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.
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.
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.
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.
Timing accuracy has been a fundamental component of broadcast infrastructures for as long as we’ve transmitted television pictures and sound. The time invariant nature of frame sampling still requires us to provide timing references with sub microsecond accuracy.
For content providers (studios, content owners, content aggregators, or other content licensors) and their licensees (affiliates) operating in a multiplatform world - and pirates looking to obtain illegal access to the most popular content - it’s an unrelenting game of cat and mouse. While the internet has provided a cost-effective and easy way to deliver content to consumers, it also opens up new vulnerabilities that content pirates are eager to expose.
It’s interesting to compare the quality that can be obtained using digital audio with legacy media such as the vinyl disk and magnetic tape.
Having a collection of PCs and MACs stacked under a desk to facilitate the multitude of operational requirements not only proves difficult to operate but challenges our modern ideas around security and makes maintenance almost impossible.