Evolve or die My journey through videoland

he journey from the arrival of colour in the UK Packaged media pioneer BOB AUGER (left, with Stefan Sargent, producing Tto the Web TV of today has been an interest - one of the first Laserdiscs) established the authoring facility that became ing ride. My starting point in the 1960s was at the Panasonic's base for the launch of DVD in Europe. He has lived through all high-tech BBC Television Centre in London, recently handed to a developer for conversion the skirmishes, battles, successes and achievements of disc-based video. to a hotel and apartments. The closure of this Now heading his consultancy Newmérique, Bob offers a personal account temple to the art of television echoes the rise of the changes in the audiovisual landscape over the past five decades. and fall of other industries, once a pillar of mod - ern society and now discarded as old-fashioned 65k of memory and storage on a 5.25 floppy Philips, the brilliant team behind the BBC and obsolete. disc. Domesday Project had successfully delivered Technology is an unforgiving master: if you When coupled to six Kodak 35mm slide their multimedia edition of the 900-year-old are not at the leading edge, you fall into the projectors, an optical multiplexer (made by a census of life in England on Laserdisc. The RTS abyss. The trick is first to catch the wave and specialist company in Pittsburgh) and a Philips planned to commemorate the half-century of TV then to know when to jump off, not an easy task plumbicon colour camera, it delivered many broadcasting with a video installation in a for people raised outside the surfing communi - corporate videos on Sony U-matic and quite a London venue and playback from videodisc was ties of California. few local TV ads on BVU or 1” C-format video. the obvious solution. Philips agreed to sponsor Innovation is inevitable, challenging tradi - Advanced as it was, you could not call the the technical side of the project. tional monopolies and providing new opportu - AVL Eagle interactive. Everything had to be The BBC and all the UK regional television nities. Nowhere has this been more evident than meticulously pre-programmed in a linear fash - companies (bar one) offered free access to their in the world of packaged media. VHS has come ion, which was fine for corporate presentations, archives, the craft unions and rights owners and gone, replaced by DVD, which is itself under but not so good when accompanying live waived their fees, so the problem was not so threat from Blu-ray as HDTV gives way to 4K events. You have to hear six or more slide pro - much “what to put in” as “what to leave out” video. jectors simultaneously searching for a cue to With Stefan Sargent back in London master - Now, the once-mighty cable operators and know exactly what this means... minding the production aspects, I found myself broadcasters are starting to feel the wind of In the mid-1980s, Philips wowed a meeting of in Eindhoven in an almost- change, as Netflix, Amazon and other streaming the BKSTS in London with a demonstration of empty warehouse, looking services disrupt traditional monopolies. There is high quality Laserdisc video in a computer- at 73 blank screens, a one constant, as CBS Corporation CEO Leslie controlled player. The experience opened my dozen videodiscs and a Moonves told the New York Times , “Our job is eyes to the advantages of disc-media. Here was computer. Fortunately, to do the best content we can and let people the perfect delivery medium, combining still Philips also provided their enjoy it in whatever way they want.” It’s a images and live-action video with great sound. top programmer to stitch message that has taken a long time to arrive. The added bonus of interactivity meant that I the multiple picture After 15 years “doing content” – first with the couldn’t wait to try it out. sources together. The BBC, then Granada TV and subsequently with The opportunity arose with “The Golden PAL video from the discs my own recording studios in Manchester, I Box,” a 1986 celebration of the 50th anniversary fed a wide screen com - decided to move back to London and in 1979 I of BBC television for the Royal Television Society prising a giant Eido - became Director of AudioVisual at Molinare in (RTS). Working as co-producer with Stefan phor video projector the capital. On arrival, I took delivery of my first Sargent, joint founder of Molinare, the project and two 6x6 video programmable computer, an AVL Eagle II was conceived from the start with disc delivery walls. running CP/M. It was, in the jargon of the time, in mind. Things went well “the bees’ knees,” boasting a 16kHz processor, With the support of Acorn Computers and for the first couple >>

12 >> of days, but then I was summoned to an More than a year later, in casual conversa - emergency meeting. The 10Mbyte HD drive on tion with the company who ordered the the controlling computer was full and we were discs, I asked why we had done no work for still some way off completing the program - them since. “Well, after we came back from ming… The problem was swiftly resolved Berlin, we sent them to a testing house and and the show ran continuously for several they said they found lots of flaws,” was the weeks without a hitch. reply. I vowed then never to deliver a disc that Laserdisc and the MCA equivalent had not been through the test pressing and D iscoVision offered better picture rigorous quality control procedure. quality and greater longevity than After a difficult first year, the Royal Bank tape-based formats and estab - of Scotland sent in its specialist advisors to lished disc media as the way assess the financial viability of DVD. Its con - forward. However, the limited run - of titles such as Gone clusion – that “DVD is going nowhere and will ning time (one hour per side on with the Wind (two minutes follow CD-i into oblivion” – cost several people linear discs) and the physical size of the media shy of four hours) from a DVD9 dual-layer single- their jobs and ensured the loss of independence were obstacles to consumer acceptance. sided DVD. of the company. Electric Switch had everything Video compression seemed to be the answer Determined to be among the first to work it needed to meet the imminent demand for and in the early 1990s I worked with an Atlanta- with the new format, I contacted a good friend DVD authoring – except European customers! based company called Iterated Systems. Based at Panasonic, with whom I had worked on a By the end of 1999, the average price of DVD on the theoretical work of the British mathemati - number of Video-CD titles, and asked who to hardware was tumbling, down by 35% over the cian Professor Michael Barnsley, “Fractal Video” contact in Japan. His response amazed me: the year. More than 70,000 players were sold in was a technology that offered remarkable com - authoring system used to create Panasonic’s first December alone, according to the UK DVD pression ratios and full frame rates. It was while DVD titles was written and supplied by committee, at the bargain price of £299 ($480, working on this project that an IBM executive Matsushita-owned Panasonic OWL – and the €380) each. told me there is “no place for video in company was based in Edinburgh, Better times were clearly on their way, under a personal computer,” a fact he Scotland. the ownership of VHS duplicators Rank Video demonstrated by trying to run OWL Development Man - Services and with a team producing some really the fractal file with an EGA ager Lindsay Holman sug - innovative titles. Leaving the operation in the (4-bit, 16-colour) video gested a trip to DVCC, hands of a great team, including technical wizard card. which at that time was Ges Hinton and compressionist Andy Lagowski, In partnership with located within Universal I moved on to pastures new in North America, John Paul Docherty, who Studios in Hollywood. commissioned by British Trade International and founded the pioneering There, I met Jerry Pierce , based in Montréal, Canada. UK computer animation who was respon sible It was here that I came across an intriguing company Electric Image, for the technical launch project, which combined the best attributes of a I started Electric Switch in of DVD for Universal and DVD player with the interactive capabilities of 1993, initially to exploit a saw with my own eyes the Compact Disc Interactive and an online connec - promised contract to convert quality that was achievable tion. A company called the Ohana Foundation, the entire TV ad archive of a major from DVD with the best real- based in Hawaii, USA, had secured the contract advertiser to fractal video. The time encoding technology. A visit to convert the VHS libraries of three major edu - arrival of the 12cm Compact Disc- Europe’s first PAL DVD movie to CES 1997 followed, at which cational publishers to DVD. It had also signed a (Concorde Video GmbH) Interactive (CD-i) format seemed to the deal with Panasonic was con - contract with the People’s Education Press (PEP) be a solution to the delivery of full-motion, full firmed: Electric Switch became the sole Euro - in Beijing, to create an “English for China” series colour images to the screen, but the promised pean operator of the Panasonic encoding and of DVD titles, using Ohana’s proprietary MPEG-1 video cartridge was delivered late and authoring system, on condition that the equip - eWhiz!™ DVD disc and player format to combat proved unreliable. ment was insured for $800,000! piracy. Nevertheless, Philips sold us the first real- It was truly a complete DVD creation system, After several months of work Ohana had time MPEG-1 encoder in the UK and together capable of seamless branching that ensured delivered just four DVD titles and I was called in with other customers across Europe, we set out equal buffer size at in- and as consultant, to sort to create full-motion video for CD-i developers. out-points, a true emulator out the log-jams in pro - It was only later that we heard that our supplier (not a simulator) which dis - duction and to work on was telling potential customers that real-time played any and all authoring the China project. It encoding was not as and encoding problems quickly became clear >> good as non-real-time prior to replication, and the software encoding! ability to emulate dual-layer Despite the false discs. start with CD-i, real- For one of the first demo time encoding gave discs, produced under pres - Electric Image a head sure and on time by Nimbus start in successfully bidding for the contract with in Wales for the IFA show in British Telecom to supply more than 400 hours Berlin, the customer asked of digital video to their research department in for dual-layer demo discs. Martlesham, for trials of something they called Electric Switch and Nimbus ADSL. It was to be many years before this pulled out all the stops, acronym returned, in a form that threatened the worked through the night and very existence of physical media! delivered a very few discs, Then, in 1995, came rumours of a new 12cm where they worked perfectly disc format that would accommodate playback for the duration of the show.

13 >> that the task would need my full-time atten - capacity.” My response enter the market when tion, so in the summer of 2001 I reluctantly then – which I stand by higher resolution video moved myself, the family and four cats to now, even with the arrival arrived. Honolulu. of HEVC – was, “HD In 2008, in a piece The concept DVD is an affordable, titled “When Better Com - was well founded evolutionary product pression Comes Along” and once suffi - that builds on existing for the trade publication cient storage replication lines. The Blu- Cue Entertainment , I space was made ray proposal is revolu - wrote, “Good though available on the tionary and its capacity is some modern compres - servers for the not big enough to cope sion methods may be, it vast amounts of with future develop - will be a long while be - data that was ments.” fore the current crop of created, the pro- Contrary to the per - codecs is superseded.” blems of execu - ception that there was an In fact, it took five tion were resol- either/or choice between HD DVD and Blu-ray, years for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) ved. QC stations, there were other format proposals for disc- to be ratified as the standard to succeed using prototypes based media in the pipeline. The Optware H.264/MPEG-4. At the 2014 IBC show in Amster - of the specialist Corporation had announced that “Holographic dam, 8K HEVC encoded video looked superb at players, helped to increase throughput. Video Discs (HVD) are likely to have a 200GB a mere 100Mbps. That’s 135GB for a three-hour With increased automation of the authoring capacity, increasing over time to a maximum of movie – a challenge for Blu-ray, but not impos - process, output of educational titles rose to 3.9TB”. Speaking on behalf of the HVD Alliance sible. s everal DVD masters per day. The project for Promotions Committee, Yasuhide Kageyama I arrived in TV as the BBC began to phase out China was going well and when the PEP sent said, “We are expecting 500GB discs to be its 405-line monochrome broadcasts in favour of over its top people from Beijing to look at the delivered within three years.” 625-line colour. Today’s over-the-top Web TV work in progress, they pronounced themselves Today, it would be ideal for 8K video, but it service streams HDTV at an impeccable frame- delighted with the results. So happy, in fact, that was never launched as a commercial product. rate and picture quality via the open internet to they announced plans to run a Then there was smart TVs. Mobile operators use 3G and 4G small “pilot project” in just HD-VMD (High Defini - services to lower bit-rate versions to hand-held 4,000 schools. tion Versatile Multi - devices, with acceptable results on the smaller Which is where the wheels layer Disc), a multi- screen. started to come off the project. layer, double-sided Younger viewers have come to rely on their While use of the proprietary disc format that met many mobile devices for entertainment and informa - format had seemed like a good of the capacity require - tion and the typical family group no longer gath - idea, there was no budget for ments of 1080p video, ers around a single large screen. A recent survey the manufacture of 4,000 using the proven red from comScore found eWhiz!™ players to laser infrastructure, that, in the group aged Chinese standards, no instead of the new between 18-34, around small item when mass- blue laser technol - one in six had not produced consumer ogy required by Blu-ray. watched any original TV players still cost $200 or so to Devised by New Medium series on conventional TV within the previous produce. The first (and probably Enterprises (NME), HD VMD month. Is the TV itself now to be discarded as an last) DVD-interactive player offered a total of 30GB old-fashioned and obsolete way to “consume never went into mass pro - capacity, on up to five content”? duction. addressable layers on The arrival of 4K video provides a positive After the terrorist attack on either side of the disc. NME CTO incentive for viewers to return to the big TV the Twin Towers in September Eugene Levich said at the time screen and Blu-ray discs are still the perfect that year, our return to the UK that BD drives cost 10 times as delivery format for video in the home. However, became inevitable. Ohana had much to make as HD DVD and with Netflix offering access to four simultaneous planned a big product launch at HD VMD, because the latter 4K streams for just $11.99 (£7.49, €9.49) a month the National School Board conference in Atlanta drives are essentially the same and high-quality content widely available, does in November, but this was cancelled and the as DVD, but with different firmware. packaged media stand a chance? staff laid off. Ohana was a bold experiment that The ML622S HD VMD consumer player was My working life began when UK TV was only failed, but members of the Ohana team have backwards compatible with DVD and did an available in black and white and home video was found success elsewhere, particularly with the excellent job of up-converting existing DVD just a dream. Now the concept of broadcasting pre-school Pencilbot “FeedMe!” titles from titles to 1080p HDTV video. At $150 – about half is itself in question and “ownership” of content Edutainment Resources, which was originally the HDTV player price and just over a quarter lasts just as long as your online provider stays in DVD-based, but blossomed after the launch of that of Blu-ray players – it promised equal or business. Looking back over the years, pack - Apps for the iPhone and iPad. greater playing time than competing formats. aged disc media that you can play anytime looks Back in the UK, I found myself defending HD Although there was merit in both HD DVD quite a bargain when compared to a subscrip - DVD in the two-year and HD VMD, neither secured long-term tion to Netflix and a monthly broadband bill. ¢ “format war” with studio support. However, consumer Blu-ray. At the Medi - enthusiasm for the more-expensive Blu- BOB AUGER was founder and MD of top London DVD authoring house Electric atech conference in ray format was slow to materialise, even Switch in 1993 – a European pioneer. He 2005, a Frankfurt after it won the format battle. In retro - then produced over 400 educational DVDs banker said that he viewed HD DVD as “an in - spect, I still believe a red laser solution would for the Ohana Foundation in Hawaii. Bob is the President of consultancy Newmérique, specialising terim solution,” with Blu-ray as “the storage have been both technically and financially in tracking and analysis the full range of video delivery medium of the future because of its greater preferable, leaving Blu-ray or its successor to technologies. Contact: [email protected]

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