Cisco

David Mazza, SVP and CTO of NBC Sports Group and NBC Olympics, gives an exclusive look at how the network will navigate COVID restrictions while delivering 1080p HDR and 4K coverage for the first time and the pivotal role distributed workflows will play. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Remotely working broadcasters are increasingly seeing the advantages of IP routing systems to easily control equipment and monitor feeds. Those who adopted IP routers prior to the pandemic were “well ahead of the game,” says one vendor. Above, the BBC’s SMPTE 2110 facility in Cardiff, Wales.

Live virtual events for broadcasters this week focus on revenue as well as technology. They include an Akamai webinar on securing Javascripts, a Cisco presentation about Precision Timed Protocol in SMPTE 2110 Fabrics and the Sports Video Group’s annual College Sports Summit. TVNewsCheck will present Optimizing Spot TV in a Challenging Economy and BIA will focus on Selling Digital Marketing Services to Local Businesses. Media Financial Management Association continues its series of webinars for CFOs and other financial managers. For the full list of events and links to their registration pages, visit TVNewsCheck’s Virtual Events Directory.

The pandemic created an opportunity to stress-test distributed and virtualized workflows right now that stations and networks were already considering for the future. The industry’s shift may now be ahead of schedule because of it. Above, NBC Universal’s Boston Media Center is one of the latest all-IP broadcast facilities.

Business motives, including increased utilization and flexibility plus easier maintenance and scalability, are driving TV’s move to software. With SMPTE’s ST2110 suite and other standards reaching maturity and diffusing into the marketplace, it’s now becoming practical to support entire live production workloads on virtual machines.

Larger networks and sports broadcasters are in the vanguard of IP routing, but local stations are following more slowly. Business needs are driving the pace of transition, and HD-SDI routers are far from disappearing. NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations’ new facility for WCAU-WWSI, its Philadelphia duopoly, uses Grass Valley control software and IPG (IP gateway) cards working with Cisco switches to bridge the HD-SDI and IP worlds.

Exclamations about the IP transition, the cloud and AI were notably muted at this year’s IBC. Vendors say that’s because this year wasn’t about shiny new things, but rather getting to work on implementation.

Broadcasters are capitalizing on that simple equation as they try to squeeze every last advertising dollar out of their 6 MHz channels through multicasting. Hopped-up encoders and advanced video compression have also facilitated channel sharing in the wake of the incentive auction and will come in handy for stacking legacy ATSC 1.0 signals as broadcasters roll out ATSC 3.0.

Transitioning from SDI to IP has enabled Canal+ to produce content more efficiently and to find new ways to reuse it, said Pierre Maillat, broadcast imagineer at the French pay TV provider. He spoke at a Cisco-sponsored event at the NAB Show where Roger Crothers, head of technology for BBC Wales, said the BBC’s first dive into IP workflow would create a roadmap for moving the rest of its six major broadcast centers to IP and that he anticipates new synergies to emerge when that happens. Ted Schilowitz, futurist for Paramount Pictures, added that IP better delivers the experience younger viewers have come to expect. A pair of video highlights of the session are here. Pictured (l-r): Dave Ward,  SVP chief architect and CTO of engineering, Cisco; Gene Arantowicz, solution engineering manager and media practice lead, World Wide Technology; Schilowitz; Maillat and Crothers.

The new WCAU-WWSI facility, set for a grand opening sometime this fall, is IP-centric and is designed to not only give the two stations a more efficient space with a common technology infrastructure, but to give their personnel new flexibility in creating content for today’s multiplatform world.