Huawei exhibits its end-to-end solutions for 4K content distribution at the 4K Summit

When it comes to distributing high-quality content, “the key factor is bandwidth and latency management, in both cases mainly when it comes to live events,” said Miguel Ángel González, Solution Architest at Huawei.

Miguel Angel Gonzalez, Solution Architest de Huawei, has presented at the 4K Summit the solutions that the Chinese manufacturer offers to respond to the distribution of content with the highest quality.

At the beginning of his presentation he highlighted that "content producers complain that their high-quality content is lost through the networks when it comes to reaching the end user." In this situation, “the key factor is bandwidth, and latency management, in both cases mainly when it comes to live events,” he stressed.

As for the devices, they must be able to decode and process 4K HDR and HFR content without any loss of quality.

As far as coding is concerned, in González's opinion, it is key to reduce bandwidth when distributing 4K content. While bandwidth can be reduced with H.265 by up to 35%, other technologies such as EyeQ developed by Harmonic They would allow the bitrate to be reduced even further. In addition, it recognizes that the future H.266 standard could be an option to take into account with an eye on 8K.

The Huawei manager has analyzed other factors that intervene in quality and end user experience such as attendance, especially during the broadcast of major sporting events, or in prime time when the quality of the network usually decreases. To mitigate the spike effect in large events, it is considered necessary to develop nodes closer to the user and work with M-ABR architectures.

Regarding latency, the problem will be even greater with the generation of UHD content, he noted.

Huawei's proposal

Miguel Ángel González has exposed some of the end to end solutions that Huawei has developed to respond to all these challenges. In coding, it is worth highlighting that the manufacturer closed a strategic alliance with Harmonic y Atem benefiting from the advanced technology of both brands.
Huawei has its own platform that covers headend, CDN, terminal and network. In its portfolio we can find everything from high-performance streaming servers to devices and chipsets that support 4K HDR. In addition, the manufacturer has an important network presence and can combine different solutions to improve quality.

In this 4K Summit he is also demonstrating interesting tools that aim to help content producers to carry out new projects intelligently.

Finally, González has shared two success stories that use Huawei technology. On the one hand, Sichuan Telecom, the first Chinese platform to provide 4K content to end users, is an end-to-end solution that reaches more than 100 million users. On the other hand, Altibox (Norway), with an end-to-end proposal with 4K technology and multicast with numerous live channels.