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.
When CBS Sports broadcasts images of the players taking the field on February 7th for Super Bowl LV to millions of viewers around the world, it will be the culmination of the most challenging season for live football sports production in the U.S.
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.
With the advent of immersive audio mixing using codecs like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X (the successor to DTS HD) professionals now have the ability to create interactive, personalized, scalable and immersive content by representing it as a set of individual assets together with metadata describing their relationships and associations.
If we could have a “Year of the Engineer”, then I am firmly of the opinion that 2020 would be it. Lockdown has demonstrated unprecedented imagination, ingenuity and tenacity, especially for our engineering community.