NAB 2019 Reflections: SES's Steve Corda and MX1's Susanna Mandel-Mantello on the Growth of 4K, Power of Live Sports

NAB 2019 Reflections: SES's Steve Corda and MX1's Susanna Mandel-Mantello on the Growth of 4K, Power of Live Sports The execs call for broadcasters to launch full-time 4K channels By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - 11:00 am

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SES and MX1 had a busy week in Vegas during NAB 2019, touting SES's growing 4K Ultra HD platform, and a host of MX1 solutions, including the MX1 360 unified media platform, the new broadcast-scale Online Video Platform (OVP), the company's OU Flex service, and an enhanced sports- and events-management tool paired with a new live-events booking platform.

SVG sat down with SES VP of Business Development Steve Corda and MX1 VP/Head of Sales, Sports, and Events Susanna Mandel-Mantello to discuss the growing market for 4K UHD, MX1's offerings at the show, and more.

On the MX1 side of things, what were the primary announcements and demos at NAB 2019?

MX1 VP/Head of Sales, Sports, and Events Susanna Mandel-Mantello

Mandel-Mantello: At the NAB Show, MX1 showed its MX1 360 unified media platform for managing and delivering linear and nonlinear content to any broadcast, VOD, or OTT platform. This powerful, next-generation platform enables broadcasters and service providers to offer a full range of end-to-end services, as well as successfully aggregate, manage, and deliver linear and nonlinear content. With MX1 360, one platform does it all, delivering a one-stop shop for broadcasters to handle all their content requirements - from preparing, packaging, managing, and validating high-quality content to reliable playout and optimal delivery for multiscreen viewing.

One of the enhancements demonstrated for MX1 360 at NAB was a new sports- and events-management interface for individual matches to team sports with any group of licensees from around the world, aimed at sports and event content owners and distributors. The new interface, managed through the MX1 360 unified media platform, allows sports and event organizations and rightsholders to easily manage and share broadcast-quality media containing matches, clips, and highlights, as well as related images, documents, metadata, and more.

Also on display was the company's new live-events booking interface, which connects MX1's sports and events customers with its 24/7 live-events booking team, simplifying the planning, monitoring, and coordination of live-event-content distribution. The booking interface features one-click sharing of live events with licensees from around the world, who receive real-time notifications and access to mission-critical distribution details. The integrated solution can be used for both single-live-event management and more-complex sports tournaments with multiple concurrent live events.

SES VP of Business Development Steve Corda

Can you provide an update on SES's 4K Ultra HD platform and where you see the 4K UHD market headed this year?

Corda: We're seeing a lot of progress in Ultra HD across North America. More 4K TVs are now being delivered than HD TVs, signaling [that] the penetration is growing significantly. If you assume one TV per household, 100 million paid-TV households, we're at about the 50% level.

One of the major bottlenecks has always been set-top boxes, but we are now seeing a lot more [4K-capable] set-top boxes being deployed - hundreds of thousands in some of the larger, tier-one MVPDs.

And our growing, core set of 4K channels that we launched a few years ago is flourishing. We now have about 35 MVPDs on the SES Ultra HD platform. All of the tier-ones have been testing and trialing 4K with us, leveraging our lineup of nearly a dozen 4K channels. That represents the largest bouquet of 4K content in the world.

Consumer appetite for quality 4K is being satisfied by an increasing number of pay-TV providers, thanks to the availability of quality 4K content, 4K set-top boxes, and SES's Ultra HD platform. The SES UHD solution combines great content, satellite distribution, and reception gear into an offering that is easily integrated into cable, IPTV, and DTH systems.

Our 4K channels offer up compelling content and have been very well received in TV markets across the U.S. and North America. A challenge of course is that we have yet to see the big brands come on board. The channels have content coming from the same studios as the brand names, but it's all about brand recognition. The channels on the SES platform offer hundreds of hours of great content, including Travelxp and Insight TV - which were among the first 4K HDR channels to hit the market and arguably among the best channels on television today.

How much of a driver is live sports content in the growth of 4K UHD adoption?

Corda: In my view, the most compelling content [in 4K] has always been sports. We've carried lots of sports, including the Olympics for NBC, some sports with iNDEMAND, and most recently, last fall, college football and Major League Baseball postseason games with Fox Sports.

SES is keenly focused on sports, having stood up two events channels that are available 24/7 for anyone looking to distribute sports to the MVPDs and their affiliates. We've done some sports this year already and see ourselves delivering an extremely large number of sports events this year - probably 10 times what we enabled last year.

A broad range of sports distributors have seen the tremendous success we're having in live 4K sports, and they're ready to leverage our platform right now. These are the brand names as well as a few that are just starting out and getting the rights to some very interesting sports content. We're carrying at least one sporting event a week currently, sometimes two or three events a week. We expect we're going to probably be running full-time with a few of the major events this summer.

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LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/05/01/nab-2019-reflections-sess-steve...
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