Ericsson willing to accompany broadcasters and operators throughout the entire value chain in their next challenges

Whether in content creation, media preparation and management, publishing, distribution and consumption, broadcasters and telco operators face new challenges in which Ericsson intends to play a key role in the provision of services and technology.

As is becoming clear at NAB 2015, television is undergoing dizzying changes. Both in content creation, as well as in media preparation and management, publication, distribution and consumption, broadcasters and telco operators face new challenges in which Ericsson aims to play a key role in the provision of services and technology.

With the background of having more than 16.7 million subscribers and more than 500 channels that use Ericsson technology to access audiovisual content and with five Emmys in its showcases for its commitment to R&D, the Swedish company is willing to transform the industry with innovative proposals in creative services, access, playout, content exchange, ingestion, LTE broadcast, Cloud DVR, multi-screen and multi-platform processing, media distribution networks...

Over the last few years and through the purchase of a series of strategic companies, Ericsson has managed to bring together a complete portfolio of solutions for content creation, media preparation and management, publishing, distribution and consumption.

The acquisition of technology from Tandberg, Technicolor, Microsoft Mediaroom, Red Bee, Fabrix and Azyki Systems has elevated Ericsson to a privileged position in the market.

Tv anywhere with implementation of Cloud TV and IPTV services, video networks (mobility, virtualization and LTE Broadcast, as axes) and media services (consulting, integration systems and managed services) are the pillars on which Ericsson will strengthen its strategy in the sector as has been evident in the distribution of spaces at its stand at NAB 2015.

Cloud storage

Ericsson has presented a cloud DVR solution in Las Vegas, available on all IP-based QAM TV platforms. This application is consumer-oriented and powered by Ericsson's video processing and storage platform, a high-performance software-based infrastructure.

Ericsson's new platform offers a unique and proven infrastructure, enabling seamless expansion and replacement of previous TV services with new cloud-based services. Integrate and virtualize the storage and processing capabilities of as many existing servers as necessary, providing an outstanding improvement in performance and saving operators many of the complexities and costs associated with launching new services.

In addition to enabling the most proven cloud DVR deployments at scale, Ericsson's 159+ petabytes of storage and video processing platform also enables multiple video storage and processing applications.

Among them, a master video library with scaled storage stands out that offers the possibility of consuming, processing and streaming, anywhere, the masters or copies with authorized content.

This solution also features an extended long tail server, which allows operators to store and deliver less popular content directly from a large central storage chamber, eliminating the need to replicate entire video libraries at the edge of the network. This cloud DVR features a dynamic source server as the high-performance scaled storage has built-in recording, storage and playback functions.

As for the CDN (Content Delivery Network), it allows operators to expand their video library and broadcast their content in streaming, as well as operate in traditional systems. Finally, its enhanced VoD increases performance, flexibility and scaling in VoD solutions.

Ericsson launches subtitling service in the US

Ericsson has announced the launch of its new subtitling service in the United States. The company will establish a TV and media services center in Atlanta, Georgia, to offer captioning and video description services to domestic and international clients beginning in April 2015.

Ericsson's subtitling services will be delivered through the corporate and programmed software platform, which has been developed in-house using market-leading speech recognition technologies. This launch allows multiple subtitlers to prepare and offer services to clients in real time, making the most of the reuse of subtitles once the material is broadcast. This service helps encourage discovery and delivery of content or improve file search. The platform is currently being used to offer both live and delayed subtitling services for major broadcast clients including the BBC and Sky.

Ericsson's subtitling service is the largest in Europe and has been active for more than 30 years. The company delivers 200,000 hours of titles each year, 80,000 of which are live. It is also the world's largest provider of audio description and sign language translation.

Likewise, in December 2014, Ericsson inaugurated the Mediadome in France, one of the most advanced TV and media centers in Europe, with state-of-the-art television facilities of more than 3,000 m2 that house the offices of Canal+Overseas.

Ericsson also plans to launch video description services for the blind in the US in the coming months.

In August 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defined new regulations aimed at increasing the quality of closed captioning services and providing smoother, more accurate closed captioning communication with broader programming.

The FCC has planned a series of key dates for the broadcast of Spanish and English language programs broadcast in the United States:
· Since January 15, 2015, video distributors and broadcasters are required to comply with certain guidelines for accuracy, synchronization, completeness and location of subtitling for online video content.
· Since January 1, 2016, clips taken from a program and published on the Internet, known as straight-lift clips, must be subtitled.
· Since January 1, 2017, video clip montages must be subtitled.