Working at the limits of broadcast technology, news providers are constantly stretching systems to deliver their story first. Discover how the winners operate and quickly master the technology they value.
A number of new production facilities are now being designed and built around the ST 2110 standard for video over IP, but the cost has been prohibitive for many others. The engineers at Diversified Systems Inc. (DSI), a veteran systems integrator, were challenged by this when it came to a recent project to add cameras to the recording studios of New York City’s renown Power Station.
On October 27, 2020 The Federal Communications Commission issued an order to expand its captioning mandate for broadcasters to include audio description requirements for 40 designated market areas (DMAs) over the next four years. The move came after the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) directed stations in the top 60 DMAs to provide what it calls “described programming.”
IP networks are delivering outstanding success for broadcasters, both in terms of scalable functionality and flexibility. And the recent NMOS suite of specifications is improving integration and control, with IS-06 and IS-07 accelerating the process.
The effect of OTT-based delivery is wide-reaching, stretching all the way back to the original content production domain and creating new technical requirements and opportunities.
SDI and IP differ fundamentally in their approach to data transport as SDI is circuit switched and IP is packet switched. This provides interesting challenges for us as we start to consider what it means to route IP signals.
The best sampling rate for digital audio is easily established by considering the requirements of the human auditory system (HAS), which is the only meaningful arbiter. Provided that the bandwidth of a digital audio system somewhat exceeds the bandwidth of the HAS, that should be enough.
The #1 rule of live broadcasting is that things tend to fail at the worst possible time. The greater the ratings, the more likely something highly unlikely but mission-critical will fail, broadcast RF and wireless communication systems included. Count on it.
IP networks provide us with untold flexibility, but this flexibility presents us with interesting challenges of control. Developments in SDN (software defined networks) are leading the way through the separation of the control and data plane. And as we discover more of what SDN means, we soon realize that broadcasters are closer than they may think in achieving its operation.