February 2013 www.tvbeurope.com


About 99% of news is still in SD, but the EBU expects this to change soon. That’s why it will have a fully HD-capable news network in 2014


at least 126 points of presence throughout the world, although it used about 145 for the Olympics, where it needed extra capacity, so it was important that switching from SDH to Ethernet only meant replacing a card, to keep infrastructure costs low too.


big events are all HD now: pretty much all MPEG-4 on fibre or satellite at up to 42Mbps 4:2:2.”


Efficient modulation Its main modulation method has been DVB-S2, but for some events it has introduced


“In total we now handle more than 75,000 transmissions a year” Graham Warren


“The core equipment doesn’t need to change at all our nodes, which would be very expensive, and the automation and control remains the same,” Warren explains. “The higher Ethernet capacity also allows us to move to JPEG2000, to use it for some big events although we’re introducing it slowly as demand increases.”


At the moment the majority


of transmissions use MPEG-4, with some MPEG-2. “The really


Novelsat NS3 equipment, which does more efficient forward error correction than S2 -- although 16 APSK or 32 APSK can be used. It also has tighter control of filter roll-off and much more granular forward error correction to substantially increase throughput. Part of the challenge of


moving to HD has been rolling out a large number of new encoders and receivers to customers. The EBU provides


members with up to eight MPEG-4 receiver/decoders each as part of the service, depending on the event – and spent a lot of time and effort introducing MPEG-4 over the last year. “We did a large series of


interoperability tests because we can never guarantee what we’ll work with. We have to have interoperable systems, which is why we want standards. We need to be able to go to an SNG operator in Ukraine, say for a football match, and the guy will turn up with something that just


The EBU’s news operation consists of two parts: a permanent News Exchange channel, transmitting about 45,000 items a year, and a Special Events unit. These can be hard news, such as natural disasters, conflicts or civil unrest, or planned events, including royal weddings and anything demanding rolling coverage.


About 99% of news is still in SD, but the EBU expects this to start changing soon, which is why it will have a fully HD-capable news network in 2014.


works.” It uses encoders and receivers


from different manufacturers. “We try to avoid locking ourselves into one manufacturer,” he says. The move to HD has been


very successful. “We’ve had very few technical issues.” The great majority of sport and other important events are now HD, but many ad-hoc services, like news, are still SD, and typically involve a lot of short transmissions. Many of its major events are


NEWS EXCHANGE: TRANSITION TO FILE


“We have to make sure we can continue to meet demand – although we can already handle it on an ad-hoc basis today.”


News is also moving from live to file-based, with an increasing number of stories not being transmitted in realtime. It is developing a new system scheduled for operation this autumn, which will provide full network independence (fibre, internet and satellite) and support a large number of file formats.


The project, called Transition To File, is “a challenge, because we’re not like a


typical newsroom, ingesting, editing and archiving content. Eurovision does not store content for more than a few days, so it is more of a conduit, coming in and out. This sort of equipment isn’t available off the shelf, so we have to create our own digital glue to make it function as we need.”


The EBU is working closely with its members’ news organisations, and will have to write a lot of software although this will be built around an off-the-shelf media management system that it is currently in the process of selecting.


TVBEurope 33 The Workflow


distributed globally, so there are also issues of standards conversion. “It’s a huge, complex operation to operate and maintain, which is why we’re moving to more system automation,” he adds. “If something does go wrong with a fibre we can generally back it up immediately, but we can also back it up with satellite very quickly. This is essential to provide the high reliability services our customers demand.” www.eurovision.com


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