Alternative to DTV: Can 5G broadcast reinvigorate Malaysia’s broadcast & media industry?

By Shaun Lim

A global pandemic, emerging technologies and evolving viewing habits have all contributed to transforming and reshaping the broadcast and media industry in recent years.

However, it has been an inert last couple of years for some broadcasters in the APAC region, including in Malaysia, and it all boils down to the drive to keep operational costs down, argued Dr Ahmad Zaki, Group General Manager, Engineering, as well as being Technical Advisor, Media Prima.

“In Malaysia, the economy has been weak, causing many broadcasters to just survive with what they have,” he told APB+.

Broadcasters in Malaysia who continue to stay still, however, risk losing out on more eyeballs as over-the-top (OTT) streaming gradually takes its throne as the platform of choice for the masses. Dr Zaki attributed this to factors such as lifestyle changes, poor indoor DTV signal reception, the proliferation of ‘smart devices’ and unfortunately, the continued pervasiveness of illegal streaming services.

Neither have previously vaunted technologies done much to help broadcasters in Malaysia attract more audiences. Dr Zaki observed, “Some service providers may have included 4K, 8K and high dynamic range (HDR) in their services but viewers have not shown great interest as the differences in picture quality is too detailed to be noticeable.

“A lot of production equipment is 4K ready and many production houses do capture and store their material in 4K. However, most of it eventually is down-converted to HD due to storage constraints and a lack of editing tools to handle high resolutions.”

Where content production is concerned, remote production has been gaining popularity, especially for small-scale and low-cost production. What has been holding remote production back, said Dr Zaki, is good-quality connectivity that comes at a price.

“Anyone with a production background knows that a large proportion of production costs comes from manpower,” he added. “We all know that uncompressed video/audio and other control signals need large amounts of bandwidth, extremely low latency, as well as a reliable and consistent connection. 

“In the past, connections with these qualities were rare and expensive. The costs to deploy such connectivity often offset the savings introduced by producing programmes remotely.”

Where the migration from baseband to IP is concerned, Dr Zaki described it as a “long and painful process” that has spanned more than a decade. The incentive to move to IP, he insisted, is an economic one, as opposed to technological.

“Although the adoption rate of IP could be higher, we are beginning to see some progress, owing to more affordable IP-based broadcast equipment. The major cost savings is even more apparent if IP is implemented en bloc.

“Of course, I am referring to IP-based production. On the contribution and distribution side, IP has been overwhelmingly accepted as the new norm.”

It is also with the desire to control cost that is compelling broadcasters to turn to technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), including in areas such as subtitling and quality control (QC).

However, Dr Zaki cautioned of the potential pitfalls presented by AI, and urged for more study on how the broadcast and media industry can safely leverage AI. “I have yet to see a truly effective AI solution that can fully replace current manual processes.

“I retain my reservations over the technology, and the potential legal concerns and ‘deep fake’ possibilities which it may still bring.”

Overall, when it comes to investment in technology, he predicts a shift from more traditional CAPEX models to OPEX models. Owning large and complex broadcast infrastructure is becoming a thing of the past, declared Dr Zaki.

“This is partly due to the rapidly changing servers, encoding/decoding equipment and expensive editing equipment all moving towards a shared model,” he explained. “The extensive use of cloud technology is relieving broadcasters of the need to purchase huge servers and equipment, only to replace them in five years due to the fast-paced developments on IT hardware.”

Is 5G broadcast Malaysia’s alternative to DTV and streaming services?

While Dr Zaki may remain guarded over technologies like AI and lament the speed at which other technologies like IP are implemented, he is more convinced of the potential possibilities another technology can bring to Malaysia.

As the Chair of the 5G Broadcasting Working Group setup under the Malaysian Technical Standards Forum Berhad (MTSFB), Dr Zaki and his team have worked tirelessly to examine 5G broadcast as an alternative to DTV and streaming services.

With the broadcast frequencies at Band 4 and Band 5 (470MHz until 700MHz) of the UHF bands no longer reserved exclusively for broadcast TV, 5G broadcast is perhaps an inevitability. “This has provided broadcasters with enough incentive to seek alternative platforms. If they have surrendered their frequencies to 5G, then it would only be fair for 5G services to include broadcast,” said Dr Zaki.

He is also quick to emphasise that 5G broadcast is not streaming, with underlying differences between the standard data streaming services and 5G broadcast.

“5G broadcast enables content to be transmitted to all devices with the right firmware. Within the 3GPP documents (the 3GPP is an umbrella term for a number of standards organisations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications) the term has evolved from Multicast-Broadcast Services (MBS) to enhanced MBS (eMBS) to further evolved MBS (feMBMS) to Multimedia Broadcast-Multicast Services (MBMS).

“5G broadcast may utilise the UHF bands for a truly broadcast experience.”

Instead of approaching it with trepidation, Dr Zaki advocates for 5G broadcast to be seen as an opportunity to enable more data bandwidth to be freed for other paid services when video streaming is close to saturating existing data bandwidth.

With video streaming data currently consisting of more than 60% of data traffic, he painted this scenario, “Just imagine if half of this could be transmitted using true broadcast over a 5G broadcast network — it will definitely free up plenty of bandwidth for other meaningful data connections.”

He added, “In most cases however, the switching between streaming and true broadcast will be done transparently to the user and seamlessly. The concept of ‘venue casting’, where live video of an ongoing match in real time can be seen by audiences at a stadium in real time and once the streaming request exceed a certain threshold, the live streaming is pushed to the true broadcast mode for a smoother and non-buffering viewing experience while maintaining online connectivity is an exciting one!”

Accessibility to off-the-shelf 5G handheld sets which are capable of bringing live audio and video from remote sites back to studios is also likely to be a boon to the technology. Able to tune into broadcast frequencies with proper firmware adaptation, the ultra reliability and low latency connectivity offered by 5G allows remote monitoring and real-time data connectivity, and further enhances remote production, remote editing and other functions that require high bandwidth and low latency.

Describing the potential of 5G broadcast as “enormous”, Dr Zaki is nevertheless taking a pragmatic outlook when it comes to how widespread an impact the technology will have on Malaysia’s broadcast and media in the near future. 

“Implementing 5G broadcast successfully, and on a wide scale, will depend on the political and business willingness of stakeholders in Malaysia,” he concluded.