DOCUMENT TITLE

DIGITAL VIDEO BROADCAST

Building a Unified Headend for DVB-S2 and Multiscreen
Content Delivery
 CONTENTS
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 3
Why DVB-S? .............................................................................................................................................. 3
DVB-S2 Today ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Multiscreen Delivery ....................................................................................................................................... 4
A Changing Marketplace ............................................................................................................................ 4
The Benefits of Software................................................................................................................................ 5
Flexible and Scalable Architecture from Elemental ................................................................................... 5
Statistical Multiplexing .................................................................................................................................... 6
A Software-Based Unified Headend .............................................................................................................. 7
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 8

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 INTRODUCTION

WHY DVB-S?
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a suite of international standards for digital television distribution.
DVB-C is a broadcast platform for cable distribution, DVB-S for satellite transmission and DVB-T for
terrestrial transmission. These three standards differ primarily in the modulation schemes they employ.
According to the DVB consortium, television services using DVB standards are now available on every
continent with more than one billion DVB receivers deployed around the world. 1

Bringing digital television broadcasting to the home was originally considered both impractical and costly
to implement. A group of broadcasters and consumer equipment manufacturers came together in Europe
in the early 1990s as the Digital Video Broadcasting Project to determine how to create a platform to
support digital television broadcast. The group’s initial efforts focused on the creation of DVB-S, which
ultimately resulted in the first digital satellite TV broadcast in Europe originating from France-based Canal
Plus in 19952. Today, this group is an industry-led consortium of the world’s leading digital TV and
technology companies committed to open technical standards for the delivery of digital TV and broadcast
services.

Ten years after the launch of DVB-S and with market demands shifting to HDTV, the standardization of
more efficient codecs and the need for more efficient data transport, the DVB-S2 (Second Generation
Satellite) standard was developed. Using the latest modulation and coding techniques, DVB-S2 delivers
performance gains thirty percent greater than DVB-S with respect to bitrates in typical television
broadcast cases. Combined with AVC (Advanced Video Coding, H.264) and HEVC (High-Efficiency
Video Coding, H.265), DVB-S2 began replacing DVB-S as new HDTV services enticed pay TV operators
to upgrade existing broadcast equipment and consumers to update set-top boxes.

Today, DVB standards are the basis for most satellite digital TV services broadcasting around the globe.
DVB-S2 is used in the United States and Europe by major satellite broadcasters including Sky in the
United Kingdom, Italy and Mexico, Premiere in Germany, and DIRECTV in the United States. DVB-S2
has been deployed by direct-to-home (DTH) operators in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa,
creating an installed base in the hundreds of millions.

Figure 1 - Traditional Broadcast Workflow Using DVB-S

An extended version of DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, was introduced in 2014 but has yet to be formally
standardized: its main aim is to provide additional transmission efficiency.

1
https://www.dvb.org/news/worldwide
2
https://www.dvb.org/about/history

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 This paper focuses on satellite transmission as it is expected to be particularly important given the
ubiquity of ultra-high definition (UHD) content and multiscreen video delivery. However, the solutions
described here may be applied to other DVB technologies such as DVB-T/T2 for terrestrial broadcasting
and DVB-C/C2 for cable delivery.

DVB-S2 TODAY
DVB-S2 is a well-established standard. Not only is it backwards-compatible with DVB-S, but broadcasters
and satellite service providers have also built headend infrastructure using traditional hardware
cumulatively over many years to support it. These headend designs tend to include dedicated and
application-specific devices for encoding individual channels and for multiplexing groups of channels
together.

With DVB-S/S2/S2X, content providers can create multi-channel multiplexes. They can combine multiple
channel signals where each signal is capable of carrying, in a typical DTH scenario, 46.0 to 58.8 Mbps of
usable audio and video payload, depending on modulation. Set-top boxes to decode DVB signals are
broadly available from many manufacturers using MPEG-2 and AVC codecs. A new generation of set-top
boxes capable of decoding HEVC are currently being deployed. HEVC offers approximately 50 percent
more encoding efficiencies over AVC.

In the past, a traditional headend design, with its legacy hardware systems and segmented infrastructure
for each delivery method, was the only practical approach. In part, this is because the two critical tasks of
encoding and multiplexing were, and continue to be, extremely demanding. Until recently, specialized
silicon, or at least a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), was used to achieve the necessary
processing power to handle video workflow tasks. Each device was essentially fixed to a single and
specific task, making it impractical to implement technology updates. Even adding support for new
codecs, without the wholesale replacement of hardware, often came at a cost that was hard to justify. A
traditional headend also led to fixed architectures, which made changing a channel offering, or providing
content to new media platforms, inherently difficult.

MULTISCREEN DELIVERY

A CHANGING MARKETPLACE
Today, there is increasing demand for broadcasters and pay TV operators to deliver content – both
streamed linear channels and video-on-demand (VOD) – to browsers, mobile devices and smart TVs. As
consumer viewing behavior changes, so must the architecture change to enable a growing video
ecosystem supporting multiscreen, or TV Everywhere, delivery.

One of the greatest challenges for broadcasters in delivering multiscreen content is that consumer
devices require a unique combination of video and audio settings, codecs, digital rights management and
streaming formats. New media delivery is a complex undertaking, but one that can certainly be
accomplished. The BBC iPlayer, which is one of the most successful streaming services in the world,
supports more than 1000 different devices using a multitude of processing and delivery profiles.

For the BBC and other video operators, it would be impossible to serve all these different outputs using
discrete encoders and manual workflows. The process has to be highly automated and software-centric

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 to be both practical and affordable. Video operators that manage to fully leverage the power, flexibility
and scalability of software-defined video processing will be able to continue satisfying customers with
compelling and competitive services that support the latest devices.

THE BENEFITS OF SOFTWARE

While broadcasters may serve satellite and other traditional broadcast platforms, and simultaneously
deliver content online, broadcast and online video delivery workflows remain separate because these
architectures have developed independently.

There are compelling reasons for the traditional broadcast workflow to move from the headend to a
software-defined domain. In addition to flexibility, there is rapidly growing interest in UHD, whether for 4K
screen resolution, extended color gamut and dynamic range, higher frame rates, or some combination of
all three.

Because it is not yet clear what standards will win in the UHD marketplace, it makes sense for
broadcasters to maintain the flexibility to offer whatever the market demands at any time, even as
hardware solutions come to market. Broadcasters locked into using first generation hardware devices will
likely struggle with upgrades for enhancements to keep pace with rapidly-advancing technological
developments, such as high dynamic range (HDR). The great advantage of software-defined video
processing is the ability to easily change codec, resolution, bit depth and frame rate, making it inherently
more flexible and overall, a safer investment choice.

Flexibility and agility are certainly powerful arguments in favor of a software-based video processing and
multiplexing environment for broadcast services. A single, unified headend, which can be deployed for
primary screen and online content delivery, is another powerful argument.

A unified headend translates into direct savings for video operators, because content only has to be
routed to a single point, and some complex video processing – such as de-interlacing, scaling, 3:2
pulldown and more – only has to be performed once. A unified headend simplifies both monitoring and
control, and ensures a consistently high quality experience for the consumer regardless of viewing
device. Dynamic content replacement can be implemented in the headend, allowing for targeted
advertising to be inserted into linear streams to match target devices and user demographics.

FLEXIBLE AND SCALABLE ARCHITECTURE FROM ELEMENTAL

Elemental has a proven ability to build high performance encoding and delivery systems for multiscreen
workflows using software-based video processing, with just-in-time packaging (JITP) and DRM taking
encoded content and securely creating the requested format at the point of delivery. Elemental software
runs on standard off-the-shelf hardware, which is cost effective and means that encoding performance
will continue to improve as processing power grows, thanks to Moore’s Law and the huge research and
development investment budgets of major IT players.

Using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and virtual machines in a data center allow video providers to
build a flexible and readily adaptable headend. Using on-premises, virtualized architecture ensures
control of valuable media assets, the ability to handle ever-expanding levels of content traffic, and the
ability to fine-tune software-based architecture for video delivery. In time, media companies and other
content providers may opt to move video processing to the cloud. Until then, virtualization provides huge
benefits while allowing video operators to retain control and ownership of content.

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 Elemental makes migration of video workflows to the cloud simple and easy as demonstrated by both the
BBC iPlayer and Amazon Video. The BBC iPlayer, which is one of the largest streaming services on the
planet, manages approximately four billion content requests annually. Elemental video processing powers
the Amazon Video 24/7 linear workflow that delivers premium broadcast content to millions of consumers.
Both services are among many that rely on Elemental solutions running on AWS infrastructure.

Today, it is straightforward to design a headend in which encoders are capable of ingesting content and
transcoding it into multiple outputs and formats for online delivery. A single system can create multi-
resolution channel outputs from a single source, whatever the codec combination.

STATISTICAL MULTIPLEXING
One of the key differences between preparing digital content for broadcast and for multiscreen delivery is
that broadcast delivery requires channels to be multiplexed together to take best advantage of available
bandwidth. As noted, each data stream in DVB-S2 is typically capable of a maximum rate of up to 58.8
Mbps in a DTH implementation, but the exact bandwidth available depends on transponder bandwidth
and link budget.

Using AVC, this bandwidth could comprise a number of SD channels at approximately 1.5 Mbps each
and HD channels at approximately 4 Mbps each to fill the multiplex. Now, using HEVC, UHD channels at
approximately 18 Mbps can be added along with radio and opportunistic data services. The obvious
approach is to set a suitable bitrate for each channel – by determining the quality required and the
economic value of each – and seeing how many can fit in the carrier.

A more efficient solution, however, is statistical multiplexing that pools together available bandwidth and
uses active variable bitrate encoding for each channel. This allocates more bandwidth to video that is
complex and reduces the bit budget when video is less complex. A fast-moving sports sequence on one
channel could be balanced, for example, by a cartoon with large areas of flat color on another channel.
Bandwidth is therefore allocated to the channel(s) that need it most.

Figure 2 - Bandwidth Savings in a Multi-Resolution, Multi-Codec Mux Pool

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 Statistical multiplexing analyzes the frame-by-frame complexity of incoming video across all channels in
the mux, while a bitrate controller dynamically sets the target bitrate levels on each encoder to ensure
total bandwidth matches available bandwidth.

There are advantages in performing statistical multiplexing in a software environment. A software-based

statmux closes the loop between analysis, bitrate setting and multiplexing, making it more responsive and
therefore, able to provide the best possible result. The Elemental Statmux product has the capability to
support multiple codecs and resolutions, as well as programmable pool size and quadrature amplitude
modulation (QAM) bonding.

Software-based statistical multiplexing provides a highly reliable and efficient use of available bandwidth.
By allowing the maximum number of channels and services, it creates the most cost-effective solution.
Statistical multiplexing also ensures that redundancy can be built into the system without large
investments in additional hardware, meaning that a failure at any point in the process can be quickly
addressed and remedied.

For a more detailed discussion on statistical multiplexing, see the Elemental white paper, Unified Linear
TV Delivery.

A SOFTWARE-BASED UNIFIED HEADEND

Elemental offers proven high quality, high performance video processing solutions for the primary screen
and for online content delivery. Creating a unified broadcast and multiscreen headend is a logical
progression, using the same encoding together with Elemental Statmux multiplexing software. This
enables, for example, a broadcaster to migrate its legacy headend to a software-defined video processing
solution, tightly integrated with its online delivery platform.

As a software platform, a unified headend is designed to run on dedicated appliances, or as virtual

machines in a data center. The migration to a unified headend is part of the broader implementation of
software-defined video architecture across the entire broadcast and content technology ecosystem.
Virtualization leads to significant efficiencies because a unified headend is responsive to peaks in
demand and does not require hardware that largely stands idle. The cost of providing the technical
infrastructure for video delivery is therefore linked directly to demand.

A unified headend also makes it possible for multiplexes to be more densely populated by migrating to a
newer codec such as HEVC, especially as set-top boxes supporting HEVC become widely available.
HEVC encoding is likely to be used for more than just UHD delivery in the future.

Elemental offers a unified headend solution, capable of creating DVB-S2 multiplexes that allow for the
mixing of UHD, HD and SD content with HEVC, AVC and MPEG-2 codecs. A unified headend powered
by Elemental software can not only create DVB-S2 multiplexes, but also encode and deliver multiscreen
video content. Elemental therefore offers a practical one-stop solution that is ready to implement. While
encoding and multiplexing have the greatest impact on image quality and low latency, there are other key
elements and functionalities involved in building a DVB-S2 stream, which solutions from Elemental
address.

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 Figure 3 - Elemental Unified Headend Solution with DVB-S2 and Multiscreen Video Delivery

One key part of the workflow is handling the various service information tables, such as program-specific
information (PSI), service information (SI), along with electronic program guide EPG metadata. All of this
data must be created and inserted into the multiplex.

Elemental partners with market leaders in this field, such as Nevion, Teleste, Triveni and Newtec to
integrate software and hardware into a unified DVB-S2 headend workflow. These partners handle the
grooming multiplex, where the proper DVB-S2 PSI/SI tables along with EPG data are inserted. Elemental
also teams with a leading solution provider to handle the network management system (NMS) layer that
all unified headends require to monitor system health.

Elemental has deep experience in protecting content for online delivery using standards required by
various content delivery platforms and consumer devices; the company is well positioned to offer a
conditional access system (CAS) to protect the DVB-S2 stream. For the broadcast side of the unified
headend, Elemental works with a broadcaster’s preferred CAS platform.

While there are third-party elements to a unified headend solution from Elemental, a full deployment
guide, including configuration support and documentation, is available.

CONCLUSION
As the performance of commercial off-the-shelf hardware rises while prices fall, and cloud capabilities and
connectivity mature quickly, software-defined video processing is increasingly becoming a compelling
business choice for video content preparation and delivery. Providing the combined functionality of
primary and multiscreen delivery as a single unified headend workflow minimizes risk and reduces
overhead in addition to simplifying the video architecture.

Software-defined video infrastructure offers resiliency, obviating the need for racks of duplicated
hardware. In the diminished likelihood of a failure, video processing is instantly switched to redundant

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 resources in a different part of the data center and a single automated failover command manages all re-
routing.

The greatest benefit of a software-defined video headend is agility. Video operators can instantly
implement the latest codecs and video processing advancements across multiple channels, substantially
reducing time to market. Codecs such as HEVC can be implemented in software years before dedicated
hardware is developed, proven and manufactured.

This is key because the latest codecs in combination with powerful statistical multiplexing allow satellite
service providers to make the best use of bandwidth for each DVB-S2 stream. Some operators will want
to use available bandwidth to transmit as many channels as possible; others will look to offer new
services such as UHD or HDR. Because codecs can be freely mixed within the multiplex, video operators
have the flexibility to meet business requirements. And if the video stream itself changes – perhaps when
migrating to DVB-S2X – then multiplex parameters can be quickly and easily upgraded.

By bringing together the best in video processing and multiplexing, and technical system elements from
market leaders, a unified headend solution from Elemental delivers unprecedented quality, flexibility and
reduced operational expenses, all while offering video operators the agility to best take advantage of
market change.

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