchidil has a wealth of experience in Product .

Thu, Nov 04

www.smadvancedforum.com

Damien has been a thought leader in the sector for many years. While relatively new to the sector, Nakchidil has a wealth of experience in Product Management that she is bringing to the space..

The future of television is carbon neutral. “The idea of bringing computing capacity closer to energy production while still tapping into unused space .

What’s this project about?

Since 2020, one of Zattoo’s data centres has been located right inside a wind turbine. With the windCORES project of the wind farm operator Westfalenwind, we’re not just relying on renewable electricity from wind energy. The data that is generated when streaming via Zattoo runs through our own data centre, located right inside a wind turbine. This project is a real innovation and the first of its kind in the world.

Why is this so important?

Zattoo has around 3 million active users per month and up to 350,000 users per day. At peak times and during certain TV highlights, there are even around 600,000 users. In addition, Zattoo also makes its technology available as a TV-as-a-service platform to media companies and network operators worldwide. In Germany, Zattoo’s customers include 1&1 Telecom and NetCologne, and in Switzerland the network operator Salt Mobile. This makes Zattoo one of the largest TV streaming providers in Europe. More than 80 million hours are streamed via Zattoo every month. This generates more than 5 million gigabytes of data – every day! This meant our old data centres were using around 1 million kilowatt hours per year.

What’s the current status and what’s happening next?

The move of our first servers into the wind turbine took place at the end of 2020. First, we carried out various tests on our systems before putting the first servers into operation in mid-January. For our next step, we want to find out whether operation can be as stable, secure and reliable as it is in traditional data centres. This is extremely important for us because we have to ensure our service can be used around the clock. Gradually, more and more content will run through this green data centre. As the first streaming provider worldwide to move its servers into a wind turbine, we’re entering completely new territory with this project. If our expectations for the project are fulfilled, it’s likely the wind turbine will be our main location for our data centre.

At Netflix, we want to entertain the world. Whatever your taste, and no matter where you live, we give you access to best-in-class TV shows, movies .

At Netflix, we want to entertain the world. Whatever your taste, and no matter where you live, we give you access to best-in-class TV shows, movies and documentaries. Our members control what they want to watch, when they want it, with no ads, in one simple subscription. We’re streaming in more than 30 languages and 190 countries, because great stories can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere. We are the world’s biggest fans of entertainment, and we’re always looking to help you find your next favorite story.