Q&A: BT Mediahive - August 2004  

Continuing its series of questions and answers with companies influencing the digital sports space, Sport and Technology spoke to David Jamieson, head of media solutions at BT Broadcast Services (BTBS), the broadcast and media solutions arm of UK incumbent telco, British Telecom. BTBS has developed a digital content management platform called BT Mediahive that offers solutions to sports rights holders among others.

Please describe your role and responsibilities at BT Broadcast Services

"I work with rights holders, suppliers and BT's media management platform to put together various new commercial and technical solutions."
 
Please describe what solutions BT offers rights holders wishing to exploit their content online?

"The key element of what we offer is the ability for content owners to digitise, store, manage, repurpose and distribute their content to broadcast, broadband and mobile channels all via a single PC browser. Recently, we have added DRM capabilities so that we can also encrypt content for delivery over open internet or IP networks. For any rights holder looking to monetise content by delivery to an IP device anywhere in the world, we offer a one-stop shop solution."
 
What are the main characteristics of your BT Mediahive system?

"We have, I think, one of the only systems in the world that can take a 270 Mbps SDI feed or digibeta tape and convert it to a range of archive, high definition, standard definition, DVD, CD, internet or multiple mobile formats in one single operation. We also have an integrated storage architecture which allows us to offer online storage solutions at current physical tape archive costs."
 
How does BT Mediahive compare to other products on the market - i.e., what are its strengths compared to your competitors?

"Its biggest strength is the ASP nature of the platform or the ability to access all our services via internet or DSL-based networks. One other strength is the very low set-up costs and hence barriers to entry. We are moving to utility data centre models for infrastructure supply and in our case the ability to offer storage on a pay as you model - currently we charge storage on a price per Gbyte per month basis."
 
How can your system be used by rights holders to create new or additional revenue streams?

"Any content passing through the BT Tower can be captured and delivered to a range of new channels such digital signage (external billboards or in-store systems), and broadband at little additional incremental cost. It's a case of one file in, many files out."
 
How does the BT Mediahive product fit within BT's overall digital/online strategy/vision?

"For the telcos, media is likely to be the next big market as broadcasters, corporate entities and domestic homes all move to open standards environments for video production, content delivery, networking and the same end user device i.e., the PC. Outsourcing or managing the new digital supply chains fits in with the wide range of networking transports available and the next generation of net-centric services such as BT Mediahive."
 
How do you envisage the future for sport on digital channels such as broadband and mobile developing?

"Bandwidth plays an important part in determining the commercial viability of delivering content to these new channels. Current broadband speeds need to get above the uncontended 500kbps mark and mobile only starts to becoming really interesting with 3G type throughput. Once you are up at these new levels the quality is remarkable. The next hurdle is rights negotiation and the adoption of some realistic attitudes towards revenue share."
 
Do you think online and/or mobile audiences will ever overtake those of traditional TV audiences?

"I think this is unlikely, because, as with radio, cinemas and TV, these services did not spell the end of the technology that preceded them. What I think will happen is that instead of talking about how many homes watched a programme in the future, people will talk about how many of the 1bn global media enable IP devices opted in to receive the content."

The next Q&A will feature Andrew Doe, CEO of WiFi access company Sports Port

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