El roadmap de Movistar Plus+: visión crítica y un futuro IP

José Luis García Cabrera, technical director of Movistar Plus+, anticipates the next roadmap of the Telefónica company, highlighting its position in relation to concepts such as IP, edge, cloud, remote production or augmented reality.

Garcia Cabrera, known for its position as COO of TSA (Telefónica Audiovisual Services), began at the beginning of the year a new challenge in which to deposit their knowledge and experience in the broadcast industry: the technical direction of Movistar Plus+. Without leaving aside his work in the integrative company, assumed additional responsibilities with an ambitious opportunity on the horizon: designing the technological evolution path of television.

The great technological modernization of its sets in Tres Cantos, with its corresponding migration to high definition, began in 2016. Since then, apart from Telefónica's strategy with respect to its platform as a global service, Movistar Plus+ has undertaken different renovations aimed at modernizing the execution of their formats, consolidating their remote production flows for the ACB and embrace all the possibilities of augmented and extended reality.

The nearest future appears full of unknowns. Is it time to bet on an IP infrastructure, as agents such as RTVE, Telemadrid or RTPA have approached? Should this evolution be developed in the current Tres Cantos facilities, whose contract ends in 2030, or should they be centralized in Distrito Telefónica? Will UHD become a standard or should efforts focus on consolidating HD HDR? Should we return to scenography with physical supports or continue creating virtual universes to bring imaginative worlds to television?

In this conversation, García Cabrera shares many of his approaches to these and other topics. In many cases, you will not have an answer completely defined, dada la incertidumbre global de un mercado que sigue buscando respuestas incesablemente. En otras, ofrece interesantes reflections que permiten vislumbrar el futuro de Movistar Plus+, en el que la producción original de contents, la apuesta por el sport and the entertainment formats seguirán ejerciendo como pilares dinamizadores his emisión lineal y oferta bajo demanda.

¿Es Movistar Plus+ una televisión a la vanguardia?

Movistar Plus+, ya sea por el valor vanguardista de producciones que desde sus inicios miraron a referentes europeos y estadounidenses, el buen hacer del equipo de profesionales que lo componen, o por el beneficio de contar con el apoyo de TSA, ha acometido todo tipo de mejoras tecnológicas to provide a top-level offer to its subscribers and, more recently, subscribers: “Movistar Plus+ continues to be a content platform with an important part of its own production and content aggregation,” says García Cabrera.

“Since five years we count con seven linked fixed pavilions and we produce the meetings from two controls located in our facilities. Three Songs jumping from one location to another, which gives a very important efficiency and positions us as early adopters of that technology.”

This leads the technical director of Movistar Plus+ to carefully evaluate the state of the service when asked if it is at the “avant-garde” in regards to state broadcast panorama: "The media It goes through different stages, and the state of the art is different in each area." For García Cabrera, sets or studios would be located in the "middle" line of production compared to other "televisions." Remote production is a completely different matter: "For a long time five years we count con seven linked fixed pavilions and we produce the meetings from two controls located in our facilities. Three Songs jumping from one location to another, which gives a very important efficiency and positions us as early adopters of that technology.”

In the general review of the Movistar Plus+ areas, García Cabrera also focuses on everything related to the content management flows, addressing the ingestion, verification, quality control or metadata: “En esta área nos apoyamos con soluciones propias que tienen un nivel de integración con las operaciones increíblemente alto. Hoy por hoy, esta área incluye toda la parte de MAM, archivo y CMS, de utilidad para nuestra distribución multiplataforma”. Todas estas soluciones han sido desarrolladas desde hace más de veinte años y han contado con un “evolutivo continuo” para adaptarse a las necesidades únicas de la plataforma, como pueda ser la agilidad en el time to market.

And roadmap a cinco años basado en Tres Cantos… o no

A comienzos de año, varios digitales pusieron en duda la continuidad de las instalaciones de Movistar Plus+ en sus instalaciones en Three Songs. El término del periodo de alquiler en 2030, together with Telefónica's strategy of unifying many of its companies into Telephone District, could rethink the channel's technical management strategy for the future of television: it is not the same to integrate a IP infrastructure from scratch, to evolve a model SDI. Furthermore, it would not make sense to invest large amounts in infrastructure that could be moved in the near future.

When questioned about this possibility, García Cabrera reflects on his position in Movistar Plus+ and what is truly his short-term goal: “One of our main objectives is to be able to generate a roadmap of technological evolution a nivel plataforma a 5 años vista”. El director técnico de Movistar Plus+ se define como un “creyente” de la tecnología “per se”, esta que puede ayudar a “hacer más eficientes procesos” y ayudar a generar una “mayor cantidad” de contenido de “mejor calidad”. En este plano, la llegada del IP The technological roadmap makes all the sense in the world: "Today, when you distribute content on the platform, we no longer only receive the video and audio, but many other things that accompany the audiovisual material. Technology has to help with this," he explains, without hesitating to affirm that its evolution "will incorporate this transition to the IP world" due to its relevant advantages in terms of "flexibility in the use of infrastructure."

“One of our main objectives is to be able to generate a roadmap of technological evolution at level platform a 5 years view.”

For García Cabrera, there is no doubt that the leap is going to occur, but the fixed space in which this occurs is not among its main concerns: "I have also heard the rumors. In the end, obviously this is a building that is not owned by Telefónica, which is always subject to contracts," he acknowledges, although he affirms that, if twenty years later there is a move from the current Tres Cantos headquarters, "technology must facilitate that transition process."

The jump to IP that Movistar Plus+ will undertake sooner or later will be through a model “gradual and hybridGarcía Cabrera points out how complex it would be to transform an infrastructure of the size of Movistar Plus+ "at a budgetary level", in addition to the complexity of internalizing the "IP learning curve" in the operation, engineering and maintenance teams. In short, the leap will be with a "multi-year and gradual model", as other television stations such as Telemadrid, RTVE or Antena 3 have followed.

Renewed prominence for LED screens

The Tres Cantos production center has various infrastructures that support a large part of Movistar Plus+'s own production. Small sets, intended for the production of content “more aimed at social networks” with a high degree of automation, alternate with other large sets.

In recent years, Movistar Plus+ has redoubled its efforts to introduce into its spaces tracking systems to exploit the possibilities of augmented and extended reality. Formats like The third time take advantage of this technology to create immersive spaces of very large dimensions, while others use the resources of the augmented reality for the exhibition of advanced graphics that interact with the narrative capabilities of the formats. "From the technical direction, we attend to the needs of what we want to produce and the type of content to find the most efficient way to carry it out. Our way of working at a budgetary level is always the same: we talk with content to understand the season's programming and we analyze what technical means are necessary to adapt to it."

Independientemente de seguir explorando las posibilidades de la realidad aumentada y extendida, García Cabrera reconoce que actualmente se está “evaluando” la posibilidad de apostar por modelos extendidos en otras televisiones en los que “el LED toma mucho más protagonismo”. El equipo técnico de Movistar Plus+ considera que la unión de una gran pantalla LED con una multi-camera production con capacidades de realidad extendida o aumentada puede aportar “valor a un contenido diferencial”, tal y como han podido concluir tras asistir a demostraciones y realizar visitas a muchos de sus compañeros de profesión.

“Creo que van a ser una evolución natural de algunos de nuestros estudios. Seguro. No sabría decir si será con carácter inmediato de cara a 2025, pero, por lo menos, el planteamiento va a estar sobre la mesa”, reconoce Garcia Cabrera, reflexionando sobre algunos de los desafíos que implican este tipo de soportes: “El mayor challenge no es el tecnológico, sino el de la operación: el alimentar continuamente esas grandes pantallas y generar contenidos para las mismas, lo cual crea un estrés en los equipos de creación de entornos muy relevante. Hay que prepararse, formar a los equipos y, antes de introducir los equipos, tener muy claro lo que se tiene que poner en el otro lado de la balanza”.

Step back with UHD?

The chimera of UHD in more traditional broadcasters, given the limitation of retransmission via DTT due to network capacity and the current state of coding solutions, could have a greater meaning on a platform like Movistar Plus+, which largely reaches subscribers via IP. However, and despite the production efforts in large events, the consolidation of this format is far from coming true. Para muestra, decisiones como la de producir grandes eventos deportivos como la final de la Champions League en formado HD HDR como estándar. ¿Hacia dónde se dirige la industria? ¿Es posible que la consolidación de la UHD en todo su esplendor, con siglas como HDR, 4K o WCG, tarde más de lo esperado en producirse?

“¿Tiene sentido el coste que conlleva una production and one cadena de manejo of one media in UHD? Al final, la conclusión viene a ser que sí, pero no para todos los contenidos”.

García Cabrera todavía no tiene una “visión clara” de hacia dónde se dirigirá Movistar Plus+ en este aspecto, si bien atesora numerosas experiencias al haber implementado proyectos UHD en muchos broadcasters. Su balance es más contenido; reconoce el valor del enfoque, pero también la complejidad de este tipo de desarrollos y cómo afectan a toda la cadena de producción: “Se tiende a pensar que cuanto mayor sea la calidad del contenido original será mejor, porque todos los procesos posteriormente partirán de una calidad mayor para su digitalización y compresión (…), pero es posible que el coste de lo que conlleva esa producción, postproducción o archivado de ese bruto no compense para el producto final que hacemos llegar al espectador”.

“¿Tiene sentido el coste que conlleva una producción y una cadena de manejo de una media in UHD for the product we generate?” reflects García Cabrera, thinking not only about the number of UHD televisions in our country, but also about the multi-device consumption that accompanies the main broadcasters in our country. "In the end, the conclusion is that yes, but not all the content. However, when in premium content such as football it is decided to take it to an HD HDR model, this tells you where the market is going," he says.

Cloud and edge: infinite possibilities

The possible deployment of the cloud has been analyzed in depth for years by the broadcast industry. The conclusions of five years ago were shared by the industry in the field of storage: el potencial era latente, pero los costes de archivado y sobre todo de recuperación restringían su uso a unos pocos agentes. En la actualidad, la photograph ha cambiado ligeramente. La variedad de competidores en el mercado ha hecho ligeramente más accesible este tipo de operaciones, pero donde realmente se ha producido un cambio importante ha sido en la oferta de procesos tradicionalmente locales llevados a la nube: “Los modelos cloud frecuentemente disparan los costes de operación, sobre todo para players que ya tienen una plataforma constituida y parten de un legacy. The situation could be different for a new agent who somehow does not have assets and wants to set up everything, starting from scratch and abstracting from technology.”

“We will start by having a cloud production in parallel to the traditional production and, as we see that the quality obtained and the signal reliability that we obtain in the cloud is comparable to what we obtain traditionally, we will make the change.

In the case of Movistar Plus+, García Cabrera finds a clear use in cloud processes such as storage, or “everything related to a potential disaster recovery”: “Economic storage models are already very competitive; The problem is when you try to recover. It also makes sense with pop up channels, where we sometimes raise and lower channels that are very seasonal; The possibility of creating new channels with a very specific time horizon and not having to invest in its own infrastructure makes a lot of sense.” The platform has also had experiences in remote production with the “technical means resting in the cloud”, which allows “minimally moving” technical means to the place of production with all the “software or ingestions” running on cloud instances.

The use of edge to continue further enhancing productions from cloud services is also on the table from the Movistar Plus+ team. García Cabrera considers that these workflows are “unstoppable”, but for now it is prudent to wait for a greater development and consolidation of the systems before use in large productions: "When you ask the companies themselves if they would use their cloud production themes to broadcast a Champions League final, for example, they answer that not yet. What we do see is that they can help a lot to sports in which there is a lower requirement in terms of production capabilities. (...) We will begin by having cloud production in parallel to traditional production and, as we see that the quality obtained and the reliability of the signal that we obtain in the cloud is comparable to that which we we obtain traditionally, we will make the change. (…) That is when we will stop having those high costs that traditional production now generates,” says García Cabrera.

Cost uncertainty: cloud and SaaS

The technical management of Movistar Plus+ considers that the cloud technology could be prepared to be part of a relevant part of its production. In fact, just two years ago, the platform conducted some satisfactory tests of a customization of a Champions match in the cloud, “in this case with AWS”, which “surprised” the team due to its “level of robustness, signal quality and latency”. In any case, to the degree of maturity of the technology and the adaptation of traditional equipment to the IT universe, García Cabrera adds another variable of great importance: “The cost certainty It is not absolute.”

"When you start operating in cloud workflows, consumption is generated within the cloud. Sometimes, we do not take into account part of the consumption of the workflows that currently run through our home and that, therefore, do not generate an additional cost. When the media begins to move through the cloud from one place to another, there are counters that have given us certain surprises at the end of the month," explains García Cabrera, who believes that scalars must evolve to be able to provide tools que permitan gestionar ese gasto en tiempo real: “No voy a decir al estilo de un taxímetro, pero que sí que nos permitan tener una visibilidad muy clara de cual es el coste relacionado con cada uno de los elementos”. En ese momento, será mucho más sencillo dar “ese salto definitivo”.

“Aunque se habla de un pago por uso, posteriormente es más diabólico. El coste de ese pago por uso depende del volumen y número de años que uno se comprometa al uso de esas licencias. Al final, me están llevando a un modelo casi como el que yo tenía de perpetuidad, pero con unos costes mucho más elevados, puestos que se convierten en variables”.

The incertidumbre en la facturación también se extiende en el universo SaaS, una apuesta cada vez más extendida por parte de empresas históricas del ecosistema broadcast y que, en ocasiones, arrojan una “letra pequeña” que no es favorable para el broadcaster: “If you ask me, I would say that they are models in which we are losing out.” García Cabrera provides more details: "The periods in which a boradcast infrastructure is amortized are always greater than five years. Today, I do not know of any manufacturer whose payment model for the use of licenses is greater than three years. That is, after three years, one has already paid the equivalent of what had been the cost of acquiring traditional ownership of that infrastructure and licenses. (...) I think that, in general, we clients think this way. In that completely rolled over of support and evolutionary, the accounts are not equivalent to those of the cost of ownership.”

Ante esta situación, el director técnico de Movistar Plus+ apostaría por un modelo híbrido en el que el cliente adquiriera una base a utilizar recurrentemente para tener en propiedad, variabilizada con un “modelo flexible y creativo” por parte de los fabricantes. El actual está lejos de acercarse a la visión de García Cabrera: “Aunque se habla de un pago por uso, posteriormente es más perverso. El coste de ese pago por uso depende del volumen y número de años que uno se comprometa al uso de esas licencias. Al final, me están llevando a un modelo casi como el que yo tenía de perpetuidad, pero con unos costes mucho más elevados, puestos que se convierten en variables”. Can this situation be reversed?: "It is a model from which we will not be able to escape. Many manufacturers are stopping evolving the products that one had in perpetuity, and what they are promoting are models of transformation from perpetual licenses to payment for use. Today we think that the business model is clearly negative when compared to the current one."

The Movistar Plus+ of the future: AR, XR, cloud, edge, AI…

Movistar Plus+ is located little by little drawing your future, pending the maturity of the technologies, studying how the deployment of each solution can help your daily operations, and providing a critical vision about the industry. In this way, trends are not inevitable transitions, but opportunities to be examined in detail.

Once this analysis is completed, they will or will not become part of the roadmap previously anticipated by Garcia Cabrera. They remain unknowns to be clarified, although the Movistar Plus+ technology team identifies certainties that will shape its short-term future: the company will “deepen” its studies with everything that has to do with “extended and augmented reality”; will undertake the transformation to IP, since the technology “is mature and very reliable”; will use the cloud for processes like disaster recovery o pop-up channels “as hyperscalars improve their business models for the average”, and will continue in its proofs of concept with edge, since it can “help remote production and minimize latencies as much as possible.”

As it could not be otherwise, the IA It will also be part of the future of Movistar Plus+. To the automatic transcription, indexing or summarization, processes already established in the house, new tools will be added as complements to the “current processes”. “We will do it, with total security, in the next years”says García Cabrera.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez