Engineers facing the need to upgrade a facility have a choice, copper or fiber. There may be good reasons to choose either. However, as this tutorial reveals, the key benefit of installing fiber optic links include its wide bandwidth, which almost makes fiber future proof with regard to new formats.
The coming together of IT and broadcast brings with it a blurred and chaotic interface. As engineers dig deeper into the differences, it becomes apparent that there still is an important role for dedicated hardware.
In the fourth season of ‘Bruce’s Shorts’, Bruce Devlin takes a look at the Interoperable Master Format (IMF). This episode explains the IMF basics. A single TV or movie title is transformed into multiple content versions (airline edits, special edition, languages…) These versions, which share common assets sourced from high-quality source masters, are ultimately made available to multiple distribution channels (Internet, optical media, broadcast…) across multiple territories and over the span of many months to over a year. IMF is aimed at improving the automation for multi-version production. This episode explains the IMF basics.. IMF has now been standardised by the SMPTE as ST 2067.
Aesthetically pleasing 3D titles and graphics are integral to providing the wow factor that keeps today’s broadcast viewers glued to the screen. These visual elements—including 3D and 2D titles, animated graphics and real-time data-driven overlays—provide the vital contextual information that enables viewers to fully appreciate and understand the events they are watching.
In the last article, we looked at the monitoring packet delay in real-time. In this article, we continue the theme of looking at a network from a broadcast engineers’ point of view so they can better communicate with the IT department, and look at FEC (Forward Error Correction).
A few years ago, on a visit to the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City, a visitor and host were walking a hallway that seemed longer than a crosstown Manhattan block. Both sides of the hallway sported heavy cable races hung from the ceiling, each with a cross section of a foot square, brimming with cables.
The EBU (European Broadcasting Union) has acknowledged that public service media (PSM) face a major challenge staying competitive or even remaining relevant under the onslaught from competitors from all directions, including new sources of TV series and other content. The EBU has called for substantial regulatory reform to help PSMs meet these challenges.
European cable operators are ending 2016 in good health but reliant on broadband subscribers to maintain modest revenue growth as TV business stagnates or declines. This is a key finding of the 2016 European Broadband Cable Yearbook published by analytics group IHS Markit and Cable Europe, the European cable trade association.
