IP Requires A Different Approach

IP requires a different approach compared with conventional broadcasting, argues Tom Swan, Sales and Marketing Director of leading systems integrator dB Broadcast.

We're seeing substantial interest in IP based infrastructure and equipment across the industry and dB Broadcast has kept up with developments from the start. Right now, we're building a major IP broadcast facility, and have recently completed a state-of-art studio system that provides live 4K productions using IP equipment and infrastructure, making the facility extremely flexible. This project was a radical new entity!

More and more IP broadcast products are becoming available, and IP based systems are moving on from proof-of-concept test systems to operational production facilities. We are currently working on IP based production facilities using best-of-breed products, rather than relying on a single manufacturer for all products.

UHD and HDR are now major considerations, although the increase in availability of native content is slow.

With UHD and HDR, we're taking hits on frame rates, resolution and dynamic range. Even by today's standards, the files are huge and the processing requirements extremely demanding. As far as possible, people want to future-proof their investments in infrastructure to support the very substantial demands of these technologies.

We're currently deploying a multi-petabyte storage platform based on 100Gb COTS infrastructure to support editing and transfer of UHD files. Building edit workstations to support UHD is still non-trivial. We're also deploying a UHD capable network for exchange of live streams. So there's a lot going on, but SDI continues to have a place in some scenarios where point to point connectivity is appropriate.

www.dbbroadcast.co.uk

This article is also available to read at BFV online here, page 31.

(JP/LM)