There is no denying that the brilliant storytelling of broadcasters at this year’s global events essentially hinges on the underlying IP infrastructure they deploy. While OB trucks may be used at each venue to produce the content, the signals on which these productions are based are ingested by gateways such as .edge, JPEG XS-compressed and otherwise processed where required and then transported to the international broadcast center as streams for further processing, format fine-tuning for different destinations, audio embedding, and additional operations for platform-specific play-out purposes.

Host broadcasters are the first to admit that the sheer number of signals—called essences in IP speak—and rights-holder preferences are much easier to address in the IP domain. Provided, that is, they can be managed by a broadcast control system such as VSM that allows operators to change a whole bunch of routings and settings with a single button press. Additionally, VSM allows the operators at the MCR to monitor the health status of every single gateway input and output, the processing blades’ temperature, and a lot more.

Environmental considerations are playing an increasingly important part, too. The list of questions broadcasters and broadcast service providers of any size ask vendors in their requests for proposals keeps growing relentlessly, and greenwashing attempts are no longer considered. Host broadcasters have similar expectations. This was one of the reasons that fueled Lawo’s decision to reconsider how to provide its processing services moving forward.

Good To Be HOME

The groundwork for HOME Apps, which run on generic servers, was laid with the HOME platform. While it was originally announced as a management platform to simplify the discovery and registration of IP devices on the network—which it still delivers most effectively—other important features, such as user authentication, addressing security concerns, seamless NMOS compatibility, and the possibility to set device parameters from a central location, were quickly added.

But that was only the first step. HOME additionally encouraged Lawo to rethink the design of its user interfaces for a seamless and intuitive user experience irrespective of the main purpose of the various video, audio or radio devices. Almost from day one, other vendors were invited to join the HOME ride by equipping their tools with an API that turns them into “HOME natives”.

Then, HOME Apps were announced. These are purpose-specific processing applications for both video and audio applications that no longer run on proprietary hardware, which brings us back to the environmental considerations mentioned above. The generic servers that HOME Apps run on are function-agnostic, meaning that any app can run on the same hardware. The ability to start and stop HOME Apps via the HOME platform means that a single server can be used for a variety of processing tasks, either simultaneously or at different times, depending on the job at hand. The essential take-away here is that a generic server consumes a minimal amount of power while no HOME App is running.

This is quite unlike bespoke hardware whose power consumption remains at a constant level, irrespective of whether the processing service it provisions is solicited or not. The function-agnostic nature of generic servers furthermore allows broadcasters and service providers to cut down on the number of hardware devices. And since they are no longer function-specific, fewer of them need to run idle for hours on end, all the while consuming the same amount of energy. Plus, HOME Apps can be configured, started and stopped within seconds rather than minutes or even hours, for real-time flexibility. And they natively support a host of transport and compression formats.

Obviously, some pieces of dedicated hardware, such as I/O gateways and control surfaces (mixing consoles, buttons panels, etc.) will continue to provide invaluable services in the future, because they are difficult or impossible to replace by software.

Going Granular

Still, Lawo’s decision to base its HOME Apps on a granular, containerized micro-service architecture is beginning to bear fruit. This is corroborated by recommendations made by institutions such as the European Broadcasting Union and far-sighted private broadcasters that have realized the potential of platform-agnostic processing compute.

As a matter of fact, a first set of recommendations that was published only weeks before Lawo’s HOME Apps were officially introduced already emphasized the importance of decoupling processing from the hardware it runs on. Under the “Second Wave” moniker, this has recently been complemented with the expectation that broadcast vendors leave all aspects related to infrastructure, the host platform and the container platform to vendors that have the heft and expertise to take raw processing power to ever new heights.

Concurrently, initiatives like NVIDIA’s Holoscan for Media stack and new developments by Intel clearly hint at the fact that the broadcast world is likely to face another momentous change. Add to this that public-cloud offerings are expected to play an increasingly important part in broadcast, and it should be clear that broadcast vendors need to focus on what they do best: listen to their customers and develop the tools that empower them to further refine their storytelling.

As a side note, the “container platform” mentioned above refers to application platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes. Software designed for containers has the ability to run on any platform that supports containerization, which includes all of the hardware or cloud platforms mentioned earlier.

What’s In It For You?

The fact that HOME Apps were designed from the ground up as microservice-based processing applications furthermore means that they scale seamlessly as ever more powerful server generations are released. They are also an instant perfect fit for public-cloud and other software-stack applications, such as Holoscan for Media.

The granularity of microservices means that each operation is provided by separate “blocks”: inputs, outputs, delivery format, compression/decompression, processing task, etc. Tweaks to any of these blocks—to add more functionality or solve issues—are easy to implement and fast to deploy. In vendor speak, this means that the time-to-market cycle shrinks significantly, because there is no need to revisit an entire processing suite just to cure or refine one tiny aspect.

Moreover, additional HOME Apps can be released much faster than previous solutions, because they focus on a specific processing task, and nothing else. Ancillary services related to input/output, compression and transport formats, etc., are simply connected to them, but otherwise lead their own lives.

In combination with Lawo Flex Subscriptions, users enjoy the agility to leverage all available HOME Apps on a tightly controlled budget. This includes HOME Apps that have yet to be released, and effectively means that less hardware allows broadcasters and broadcast service providers to achieve more.

The decision to base the entire HOME Apps platform on containerized services rather than on a virtual memory approach makes it easy for them to adapt to the compute platform they run on. No modifications are required if you switch to more powerful generic servers or any other container-savvy environment, making HOME Apps a consistently dependable processing solution.

Look Out For The Outlook

It may have become clear from this Themed Content Collection by The Broadcast Bridge that migrating to IP is beginning to look like a necessity, because of the substantial benefits it offers for many aspects that broadcasters and content producers face. The qualms and hesitations that may have kept you from getting on board so far are understandable. After all, the IP world does involve aspects that looked irrelevant in the baseband world.

But consider the convenience you could enjoy when covering election nights or athletics jamborees from multiple locations, quickly switching from one to the other without repatching a single physical cable, or the possibility to collaborate on productions in a remote and/or distributed fashion. Getting more production mileage out of your infrastructure (and stagnating budget) is certainly an argument in favor of looking at the future of your operation from a newly informed perspective.

If and when you decide to take the jump, team Lawo is here to advise and support you. Thanks to our experience with lighthouse and countless smaller projects all over the world, we are confident we can help you to successfully surf the first wave and quickly reap the rewards of your migration to IP.

As stated earlier, the second wave is already rolling on the horizon, so now might be a good time to talk to us about IP and how Lawo’s unified HOME platform with its five pillars and format flexibility enables you to produce world-class content for years to come.

We might even touch on the notion of shared memory being built into our platform during our conversation, but that is something to get excited about when the second wave arrives. Just rest assured that HOME, HOME Apps as well as our I/O and control hardware are ready for anything the future of broadcast may bring.