At the start of 2013, BCE at RTL City was a hole in Luxembourg’s ground and in less than four years they were on air broadcasting 35 different channels across Europe and Singapore. Costas Colombus is BCE’s Special Projects Manager and gave The Broadcast Bridge a unique insight into how they made this mammoth installation work, including describing the issues and how they overcame them along the way.
In this second article in the series we look at the IP routers Costas and his team chose, and why.
As more and more broadcast facility operations migrate to automated production and distribution systems, companies that market technical furniture are now offering next-generation products that accommodate less equipment (and operators) and consume less space while supporting the use of new technologies like flat screen displays and software-centric control systems. This includes the use of new fabricated materials that stand up to the daily rigors of operator use.
Disasters can strike at any time and in many forms, leaving facilities with severe damage and stripping broadcast data centers of power for days. Though this can have catastrophic results, many broadcasters — through no fault of their own — surprisingly don’t have plans about how to truly protect content/playout since most of their time (and money, mind you) is spent creating, managing and delivering that content. But in the wake of several hurricanes in the US this year, as well as the horrific earthquake in Mexico, media companies are in fact putting greater emphasis on securing content and making sure their station’s main and backup feeds aren’t compromised during a disaster.
Broadcasters have finally been able to harmonize the Master Exchange Format (MXF) with the Digital Cinema Distribution format (DCP) and other international media exchange formats such as Digital Production Partnership (DPP). The result is a new specification called the Interoperable Master Format (IMF).
Some TV people become concerned when all their eggs are in one basket. In fact, when everything is in one basket, you always know exactly where the basket is.
SMPTE announces the approval of the first standards within SMPTE ST 2110, Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks.
How many SMPTE standards does it actually take to make, post-produce, distribute, broadcast and stream a movie? In this Bruce’s Short, Bruce Devlin takes a wry look at the sheer number of standards that are needed to get from the camera to the viewer.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and Quantum, all suppliers of Linear Tape-Open (LTO)-based storage products for the media and entertainment industries, have announced the specifications of the latest LTO Ultrium format, generation 8, which is now available for licensing by media manufacturers.