When TV Dies, Will It Go to the Cloud?

SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES When TV Dies, Will It Go to the Cloud?

Karin Breitman and Markus Endler, PUC-Rio, Brazil Rafael Pereira and Marcello Azambuja, Globo.com

Coupled with the expected growth in bandwidth through the next decade, cloud computing will change the face of TV.

he increasing popu- ogy—it makes more sense to stream not to mention router-type devices larity of videos on the the content directly from the Internet that let regular TV sets display Inter- Internet, allied to recent than record it for later use. net content. T advances in network Second, and more importantly, the It seems our lives are driven by technology, are drastically changing Net removes the barrier that separates media displays, as Steve Jobs dem- television as we know it. In the past producers, distributors, and con- onstrated with his recent unveiling few decades we experienced a very sumers. On the Internet, anyone can of the iPad. It is easy to imagine a clear role distinction: TV channels produce and distribute high-quality middle-class adult in the work force and independent companies pro- content. As a result, there is much soon having access to two or more duced video footage to be distributed more content available, making the such displays on a regular basis. by broadcasters and consumed by competition for audiences tougher and Displays can be organized in passive general audiences. Roles and changing viewing habits irreversibly. five strata, according to their evo- responsibilities were clear down the Third, the Internet allows mixing lution (B. Mazloff, Le 5éme écran line, and everyone was happy. and matching of multisource content. – Les medias urbains dans la ville A few years ago this “family It has become commonplace for net- 2.0 – editions Fyp - 2009), as Figure around the TV set” scenario began to works to mix their own footage with 1 shows. Movie projection screens crack. Television faced several daunt- user-generated content to provide a were the first to appear, in open ing challenges as cable multiplied the more holistic experience. Video pro- public spaces. Then came the TV number of viewing choices and hard- duction, distribution, and selection are and PC—no longer public, but still ware prices let middle-class families no longer the privilege of a few. Users collective. Mobile devices followed, own as many TV sets as there were now have a front seat, forcing media for personal use in both private and members in the family. giants to explore new business models. public environments. More recently, From a technical viewpoint, huge public electronic displays on every- Sea change challenges remain, however, includ- thing from billboards to bus stops are The Internet brought the poten- ing the ability to process, index, changing the urban landscape. tial to completely reinvent TV. First, store, and distribute nearly limitless Fifty years ago, video was pro- it let users see what they wanted, amounts of data. This is why cloud duced in a single format since its when they wanted, while suppress- computing will play a major role in consumption was restricted to some ing the need for additional hardware. redefining TV in the next few years. specific displays. Today, on the other Digital video recorders, notably the hand, several different versions are TiVo, popularized the concept of let- ramping up required to enable access on PCs, ting users choose more convenient Electronic devices that can be used iPhones, PDAs, game consoles, times to watch their favorite pro- to consume content on the Internet and other devices. This is a critical grams. However, with the increase are proliferating at an increasing rate: problem for broadcasters, as video in bandwidth availability for the PCs, tablet and laptop computers, processing is as computationally last mile—via cable and asymmetric PDAs, mobile phones, handheld video expensive as it is data intensive, con- digital subscriber line (ADSL) technol- game consoles, and eBook readers, suming time and resources.

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No matter how resourceful the entity distributing the contents is, there will be peak times with exces- sive demand and other times of idleness. Given that service providers can build applications with an elastic Shared Shared Shared Individual Shared infrastructure and adjust effectively public private private mobile public to demand variations, the cloud has spaces space space spaces all the characteristics needed to deal open open restricted very open with this type of content. access access access restricted access access In cases where there is a very large or seasonal demand, the use of public clouds for information pro- Figure 1. Evolution of media display types. The Internet is enabling the rapid cessing and storage is emerging as an proliferation of electronic displays. attractive alternative. The concept of hardware as a service (HaaS) relieves Besides the proliferation of differ- niques used in the split, distribute, the necessity of making large infra- ent devices, it is not uncommon for process, and merge steps as needed. structure investments, while allowing the market to prefer particular plat- This ensures flexibility, adaptation, on-the-fly resizing and adaptation to forms. A decade ago, RealNetworks’s extensibility, and the accommoda- current needs. RealVideo and RealMedia took the tion of different applications. In the With a public cloud, users can lead, followed by MS Windows Media case of video processing, allowing quickly gauge the resources required and Adobe’s Flash, with the future a choice among codecs, containers, to perform a particular task and pay looking toward HTML 5. Each of these audio streams, and different splitting only for those effectively used. A technologies defined a set of associ- techniques is paramount. successful example of this is the reg- ated formats, codecs, and transport Considering the growth of Inter- istration system for the Big Brother protocols that everyone must follow. net video use along with the demand Brasil reality TV show. On top of that, the last mile is pushing for higher-quality HD-level content, The application process is open the demand for high-quality content dealing efficiently with transcoding to any resident in the country, with and high-definition videos that require processes is a strategic priority. The contestants required to send a video many more computational resources. cloud solution offers a competitive of themselves in the format of their advantage by providing the unprec- choice. Videos are encoded in the Split and merge edented possibility of processing MPEG-2 standard to facilitate visual- Split and Merge is a cloud-based videos several hours long in the same ization by the jurors and spare them platform for distributed video time frame as those that run only a the hassle of dealing with a plethora encoding that can overcome these few minutes. of different codecs. The system is drawbacks. The basic idea is to use the able to receive a very large number of cloud’s elasticity to engage resources Distribution Challenges videos during the three-month appli- dynamically, then distribute and par- Unlike TV signals, which are trans- cation process. allelize the video-encoding processes. mitted independently of the number The system in particular leverages The Split and Merge platform, shown of viewers, Internet media consump- the power of cloud computing to deal in Figure 2, was designed to reduce tion is based on connectivity: Each with uncertain storage and process- video-encoding times to fixed thresh- user who wants to watch a video ing requirements, allocate resources olds, independently of the input size must open a separate connection. needed during the application and of the video file, using only dynamic With unicast, the most popular dis- selection processes, and scale up to resource provisioning in the cloud. tribution model, there is a separate rare but extreme high-peak situa- Split and Merge fragments every connection for each user to the server tions—for example, during the last video received, processes the responsible for content distribution. weekend, when 60 percent of the fragments in a distributed cloud This limitation becomes increasingly total submissions with about 200,000 environment, and merges partial evident when a variable volume of videos are expected. results. As in most map-reduce imple- information must be processed to Applications with seasonal but mentations, it makes efficient use of meet spikes in demand during, for very large demand are not rare. available computing resources. It also example, popular sports competitions The Internet transmission of sports allows for the customization of tech- or public emergencies. events such as FIFA’s World Cup and

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r4sof.indd 82 3/26/10 1:32 PM the Olympics, and of breaking news Tempo such as Michael Jackson’s death, require a huge infrastructure for a very short time, making them killer cloud applications.

Consumer Challenges chunk1 chunk2 chunkN The new paradigm of video content consumption quickly became clear to major broadcasters, whose revenues had been falling con- Full encoded video sistently since 2005 and who had chunk1 chunk2 chunkN been forced to rethink their content distribution models. For example, NBC Universal partnered with News Corp. to launch Hulu.com in 2007, with Disney joining two years later. The popular website, which offers Figure 2. Split and Merge architecture. The system fragments every video received, processes the fragments in a distributed cloud environment, and merges partial commercial-supported streaming results. video of TV shows and movies, aims to recover part of the lost revenue resulting from the decrease of tradi- subscribers to download movies ideo production and dis- tional TV audiences. through its iTunes store. tribution are no longer During the recent high-definition While the Internet offered new rev- Vrestricted to large broad- format war between HD-DVD (sup- enue possibilities, it also augmented casters. Users now have the power ported by Microsoft and Toshiba) and the complexity of production and to make, distribute, mix, and match Blu-ray (supported by Sony) technolo- distribution business models. Hulu their own content. Cloud comput- gies, videogames played an important (www.fastcompany.com/magazine/ ing will play a decisive role in this role. Sony pushed Blu-ray adoption, 140/the-unlikely-mogul.html), for extremely demanding scenario. The using the technology as the underly- example, preferred to follow a model evolution of connectivity, coupled ing basis for its PlayStation 3, which similar to that used by TV, with with the expected growth in band- doubles as a Blu-ray disc player. commercial spots at intervals in the width over the next decade, will Although Microsoft’s Xbox 360 con- content. Even this simple model can indelibly change the face of TV. sole supported HD-DVD, a disc player be further refined, with Web technol- sold as expansion hardware and was ogy easily identifying and addressing Karin Breitman is an assistant professor in the Departamento de not required to play videogames. specific group campaigns such as Informática, PUC-Rio. Contact her at Shortly after Blu-ray emerged victo- gender, age, and location. [email protected]. rious in 2008 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ Cable TV networks are pursuing hi/business/7252172.stm), it become a similar approach to avoid losing Markus Endler is an associate clear that Microsoft’s strategy was not ground to Internet-based TV provid- professor in the Departamento de Informática, PUC-Rio. Contact him at focused on the disc formats but rather ers. Many have launched their own [email protected]. on the rising market for online video. video sites, which offer added services In July 2008, less than six months to justify their value. For example, Rafael Pereira is a senior media engi- after the end of the HD format wars, Comcast recently launched Xfin- neer at Globo.com. Contact him at Microsoft announced its partnership ity (blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/12/15/ [email protected]. with Netflix to stream movies and comcast-opens-fancast-xfinity-tv), a Marcello Azambuja is a digital media TV episodes using the XBox 360 con- service that lets users watch TV pro- manager at Globo.com. Contact him at sole (www.microsoft.com/presspass/ gramming on the Internet anywhere. [email protected]. press/2008/jul08/07-14instantstreampr. The popularity of online videos mspx). This constituted a shift from has also raised the interesting possi- the paradigm of media discs, enabling bility of the Internet serving as a large Editor: Mike Hinchey, Lero—The Irish console owners to rent movies with the and collaborative content producer, Software Engineering Research Centre; press of a button. Apple offered a simi- with user-generated content comple- [email protected] lar initiative with Apple TV, enabling menting TV programming.

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