Vision: Slomo.TV on achieving explosive growth in 4K sports video production
By Igor Vitiorets, Slomo.TV CTO.
I would like to share my vision on the development of sports broadcasting and video production, based not only on the technology, but on the intersection of technology and economics.
Having created the world’s first 4K replay servers that provide fully featured video replays of three to four 4K video sources in one device, I was quite skeptical about the intense growth of 4K sports production.
Despite the best price and performance ratio of our servers, a mass transition to 4K and the provision of viewers with a greater choice of content in the best possible quality has been challenging until now.
Economic aspects
All modern user devices (TVs, monitors, gadgets, etc,) already support 4K, but the content production in 4K has not become global. We have to admit that only large, expensive events and sport competitions are covered in 4K. However, viewers are able and willing to watch, for example, matches of their national championships or broadcasts of local events in 4K. Until recently, this content was not available to them in 4K, as small TV companies, which mainly provide broadcasts of such events, were not eager to move to 4K.
The reason for this lies in the economic aspect. The 4K broadcasts require a set of relevant equipment, namely cameras, video mixers, routers, servers, etc. These components of 4K video production from major high end companies are quite expensive and unaffordable for entry-level and mid-level companies. Thus, there is not enough wide high quality content.
The situation changed fundamentally with the advent of BlackMagic Design’s broadcast grade, cost effective and feature-rich 4K video production components. It made 4K OB vans or flight cases for four to 16 cameras based on BlackMagic Design equipment economically accessible to virtually any broadcaster. The entry barrier to the 4K market has been lowered significantly.
Interesting phenomenon
Monitoring the TV production market, I noticed an interesting phenomenon related to the new availability of 4K equipment; there are quite a few cases when video engineers who used to work for major TV companies set up their own businesses and, thanks to the sufficient quality of the BMD’s equipment and its much lower price, successfully entered the 4K market, winning a noticeable share of it from the major players because of their economical advantage.
Separately I would like to focus on the live sports broadcasting. Since sports broadcasts are inconceivable without video replays, a 4K replay server is a must-have component of any 4K broadcast.
Until last year, the lack of cost effective 4K replay server oriented on budget broadcast was an obstacle for small and medium-sized companies to enter the 4K broadcast market. Now it is easier for these companies to enter the 4K sports broadcasting market through new affordable, compact 4K video replay servers.
From my perspective, the mentioned changes and market releases will help solve one of the important issues; the lack of 4K content. In turn, we will continue to move towards making our 4K equipment more accessible to sports broadcasting and video content production companies of all levels, which will lead to greater availability of 4K in all ways.