32 TVBEurope The Workflow
(Euro)vision for the future
Recovery position: The EBU is building a new disaster recovery centre at its Leuk back-up site
www.tvbeurope.com February 2013
Eurovision is more than just a song contest. It is a network that delivers thousands of hours of live sports, news and music events to broadcasters in Europe and around the world each year. David Fox takes a close look
THE EBU’S satellite and fibre network plays a vital role in connecting public broadcasters in 56 countries in and around Europe. It also provides services for many commercial operators. It distributes major sports
events, with more than 45,000 hours of premium live programming, and provides the world’s largest broadcast content exchange platform, the Eurovision News Exchange. This 24-hour news service is currently upgrading many of its facilities and will install new systems throughout 2013 to improve efficiency and reduce costs. “For the network, 2012 has
probably been the most intense year yet in terms of complexity of transmissions and technology and network improvements,” says EBU Network Director Graham Warren. “It was one of our busiest
years on record, with the UEFA Euro 2012, Champions League and the Europa League, an increase in Formula 1 coverage and the London Olympic Games, as well as the many other sports we carry -- and getting started on the big new
contract for NBA basketball.” Eurovision has also
introduced new MPEG-4 encoders and decoders for HD, changed its fibre technology and introduced a comprehensive disaster recovery system at a new site in Leuk, Switzerland. “We have achieved an
enormous amount in one year. The great majority of the services we provide are occasional use, including major events such as the Olympic Games (where we took care of the majority of content being delivered internationally), the Tour de France and Wimbledon. In total we now handle more than 75,000 transmissions a year. It’s an intense level of activity,” he says. “Eurovision is known for being a high-reliability provider. We have a lot of permanent network capacity, including a very extensive fibre network, which spans the globe and is managed from Geneva.” It also holds long leases on a
large number of satellite transponders, and takes ad hoc local links where necessary for the duration of an event to connect to its permanent
network. It typically chooses a mix of both fibre and satellite. Eurovision also has access to
many earth stations at EBU members’ premises and elsewhere, all connected to its FINE international fibre network. It also provides streaming via a content delivery network, through its BEST service.
Disaster recovery The EBU has a large contract with UEFA, distributing all of its audiovisual programmes around the world on the Eurovision network. “With these top-tier events, the value of the rights is so high that we take all necessary steps to guarantee transmissions, come what may, which is why we recently opened at a complete back-up site in Switzerland,” explains Warren. “At peak times we can have 24
matches running simultaneously, plus a highlights channel, so we wanted to build a rock-solid back-up facility. It means we can control everything from either Leuk or Geneva.” The new Eurovision Network Operations Centre B (NOC B),
100 kilometres east of Geneva, also backs up all of its satellite systems and the EBU’s mission critical services, such as booking, billing and email. “It’s an all-round disaster recovery system for the EBU.”
NOC B has also become a test
bed for greater automation, which Eurovision is rolling out elsewhere this year, integrating automation with its various services from the booking stage onwards. A lot of this is already automated, but further integration will improve customer service through faster switching and systems changeovers. Its core automation system is
Skyline’s Dataminer, which can access almost every piece of equipment, monitoring alarms and automatically switching to back-ups, ensuring the correct bitrate, etc. It was chosen because it is well known and widely used in the industry.
SD to HD
The London 2012 Olympic Games was the largest event to be carried by the EBU exclusively in HD. About 55- 60% of the EBU’s transmissions
are now in HD, and this figure is growing all the time. This has meant greater
pressure on network capacity, which has been increased in some areas. But capacity is finite, particularly for satellite transmissions, so Warren’s team is mitigating the impact by increasing efficiency wherever possible. The introduction of MPEG-4, which is about 30% more efficient than MPEG-2, has played its part, while the implementation of a new modulation scheme on satellite has delivered a further 25% efficiency. “We can substantially increase
the efficiency of the network to ease the burden passed on to the customer. We’re always trying to optimise the efficiency of our satellite capacity,” he says. Eurovision is also moving its
fibre networks from SDH to Ethernet technology, which has cut the costs of fibre. “On the main trunk network we can have 1Gigabit or higher Ethernet bitrates for the same or less cost than 155Mbps SDH, so we’re getting a lot more capacity for the same price.” The Eurovision network has
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