INTERNET DELIVERY OF TELEVISION MATERIAL

David Bradshaw, British Broadcasting Corporation, UK

ABSTRACT

The BBC operates the most-visited Web sites in the United Kingdom. The sites offer a range of material, both related and unrelated to programmes being broadcast in the conventional manner. An increasing proportion of the material offered is in the form of audio and video streams. This paper identifies some of the ways in which Internet-delivered video can be of interest to broadcasters and their technical implications.

INTRODUCTION

There are many differences between traditional broadcasting and Internet publishing. For example:

These differences represent both strengths and weaknesses which need to be kept in mind when planning new Internet-based services.

BBC ONLINE SERVICES

The BBC has been involved with the Internet since its inception in the eighties. Initially it was by connection to the JANET academic network for research and email via a dial-up 1200 baud connection, but today the BBC's connectivity to the Internet amounts to some 130 Mbit/s via the major Internet Service Providers. This is the result of the development of Web-based applications and a conscious decision by the BBC to become an Internet Publisher.

There are two main BBC public-access Web sites:

In March this year the BBC sites were subjected to Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) measurements to provide a verifiable figure for the level of interest. The audited figures gave a total number of page impressions during the month of nearly 70 million. This is a tenfold increase in the amount of data delivered over a period of just ten months and makes the BBC sites the most visited in the UK.

CONTENT PRODUCTION

The use of the Internet for the delivery of television material opens up a number of new opportunities.

The most straightforward is the duplication of the normal television prgramme carried by terrestrial or satellite transmitters. This has the effect of extending the availability of the programmes to a global audience and is of interest to international broadcasters such as the BBC World Service. It is relatively inexpensive to create such a service as all that is required is the stream encoder and server. The BBC currently streams its three main news bulletins each day together with live coverage of parliamentary debates, a weekly current affairs programme and a daily Welsh-language news programme. In addition, many special events such as the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, Ryder Cup Golf, the Budget, General Election, the Hong Kong handover and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, have been covered. Carrying material on the Internet allows longer coverage of events with less editing to meet programme schedules.

In addition to the simulcasting of "conventional" television programmes, the Internet allows stored video clips to be made available to the audience for a period after the event. These can be viewed at times suitable to the audience and overcomes the problems of time zones. There are copyright issues involved here and not all material could be made available in this way.

The video clips could, of course, be different from the material used in the conventional programme and could be used to give more information to those viewers who wish to explore a topic in more detail than had been possible when the programme was transmitted to a mass audience. This is seen as a valuable feature of the Online services, the ability to be integrated with the conventional broadcasting channels to give a richer experience to the audience.

The Internet allows material to be made available that would be of interest to only a small audience. An example of such material would be a camera focussed on the nest of a rare bird in a remote area of Scotland, the audience for which would be numbered in dozens rather than the thousands needed to justify a conventional programme. At this time we have a camera looking at the dome building being constructed for the UK's Millenium Exhibition (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/news/dome/domecam.pl).

One can also envisage the use of the Internet as a mechanism for trading television programmes between peer organisations. An ACTS project, ATMAN, is targeted at producing such a system, with browsing of remote servers to identify the required material and trading conducted through "brokers".

CONSIDERATIONS

Whilst one can identify a number of exciting possibilities, the real world imposes a number of constraints.

Browsers

Whereas in conventional television broadcasting one can make assumptions about the capability of the receiving installation (e.g. the line and colour standards on which it operates), the same is not true of the Internet. A variety of browsers are in use for viewing Web pages, with different capabilities and functionalities. This creates problems for those responsible for content creation - should they target their content for a popular browser and risk dissatisfying those using different browsers or design content for a basic browser and end up with a site that is limited and unexciting.

The Internet is still under continuous development and new browsers emerge with new facilities - and old browsers can be enhanced through the use of downloadable "plug ins" such as those for streaming audio and video. Thus the content creator has to make assumptions, knowing that not all the audience can be satisfied.

At the time of writing, the number of pages on the BBC Online site amounts to over 40,000 pages and is increasing. It is essential to allow the number of pages to be increased rapidly for special events, such as World Cup football or a General Election, so the servers are normally run at about 40% of installed capacity.

Connectivity

With the 1000% per annum rate of growth, and every sign that it will continue to grow as PC penetration continues to increase, Internet connectivity must be kept under review. Unlike those accessing academic, financial and technical information services, the audience for broadcast entertainment services is unwilling to accept long delays in the response from a broadcaster's site; they will simply go elsewhere. However, there are cost implications in having too much connectivity too soon.

There are usually between 150 and 200 concurrent audio and video streams being delivered to the Internet from the BBC sites, contributing 4 Mbit/s to the Internet traffic. But for special events this can rise to over 500 streams. Consequently, there is real interest in the development of multicasting techniques.

An interesting development that was implemented for the live streaming video coverage of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, which, it was anticipated, would generate a large amount of traffic. Rather than serve a large global audience through the BBC's normal Internet access points, which could have been in danger of becoming saturated, single streams direct to the ISPs' own servers were implemented and a substantial part of the audience served from these. This was believed to be an Internet "first" and could lead to the handling of major events of world-wide interest in a manner similar to the "pooling" arrangements employed for conventional broadcasting.

CONCLUSION

The Internet is still developing as a medium for the distribution of entertainment and education content and broadcasters need to be aware that they are participating in an experiment when embarking on the introduction of Internet services. There are exciting possibilities for programme makers willing to grasp them. New genres of programme become possible, creating richer experiences for the audience.


David Bradshaw, BBC Research & Development, Kingswood Warren, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 6NP, UK
email: david.bradshaw@rd.bbc.co.uk