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By Steve Ranger, 31 March 2005 08:00

NEWS Broadcasters are making dramatic changes to their IT infrastructure as they move to off-the-shelf digital production systems.

At present only around 15 per cent of European broadcasters have fully digital production workflows, but according to analyst Datamonitor the days of runners rushing videotapes between offices will soon be over.

“Broadcasters are finally joining the rest of the world in using IT-based open standards equipment in their TV production systems," said James Healey, senior media and broadcasting technologies analyst at Datamonitor.

In 2008, European broadcasters will spend $3.6bn on their production equipment - up from $2.6bn in 2004 - with technologies such as media asset management and video servers seeing double-digit growth.

"Some of the product groups in the value chain will see a decline in revenues - essentially those areas where analogue equipment is being replaced by IT-based solutions. The humble videotape recorder for example, which has been the workhorse of the production industry for so long, is now being replaced video servers," said Healey.

As they are now transmitting in digital, broadcasters realise they can reduce capital expenditure and boost productivity by using off-the-shelf technologies.

The next big technological step for the European broadcast industry is to begin transmitting in high-definition (HD) format, said Datamonitor. Production systems will need to be upgraded to cope, as HD content requires five to six times the storage space of regular digital files.

According to Ofcom three out of five UK households – 14.7 million - now receive digital TV.

BSkyB added 177,000 subscribers in the last quarter bringing its total number of UK subscribers to 7.2 million at the end of 2004, while there are almost five million free-to-view digital households.

The total number of subscribers to cable television remained around 3.3 million, while digital cable accounts for just over 2.5 million of the total number of UK digital households, according to Ofcom.

The analogue TV network in the UK is due to be replaced by digital in around 2012. Earlier this week two villages in Wales were the first to switch over to digital only as part of a pilot scheme.