56 TVBEurope Forum Channel in a Box
Are you expecting anything radical to
emerge at IBC with regards Channel-in- a-Box?
Ash: The most obvious thing will be the more completely developed Masstech PlayBox solution, of course. IP-based playout looks set to be very big business. Our EdgeBox is capable of a full IP playout workflow. When integrated with Masstech, we can streamline and automate the movement of assets from production and storage into playout. EdgeBox makes delivering a TV station, complete with local branding and content, to anywhere in the world an economic reality. EdgeBox provides a tapeless,
Karl Mehring, Snell
file-based operation in two parts: one integrated with the broadcast centre and the other at the remote site. At the broadcast centre, it is fully integrated into the current or preferred systems including traffic, storage, MAM, ingest, transcoding and file transfer systems, or PlayBox Technology
can provide these. This connects to the remote EdgeBox site’s playout equipment via the public internet — making a huge cost saving over the traditional dedicated fibre or satellite links. Mehring: With all the new approaches to linear playout, the industry runs the risk of
losing focus on what this type of solution is trying to provide. The goal should be to give broadcasters the ability to playout channels with excellence — so the rich presentation styles they have enjoyed for many years, but with the added benefit of reduced costs. One example of a highly focused technology is Snell’s ICE product, which offers more functionality, but with a smaller footprint — or even a virtual or cloud-based footprint — without having to compromise the presentation style, playlist dynamism, or reliability. Rose: IBC will be the first European show for customers to see GV STRATUS Playout and the new Densité SSP card — playout on a card. This offers a radical solution to the challenges of modern playout, how to simplify operation, lowering cost but meeting quality and service level agreements even when playout is moved to the edge. Shell: We expect cloud-based solutions to be at the forefront as never before. The challenge will be to establish what sacrifices and
compromises can reasonably be made as far as channel branding and graphics are concerned in order to run a Channel-in-a-Box as a virtual machine on pure CPU — whether in a private or a public cloud — as opposed to one running with the assistance of GPU hardware. Smith: Knowing what we plan to show at the Imagine Communications stand, I’ll say ‘yes’. We’re going to be building on our NAB demonstration of playout in the cloud and unveiling additional aspects of our virtualised playout plan, as we rapidly progress towards our goal of enabling geo-dispersed operations across a unified media platform. That platform encompasses not only typical Channel-in-a-Box functionality like playout, automation, graphics and effects, but also business systems, multi-platform delivery transformation and more — all free from the confines of physical appliance deployment. Weigner: Channel-in-a-Box is such a bad term. It has now become ‘TV-station-in-a-Box’ with additional functions such as Dolby encoders, IP encoders,
www.tvbeurope.com August 2014
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