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In this look at the potential use of IT solutions in broadcast applications, John Watkinson turns to key issues of bandwidth, latency and compression.
Over the last 25 years developers have worked on producing specific networking systems for broadcast that can transport many channels of high quality audio in the most efficient and budget conscious way. Since the mid 1980s Ethernet has formed the basis of many networks, for both IT and audio. CobraNet is generally regarded within the industry as the first commercially successful digital audio over Ethernet system. It first appeared in 1996 and while largely seen as a live and installed sound tool it showed what networking technology could do. The growing interest in networking around the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries was reflected by the Audio Engineering Society (AES) organising a “moving audio” conference 14 years ago. This was at a time when, according to AES standards manager Mark Yonge chairing the Audio Networking Forum in London on 12 December, networks were a “new and novel idea”.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), developer of the DisplayPort standard for establishing a PC-to-monitor interface, said that adoption of its DisplayPort standard, as well as its membership numbers, are at an all time high. The group said this increase in activity points to the growing demand for displays with 4K and higher resolution, as well as smaller devices with more flexible connectivity.
Although there continues to be some debate about whether the industry as a whole will embrace a next-generation television broadcast standard, dubbed ATSC 3.0, due to a number of technical and financial hardship hurdles (for both broadcasters and the consumer), several live demonstrations of the proposed standard’s capabilities continue to be staged at various industry gatherings. The latest such demonstration is occurring this week at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) convention in Las Vegas.
Any discussion of media storage relies on four generic phrases; on-line, near-line, archive or off-line. What storage technology is best suited for each task?
Thirteen industry experts offer their thoughts on technology for 2015.
Cloud computing and broadcasters—they are made for each other. Cloud computing enables global scale of operations, brings tremendous cost savings and enables the worldwide distribution of content.
Like everything else, audio equipment is increasingly adopting IT solutions in the hope of achieving some combination of economy, resilience, flexibility and sound quality. John Watkinson argues that the best way to obtain the desired result is to make informed decisions based on an understanding of the technology.
