Viewer demand will drive technology adoption in 2019

Virgilio Sanz, Senior Solutions Engineer at Akamai Technologies, outlines in this Tribune some of the technological trends that will mark the year that is now beginning.

A few days before the end of the year, everything indicates that in 2019 the Viewer demand will drive technology adoption.

In 2018, 100 million televisions were sold with 4K support Around the world, viewers will wonder where the content is to enjoy this technology. With the successful OTT tests in 4K During this summer and some premium SVOD services providing 4K content (albeit with a limited and still expensive catalogue), viewers are likely to start looking for 4K content, mostly for on-demand content.

But, the jury is still out on 4K and it won't prevail across all platforms or genres. However, it has been shown that the HDR (High Dynamic Range) has an immediate impact on viewers. Better pixels, rather than more, improve the TV experience immediately, and don't have the same cost challenges in production.

The good news is that many of those 4K TVs also support HDR, so we may start to see the technology come into play before 4K has a chance to adapt.

On the other hand, viewers will have to wait to see any powerful impact of 5G in video delivery.

If we see any presentation related to 5G and broadcasting, we are likely to come away disappointed as the great advances in mobile connectivity and video delivery are taking longer to wait than anticipated when 5G services began to be rolled out.

As 5G develops, so does the ability to deliver higher quality video, both to mobile devices and to viewers who are “off the grid” for fixed broadband connectivity. Many have even proposed that the future of linear broadcasting will be determined by the 3GPP.

But as we dig into this promise, we can see that actual adoption of 5G services for linear delivery will not happen before 2023, likely several months later. However, at Akamai we can predict that in 2019 there will be more testing, and a better understanding of what the technology can really bring.