UP
and away from satellite, “the economics change dramatically,” Young highlights. “You don’t pay for what goes into the cloud; you pay for what comes out of the cloud. If you were to continue with the existing model, you’d have to send 25 feeds (1 region network plus all 24 alternate feeds) to every receiving site. That’s very expensive,” Young stresses – both from bandwidth charges and computing resources. “What Zixi has done is offer the ability to make that switch within the cloud rather than at the IRD,” Young continues. “The knock-on effect of that, for a regional sports network, is a 25x reduction in computing requirements. That’s the difference between it being economically viable or not. It’s a pretty essential functionality.” SETTING THE STANDARD Besides offering financial benefits, market switching in the cloud cuts down on electricity, providing a much more sustainable option for regional broadcasters. “Switching at the IRD literally burns 25x more electricity; it’s that simple,” Young states. That said, the IRD does a ‘pretty good job’ of making the switch as smooth as possible; “as far as the viewers are concerned, they can’t see that anything has happened,” he claims. This posed a big challenge for the developers at Zixi, who had to emulate this in the cloud. Zixi implemented an industry standard called ESNI, which stands for Event Scheduling and Notification Interface. “What that standard does is communicate a schedule to Zixi’s market switching system – in a standardised format – followed by
UP IN THE CLOUD Different feeds are sent over IP and then need to be distributed to receiving sites
THE IRD DOES A ‘PRETTY GOOD JOB’ OF MAKING THE SWITCH AS SMOOTH AS POSSIBLE
a set of policies. It says, ‘When you see this trigger, it means that the Yankees/Red Sox game has started, and that means the following receiving sites need to see this feed switched from this source.’” Zixi built ESNI in a modular way, allowing customers to use their server of choice. DOWN THE LINE Besides live sport, Young foresees market switching and the ESNI standard having applications in addressable advertising. It’s a natural fit, according to Young: “If you’re going to send a different game, you can send a different advert,” tailoring both to the region at hand. “There are extensibility properties down the line. We’ve not implemented them yet, but we could do in the future,” he admits. In the short term, Young sees cloud- based market switching as being ‘a big driver for satellite replacement’ due to its obvious economic and environmental benefits – with Zixi remaining at the forefront of this revolution in regionalisation.
cost of satellite is independent of the number of receiving sites. You pay for what goes up to a satellite; you don’t pay for what comes down.” Now, as the broadcast industry moves towards over-IP distribution
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