U.K.-based Arqiva Satellite & Media (www.arqiva.com) provides much of the infrastructure behind television, radio, satellite and wireless communications in the U.K. and has a significant presence in Ireland, mainland Europe and the USA. Arqiva recently published a guide to help exhibitors navigate the new realm of digital exhibition of live events. What follows is an abridged version of the guide. FJI thanks Arqiva for the opportunity to spread the word.

During the last few years, live alternative content has proven that it has a place in the cinema business. Audiences have been excited by the opportunity to watch opera, ballet, music concerts and sports live on the big screen and exhibitors have created incremental revenue streams.

Understandably, exhibitors were initially cautious when deploying cinema equipment for live broadcasts and worked hard to limit costs while they gauged audience demand and experimented with business models. Today, most alternative live events continue to be carried over these “early adopter” systems based on consumer-grade receivers, which although functional often present exhibitors with some challenges.

These challenges can include the extra burden live event screenings place on cinema managers and projectionists, the quality of the integration with digital projectors and cinema sound systems, last-minute requirements to re-point satellite dishes and re-tune receivers just before screening, and customer dissatisfaction with poor sound quality, lip-sync errors and signal interference.

This guide has been designed to provide exhibitors with information on all the current technology and service options which can help exhibitors identify and address the challenges that most affect their business.

How It Works
Screening a live alternative event successfully can be broken down into four steps: capture, transmitting or broadcasting the event from the venue to the cinema, receiving the video at the cinema, and projecting the event. The exhibitor will have varying levels of control over each of the four steps. For instance, it’s likely that the cinema will have little control over the capture of a live event, unless the exhibitor has directly negotiated the rights and is undertaking the production for a particular event.

Capture
This includes shooting of the live event into a package that’s suitable for screening in a cinema. Many live events will be recorded and packaged for a number of international markets. Outside of the artistic production of an event, the capture choices that most affect exhibitors with respect to their network are format (i.e., SD or HD), frame rate, bit rate and encryption.

Broadcast
Once captured, the event needs to be transmitted from the venue to the cinemas in which it is to be screened. As the event is to be projected live, it has to be distributed by a communications network. Presently, all live events are transported to the cinema by satellite, as terrestrial (i.e., wired) links are not commercially viable for live cinema distribution.
A satellite truck at the event venue will be able to see a satellite and “bounce” the event picture to each cinema. The economics of satellite communications is particularly favorable when a live event is being screened at multiple cinemas inside the reach (or footprint) of a satellite.

Receive
Perhaps not surprisingly, given that this is the interface between the cinema and the live event production, the receive stage is the one where the exhibitor has both the most control and the largest number of options. Choices include the type of equipment installed at each cinema and how this equipment and the service are managed.

Projection
Although it is possible to prepare a cinema in an ad hoc fashion to screen a live event, for the rest of this guide we assume that the exhibitor has an installed DCI-compliant system that will be used to screen the live alternative events.

Let’s take a closer look at the choices facing the exhibitor in the areas where they have most control: receiving and projection of the alternative live event video.

Where we are today?
When live event screening was pioneered, cinema owners rightly saw it as an experiment. It would be great news if it worked financially, but if it didn’t, the exhibitors needed to limit the costs of these screenings.

This led to the first live alternative events being received at the cinema by “receive-only” satellite dishes and decoded by set-top boxes designed for consumers to receive pay TV. There was quite a bit for the projectionist to do to prepare for and keep the event onscreen, support contracts for the satellite equipment were short-term, and testing, installation and event management were all very ad hoc. And of course, all of this made sense—no one knew if live events were going to succeed or fail, be a short-term flash in the pan, or have the potential to grow to be an important new revenue stream.

Live alternative events have proven to provide sizeable audiences and on many occasions during non-peak cinema hours. For these reasons, most cinema chains see alternative live event screenings as an exciting development and a growing source of future revenues.
Now that digital cinema and live alternative events are taking off, technology and service providers have developed and are now offering new equipment and services that have the potential to make exhibitors’ lives easier by increasing efficiency and improving scalability.

Receive
To receive a live event, each cinema needs a satellite dish which is pointed and tuned correctly to receive the event and a receiver which decodes the event broadcast, so that it can be fed into the digital projection system for screening. The main choices facing the exhibitor are: What sort of satellite network will I receive my content from, should I choose professional or consumer receiver equipment, and do I have to support encryption?

Satellite networks
In theory, satellite broadcasts are available to anyone with the right size satellite dish pointed at the correct satellite and with an appropriately tuned receiver. There are two main types of satellite platforms: closed networks and open networks.
Closed networks usually only allow a closed group of transmission providers to access them; this means that exhibitors will only get access to the events those transmission providers broadcast.
Open networks are open to be used by everyone; there is no gatekeeper controlling access to what events can be broadcast and what you can receive on your system. The rights-holder would typically work with their transmission partner to define where and what encryption is required.
In addition, it is worth knowing that for live events, some satellites use capacity which is available as a stopgap measure, with potentially limited availability and limited long-term commitment. If capacity is not available for an event, it will mean exhibitors may have to re-tune their equipment, or if the capacity becomes permanently unavailable, re-point the satellite dishes at each site.

Open and closed satellite networks
To receive a live event, a satellite dish has to be first correctly pointed at the appropriate satellite. Presently, more than one satellite network is being used to broadcast live events in digital cinemas, which presents exhibitors with a number of choices in terms of the equipment they install. However, this choice would not be necessary if the events rights-holders broadcast their content on the most popular “open” digital-cinema satellite networks.
The best future scenario for both exhibitors and live events producers and rights-holders would be if one or more satellite prevails for the delivery of both digital movies and live events. There are likely to be a number of economic factors that will move the industry in this direction.
Notwithstanding the above, the exhibitor presently has the following satellite receive dish options: Use one or more fixed dishes, or point the dish to access different satellites, which can be achieved either through a motorized dish or by climbing on the roof and physically re-pointing the dish.
Motorized dishes provide an option for automated dish re-pointing and enable the exhibitor to access different satellites by rotating the dish using a series of motors and control gear to point directly at a satellite. Such motorized dishes are commonly used by “teleport” operators, where dishes are often in excess of four meters in diameter and where regular maintenance of the motorized infrastructure can take place. While this functionality may be desirable, the capital expense, operating cost, complexity and reliability issues may outweigh the benefits of deploying such systems at cinemas.
Fixed antennas are typically installed in a permanent or semi-permanent fashion and pointed at a particular satellite. The correct pointing of a satellite dish is extremely important (and requires specialist equipment including spectrum analyzers), as it affects the reliability of the signal being received. For instance,
a badly pointed dish will be more susceptible to interference.
It is possible to re-point a fixed antenna from one satellite to another (as long as there is line of sight to the satellite in question), although this process needs to be undertaken by a trained satellite professional. A further consideration is that if satellite dishes are to be re-pointed for different events, it makes it more difficult to have a single dish option for live events and the electronic delivery of movies.

Receiver choice – consumer or professional
The choice of receiver is important—choosing a consumer receiver similar to one installed in the home to receive satellite TV is a very low-cost option, but it does have lower functionality than a professional receiver. While all of this additional functionality is not necessarily needed, it does increase the options for how a live event network can be managed, which may be advantageous to some exhibitors. Consumer receivers can occasionally suffer from lip-syncing issues, a problem inherent to the design of the vast majority of consumer receivers. This is because these receivers were designed for the broadcast TV market, which solves lip-syncing issues with other techniques.
Consumer receivers provide for domestic audio and video connections which may limit the quality and ease of integration with 2K and 4K DCI projectors. These are constructed with industry-standard professional interfaces. This can lead to a requirement for a separate scaler unit which needs configuration and adds to the complexity and can, in some circumstances, reduce the reliability and quality of the system.
Other functionality that is not typically supported by consumer receivers includes: HD DVB subtitling, support for remote management, automatic tuning and open-standard encryption. The benefit of each of these to any particular exhibitor should be carefully considered and while some of these functions do not directly impact the exhibitor, they have the potential to limit the content choices open to them. For instance, rights-holders are currently unable to broadcast HD DVB subtitling, which means that for each language variation a separate video broadcast is required, which dramatically increases the event costs. Once a critical mass of sites is able to support HD DVB subtitling, event rights-holders may choose to take advantage of these cost savings, excluding exhibitors without subtitling support from an event.
The same is true for encryption. The level of future proofing is also lower, with many consumer receivers unable to support the high bandwidth requirement of live 3D or the simultaneous reception of digital-cinema packages (feature content) and live events.
In summary, the lower-cost option limits flexibility, reduces quality and increases the complexity of managing the system, but if you’re at a stage where these issues are not primary concerns, then consumer receivers may continue to be adequate for your business.

Encryption
Typically, encryption is deployed when it’s mandated by the content owner or rights-holder to protect their content from unauthorized viewing or piracy. Although to date rights-holders have predominantly decided to transmit their events unencrypted, this is largely due to the fact that it has been technically and commercially difficult to successfully distribute and screen events using encryption. It is suspected that the inability to encrypt content has restricted the number and type of events.
Let’s not forget that encryption is quite common in the broadcast and cinema industries, where rights-holders value their content and do not want unauthorized access or piracy. Depending on what the content owner decides, it is therefore possible that the live event is either encrypted or free to air. If the content owner decides to encrypt, there are two broad choices for them: open standards-based or closed encryption.
Closed encryption is often associated with closed networks. It can be very secure, but limits the access of who can transmit their material, as a gatekeeper is usually required to generate the encryption keys and provide the broadcast.
Open-standards-based encryptions allow any transmission provider to transmit and encrypt, but also enable all authorized and enabled receivers to receive and decrypt the event. In either case, if the event is encrypted, the receiver equipment will require some capability to decrypt this signal. The choice of what receive equipment is deployed at your premises will define whether you can receive an event.

Projection: Ad Hoc or Managed Integration
Once received and decoded, the live event footage is fed to the digital projector and the cinema sound system.
To do this efficiently, the receiver should be properly integrated with the digital projection system. There are two main choices here, self-installation or integration through your technology provider or systems integrator.
Some live event systems installed with early adopter solutions can be overly complex and difficult to manage compared with the solutions available today. As exhibitors look to provide more live events on more screens, it is increasingly likely that they will require systems that are as efficient and as streamlined as possible, reducing staffing levels and ensuring that the event screened has high video and sound quality to provide the entertainment experience consumers expect when visiting a cinema. A professional installation means that the satellite equipment is integrated directly and permanently with the digital-cinema equipment and protects the exhibitor’s digital projection investment and future live event revenues.

Running the Technology
It’s relatively easy to design and build a system capable of receiving and digitally projecting live alternative events at cinemas. What’s more difficult is designing a system that’s also easy to manage and maintain. Running a system involves a number of tasks, the most important of which are tuning, maintenance, monitoring, and management and event support.

Tuning: in-house or managed
Right now, tuning is one of the most common sources of live event failure and the biggest overhead on local cinema staff. This is because for each and every event, the receiver needs to be tuned to the specific parameters of the event.
When using a consumer receiver, tuning is a manual task often undertaken using the remote control; this process may not be that intuitive (but can be taught) and it is open to “finger trouble” and can be time-consuming to get right.
With a professional receiver and a managed network, the receivers can be remotely tuned for an event, removing the need for local staff intervention, while providing an option for local configuration as a fail-safe, reducing your chance of live event failure. Remote tuning allows for a central operations center to check that each site is correctly tuned to the event.

Maintenance, monitoring and management
So you’ve got a live alternative event system that’s working. To keep it up and running and manage a network efficiently, it is desirable to spot any problems as soon as possible.

There are a three main ways that a network can be maintained:
• In-house, using your own in-cinema resources and centralized technical teams
• Ad hoc, paying for third-party support as and when required
• Managed service, which means that your system is managed by a third party whose job is to ensure that the network is always ready for action, whilst eliminating unknown costs

Which option is best for you depends on a host of factors, including the technical knowledge of your internal resource, how important live events are to your business, the robustness of your network and the quality of your receive equipment and its installation.

At one end of the scale there is the DIY approach, and at the other a managed service. There is a cost attached to both approaches—it just depends which best fits your organization and scale of operation.

The installation of professional receivers enables the use of a back-channel (typically an existing broadband/ADSL network) at the cinema for remote management and monitoring of the receiver. This provides real-time warnings when things go wrong, rather than relying on ad hoc testing. If the antenna has been blown off-course or a cable has become damaged or unplugged, these faults will be detected by the Network Operations Center (NOC) at the teleport operator as soon as they happen. The NOC will also monitor the strength of the satellite signal and interference and ensure that the receiver is decoding the signal properly, as well as monitoring a number of additional parameters that are useful in early fault diagnosis.

Event Support
The primary method for identifying problems in live event networks to date has been to conduct signal tests. These usually take place up to a week before the event.

During the tests, the cinema managers or projectionists determine whether they are receiving the broadcast correctly. As live events become more frequent and the number of cinemas reached increases, consideration needs to be given as to how these testing processes scale.
Testing of cinema networks built using consumer-grade receivers is limited to local checking of a broadcast during the time of the broadcast. Where the network is being monitored, the exhibitor is able to know the status of each site at any given time.

Exhibitors also have the option of installing a confidence monitor, something that was not commonly deployed in early installation. This displays the content received via the receiver without using the digital projector and cinema screen. This means, for example, that during a test, signals can be monitored even if the digital auditorium is showing other content and helps ensure that a professionally monitored network is kept in tip-top condition continually rather than being checked a week before an event.

What’s Right for You?
Evaluating what’s the best way of receiving and screening live alternative events is a complex task. You’re obviously going to look at installation and running costs and compare those with future revenues. How bullish you are on the prospects of live alternative events is obviously an important factor. Additionally, it may be important to you that live event infrastructure installed now also prepares you for electronic delivery of movies and for 3D content. Decisions are also affected by day-to-day resourcing issues, such as whether or not projectionists have the time and skill to carry out tuning and satellite dish re-pointing.
We hope this guide enables you to pick your way through all the options, including the new solutions and services specifically designed for exhibitors screening live alternative events, so that you can make the decisions that are right for you.

To download a PDF of the full guide, go here.