Q : BBC Wales in Central Square, Cardiff, was a broadcasting pioneer, deciding to build IP into a facility from the ground up. As head of technology, Roger Crothers was there from the beginning. Tell us about the process of designing the facility? Roger Crothers: The reason we took the IP route came down to timing. IP standards were quite immature, but they were emerging. There was a lot of talk about a new standard called SMPTE 2022-6, which allowed for transport of high bit-rate media over IP – then 2110 came after that – and we wondered if we should build an SDI infrastructure. We didn’t want something that we thought we’d have to rip out at a later stage. We were looking to be as future-proof as possible – and IP was part of that. We were quite ambitious. Very few other broadcasters in the UK were doing it, or if they were, it was a very
small proportion of their infrastructure. Our ideal scenario was to get end-to- end IP from edge devices, all the way into the core and back out. Q : Were decisions challenging, with IP broadcast technology still developing? Roger Crothers: The timing was good and bad. Good, because we could be flexible about our technology; bad because the tech was still immature and there was a lack of interoperability and products that were 2110 compliant. We never thought we’d get to 100% of devices natively IP, setting our target at 60%. In a worst-case scenario, we could revert back to 2022-6 or, if we really needed to, go back to SDI. But we managed it quite well and spent a good 14 to 18 months on interoperability testing, getting confidence that 2110 was going to work for us.
WITH IPWE ARE NOW FORWARD-AGNOSTIC
Q : What are the main advantages of working with an IP-centric infrastructure? Gerhard Lang: At Vizrt, we have been working with software-based tools since we were founded – and we started early with IP-based solutions. For us, it was always very clear that IP was synonymous with flexibility. And when it comes to formats, IP means that there is no limitation to what you can produce, or whether it’s compressed or uncompressed – all of that is history. Additionally, IP mixes with software much better than SDI.
DRAGON ROARS BBC Wales (top) is at the forefront of IP advancement
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