58 TVBEurope
www.tvbeurope.com October 2014
IP Forum
IP is the only way to go Philip Stevens moderates this month’s Forum in which issues relating to internet protocol (IP) technology are discussed
With its ability to carry signals from any point to any point within standard internet infrastructures, audio and video-over-IP will transform broadcasting. So, what are the challenges when it comes to IP technology? What are the latest innovations? And where next for this technology? Those taking part are (in alphabetical order) Martin Dyster, director and head of audio, TSL Products; John Mailhot, product architect director, Imagine Communications; Kirstan Pepler, head of propositions, media sector, Easynet; Steve Plunkett, CTO, Red Bee Media, part of Ericsson; Robert Rowe, MD, live TV, Snell, a Quantel company; Arnhild Schia, CCO, Nevion; Garrick Simeon, MD, General Dynamics Mediaware; Lieven Vermaele, CEO, SDNsquare; Jan Weigner, CTO, Cinegy; Hiroshi Yamauchi, technology and business development manager, 4K IP production and optical disk archive, Sony Europe.
How does IP technology help the broadcasting industry? Dyster: I can remember producing broadcast system designs where VT-based editing was cutting edge, serial control was a revelation and the parallel control cable infrastructure linking GPI ports and Boolean logic-based custom switching systems held together day-to-day operations across the entire broadcast facility. In the past two
Martin Dyster TSL Products
John Mailhot Imagine Communications
decades these ‘clunky’, over-complicated and inefficient systems have gradually disappeared
interchange. Signals are connected back to
to be replaced almost entirely with IP-based
a house ‘router’ and high-quality pixel-perfect
facsimiles. Where hundreds of kilometres of cable,
synchronous-timed signals are available. Except
thousands of connections and months of design
for cost and scalability, HD-SDI would live forever,
and installation once existed, now a few racks of
but as IP technology continues to improve, even
PCs, hundreds of metres of CAT5e cable and an
these uncompressed production infrastructures will
appropriate quota of Ethernet switches does the
find scalability and TCO benefits.
same job for a fraction of the cost and complexity.
Vermaele: IP technology will help us move
Mailhot: The economic scale of the IT industry,
into one end-to-end virtualised platform that
as compared to unique equipment for television,
will be software-based for all media processes
produces a very different leverage on its
and IP-based as one converged network for
technology supply chain. For the IT industry, this
all media workflows between these processes.
has produced a beneficial price/capability
If well designed, this will result in a format-
improvement of roughly twice every 18 months –
independent, vendor-agnostic, highly flexible and
this is seen across storage, computing, and also
scalable infrastructure. The creativity, speed and
networking. By contrast, HD-SDI was introduced
flexibility to set up, develop and offer new media
in 1995 and we are still using it today. For
experiences on these platforms will increase, while
uncompressed content, HD-SDI is still the standard
the cost and complexity decreases.