New Harris A/V ‘Box’ Merges Baseband, IP

Harris has come up with a multifunction, rack-mounted “box” that allows TV stations and other video production facilities to process video and audio from many sources and prepare it for distribution over many media while saving space and power.

“We’re bringing together the baseband world and the networking and compression world in a single platform,” says Steve Copeland, director of product management, audio/video processing, Harris Broadcast Communications Division.

Just 4.5 inches tall (3RU), Selenio is making its formal debut today at the CABSAT MENA exhibition and conference in Dubai.

The box — or “frame” or “platform” as Copeland prefers to call it — has 14 slots for the application modules providing such functions as frame synchronization, video conversion, encoding, decoding, multiplexing and demultiplexing.

“When we talk about the applications, I really see those modules as being the building blocks,” Copeland says.

The building blocks can be assembled to do whatever job needs to be done, Copeland says. “We could decode incoming video, send it within the frame to a conversion module to put it into some sort of house reference. We can transcode the audio, or process it — up-mix it, down-mix it, whatever we want to do. Then we can send it out baseband, or we can send it again within the frame to an encoder, or to a mux.”

Each module has a 3 Gb/s baseband connection, a 1 Gb/s data connection and a independent control network.

By combining baseband with IP, Selenio also provides an on-ramp to IP infrastructure, Copeland says.

“We started this project a year and a half ago, and spent a great deal of time trying to understand what customers’ pain points are. And one of the things that became clear was that there was this anxiety about the transition to the IP network,” he says.

“Because of the unique architecture, we can provide them with this path, this migration to the way their infrastructure may go over time.”

Selenio has a graphical user interface based on Microsoft Silverlight that simplifies operation, Copeland says. “Instead of just the long tree list of parameters where you’ve got to remember what’s where, and how you navigate it, and how you actually do things timely and efficiently, we’ve created this block diagram view of all the functionality that’s going on within a particular module.”

“So you can step through a very logical and very intuitive configuration of a particular card or a function — a very easy way to create a connection from one slot to the next, a very easy way to view alarms and deal with those alarms very quickly.”

Copeland wasn’t ready to talk about price or ROI, noting that both would be difficult to calculate without knowing the precise configuration. But in general, he says, the savings in hardware would be anywhere from 5% to 15%. Plus, he adds, the single unit requires half the rack space and as much as 30% less power as comparable discrete hardware.

But the real value is not so much is what it saves, but in what it can do, he says. “In terms of flexibility, scalability, growth potential, it will provide users with a path to add more services, to bring new revenue streams on board faster and easier.”

Copeland says that Harris has shown the system to a number of its customers to get feedback and refine the interface. None have been U.S. broadcasters, however.

Click here for the Selenio data sheet.