Integrated IT Playout, By George Jarrett (Pt. 2)

On the matter of what users expect a CIAB to offer, Scott Rose, director of product management with Grass Valley, said: “Customers often look for specific features and functionality driven by their business, these range from powerful real-time graphics to advanced audio handling including Dolby and track shuffling. We see three key areas that are difficult to achieve with many systems.
"Firstly, live play out. We have seen a real resurgence in live event-based TV as the industry reacts to platforms like Netflix and Love Film. Live is no longer limited to top-end channels: almost any channel might need to run a live event and needs the right tools. Some systems are great at pre-packaged channels but only a few like our iTX enable operators to seamlessly manage multiple live events across channels," he added. "Secondly, the need to be more agile. Changes in the industry keep coming thick and fast, like using new codecs, changes to regulations, and social media. All of these things need a solution that will grow with broadcasters. Many systems are based around proprietary hardware, or even OEM software, so the vendor isn’t able to advance their product quickly enough."
Grass Valley’s iTX is totally software based, and the last issue Rose raised was managing the total cost of ownership.
"Broadcasters' budgets remain tight, so doing more in the play out solution is critical,” he said. “We pack the channel chain into iTX and reduce the cost compared to all the discreet boxes you would have needed."
Grass Valley goes further by combining monitoring products such as iControl and Kaleido - to give proactive alerts and service management. What room is there to develop the market further?
"The future will see the continued transition away from the traditional chain to integrated play out and also to ‘channel on a card’ for play out at the edge. We launched GV STRATUS Playout at NAB, a combination of a solid-state play out card, which is perfect for cable head ends, remote sites, and regional or even hyper-local feeds," said Rose.
"Many CIAB systems cannot do a channel in a box. Once you reach features that cannot be done you are forced back outside. This in turn means automating and managing those devices, and it goes against the principles of integration and simplicity for the operators."
The purpose of iTX has always been to offer the full play out chain in a server, and Grass Valley continues to add features 'Inside'. This led to the acquisition of Softel and the integration of a subtitle and captioning engine into iTX. Is channel-in-a-box a dated and restrictive tag?
"It is a term the industry has become comfortable with. It doesn’t, however, really describe the capability of the whole solution. CIAB systems today are running national broadcasters’ channels and some of the largest facilities in the world. So, CIAB has really just become play out," said Rose. "Advances in codecs will continue to make new workflows possible, and reducing file sizes means content can be moved and shared faster without a loss in visual quality."
These changes make integrated play out even more efficient and decrease the need for centralised SAN storage based systems for last minute play out.
"Wrappers and metadata should be looked at as two discreet requirements. For wrappers, the broadcast industry is a bit contradictory. We all want standards, but when it comes to using them, we all want 'just a few changes'. If we really want to get away from the mix-and-match approach, we have to get back to standards and use them without bending them to fit our own desires," said Rose. "For metadata the key is to allow extensible standards so both mandatory metadata and custom metadata can be present, this is an area where we do have to allow for customization."
Grass Valley treats file delivery as the primary ingest method for iTX. It has a new set of tools for managing the ingesting of both media and metadata from delivery systems such as Extreme Reach. What do its solutions offer that others do not?
"We solve the whole problem, using iTX as the integrated play out to simplify the channel chain and our wider product range to wrap around a solution that saves money while improving quality," said Rose.

Integrated IT based play out
Asked what users want a CIAB system to comprise, Snell Group chief architect Neil Maycock said: "Whilst the market is well established there is still a wide range of customer requirements and expectations. Some are only just contemplating deploying CIAB technology and therefore are taking a cautious approach, possibly with backup channels or low revenue services. Others evaluated and proved the technology some time ago and are rolling out on a large scale with premium channels.
"Fundamentally, to fully realise the promise commercially and operationally, it is important that the chosen product provides all the features you need for a service; as soon as separate devices are introduced, the full benefits start to be compromised,” he added. “It is not possible to specify a generic feature set that defines a good CIAB solution."
Maycock’s view is that the more complete the CIAB solution, the greater the commercial benefit. CIAB technology reduces integration costs, reduces CAPEX and reduces OPEX, but as soon as a system starts introducing multiple products then those benefits are compromised. Not every system requires every feature, so what has Snell done with its ICE solution?
"We have greatly expanded the capability of ICE, including incorporating third party software, to support the most complex requirements. New capabilities include Dolby processing, loudness control and Nielsen watermarking," said Maycock. "We also announced a pure software solution to originate a broadcast channel. This uses Snell’s On Demand technology to allow the ICE software to be hosted on a virtual machine platform, with live inputs and output handled as IP streams.  
"Channel in a Box is not an accurate term, most systems are neither a single box or a single channel. Perhaps 'integrated IT based play out' is better. It’s likely the term 'cloud based play out' will replace CIAB, but most solutions won’t be cloud based. The real advantage of pure software based solutions is the agile and adaptable infrastructure for the broadcaster," he added. "New codecs will broaden the range of applications that can be addressed by CIAB, but don’t fundamentally change the offerings."

Focusing on business objectives
On the matter of Pixel Power offering a full CIAB system, CEO James Gilbert said: "We do. ­The ChannelMaster platform provides all the functionality needed for channel play out. Unlike most products on the market, we have not taken a standard PC and tried to make it do what we need. For our live graphics systems we developed a hardware platform, Clarity, to deliver the sort of reliability and performance capabilities that broadcasters expect."

George's article is also available in BFV online.