In recent years, major events such as the Arab Spring and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake have brought the role of citizen journalists into global prominence. As mainstream news outlets adapt to this emerging trend, professional journalists and average citizens alike can explore the use of satellite technology as a key enabler to delivering news from anywhere in the world.
Content owners have traditionally archived material as a resource worth keeping in perpetuity, but this simplistic approach is no longer fit for purpose. Invariably though, detailed knowledge about the content is unavailable or it is in a state where it cannot be easily unlocked. If assets are stored on disparate hard discs, siloed servers or on shelves as tape, there will be considerable wasted time, effort and cost in locating, retrieving and collaborating on content creation and onward distribution. Time to air is impacted and the archive is effectively devalued. An archive system used solely for preservation or for legal compliance realises very little of its true value and barely justifies the ongoing cost of acquisition, documentation and maintenance. Only by reimagining the archive as a unified repository of assets, which are integral to production, content preparation and content delivery workflows, can its value be transformed.
As broadcasters moved from analog to digital, new doors opened to automating processes—and important to the front office—the possibility of lowering staff costs. Above, Ross Overdrive can enable live production and playout to be managed with a minimal staff.
The usage of mobile devices has exploded over the past ten years. At the same time TV remains incredibly popular and powers the largest content industry in the world. The holy grail of next generation connected devices is, quite naturally, to connect the first screen, the TV, with the second screen, the mobile. This paper from Accedo explores the prospect of integrated first and second screen experiences and the likely development over the coming years.
You are sitting there quietly watching your favorite show on TV when all of a sudden the commercial comes on – BAM, WAM, BUY, BUY… screams at you. The purpose of the commercial is to grab your attention in the few seconds of the spot. The recording engineers in the commercials production agency will turn up the sound levels into the red for maximum impact and effect to shake you out of your slumbers. However the effect can be to intensely annoy the viewer who reaches for the channel change, or worse calls the TV company to complain.
There is a rapid and profound technology shift in ENG. Wireless broadband service providers have become viable low-cost alternatives to conventional microwave in a large number of cases. BT Sport has launched what is claimed to be Europe’s first cellular newsgathering fleet with LiveU LU500 units and Xtender remote antennas even giving the service a new acronym of CNG. Meanwhile U.S. Spanish language broadcaster Noticias MundoFOX has based its entire ENG operation on LIVE+ 20/20 cellular-bonded transmitters from Dejero. “Budget is always a large consideration for a start-up news network,” explained Armando Acevedo, the network’s director of operations. “The ability to cover live, breaking news from the source is a critical differentiator but can also be a major expense area, especially if the station has to maintain costly satellite vehicles.”
The Situation. The age of loudness compliance is upon us, with governments around the world adopting variations of ITU-R BS.1770-3 standard for all terrestrial broadcast, cable television, direct-broadcast satellite and IPTV programs. What this means for the broadcast/content provider is that loudness compliance now has the force of law behind it, making accurate logging of all disseminated materials a necessity. The current ITU standard, 1770-3 (August 2012), builds upon 1770-1 (2006) and 1770-2 (March, 2011), which makes loudness compliance somewhat of a moving target, requiring specialized monitoring equipment that is software-based to accommodate standards updates. Local variations of ITU 1770 are found in the CALM Act in the U.S. with ATSC A/85:2013, the European EBU R128 standard, TR-B32 in Japan and the Australian PO-59, among many others coming online. For the broadcaster, monitoring the video and audio integrity of a signal as the final step before dissemination is no longer enough, necessitating installing a system that will provide both signal integrity and loudness compliance monitoring in one package.
We’ve all heard the phrase Disaster Recovery (DR), but what does it actually mean for broadcasters and content owners, and what constitutes a disaster? DR is a broad term that encompasses a range of scenarios, from catastrophic disaster (for instance, the complete destruction of a whole facility), to operational disaster such as a transmission server failing. The ideal strategy for rescuing a situation in the event of a disaster is the seamless continuity of business under all circumstances with no assets being lost.
