58 TVBEurope Forum Channel in a Box
audio management, switching, DVE, and many other CiaB- oriented capabilities. This approach allows existing Spectrum customers to expand their current systems with ChannelPort both securely and reliably. Channel density is the same as it is for standard MediaPort systems, which offer four channels and four simulcast channels per rack unit, and we give users the choice of using Harmonic’s own embedded automation for playout control or a third-party solution. In other words, customers can choose to use their existing automation solution, transition to a new automation system, or use the embedded system from Harmonic. Weigner: Using a highly integrated ‘TV-station-in-a- Box’ solution is only scaring engineers or system integrators who are used to earning their living stringing and gluing together many proprietary boxes with SDI and RS-422. The divide is between hardware and software people. Hardware is now a commodity and the software is the differentiator. The broadcaster’s CFO will see the financial benefits right away along with the fact that a new channel can be launched in minutes.
Social media and second screens are becoming increasingly important to broadcasters. How can
CiaB systems handle these demands?
Ash: Our SocialMediaBox is designed as an integral element of our CiaB system, and allows programme production and presentation creators to incorporate comments from multiple social networking feeds quickly and efficiently into a single, ready-for-broadcast stream. Comments can be selected and moderated from a variety of different social media outlets,
easier to do this in an integrated system than having to feed the data and control messages to disparate boxes. Straight: We have been integrating social media into CiaB playout for some time. Each installation is a custom-build that we market under the tag line ‘just:social’. We work together with the multi-disciplinary broadcast agency Molden Media for these solutions.
Mat Shell, Pebble Beach Systems
Would the widespread adoption of 4K mean any new innovations for CiaB?
Stephen Smith, Imagine Communications
integrating sources such as Facebook and Twitter on a single feed for broadcasting. This is extremely useful for live television shows that produce auxiliary-screen pages for viewer feedback. SocialMediaBox is controlled using a standard web browser. Operators can view preconfigured feeds from various social media sources or websites, and add the desired posts to a customised feed list using simple drag-and-drop actions. Comments in the customised feed can then be edited, checked against a profanity word-list, and published immediately (instant-publish mode) or floated until approved for publishing. Mehring: CiaB systems should be able to harvest data from social media feeds and provide insertion into live graphics.
At Snell, we have a rules-based approach to this, which gives the ability to add business rules to the rendered output. For example, the system can automatically filter highly influential or particularly interesting social content to better capture audience attention and engagement. Another useful development that Snell has undertaken is to provide the live recording of material while it is being broadcast for on-demand applications. This can include the insertion of audience tracking information days after the original airing to allow commercial revenues to be recognised on non- linear platforms. Rose: The best playout solutions allow social media data to be utilised within a playlist and with high quality on-screen graphics. In fact, it’s
Gilbert: Innovations: no. Challenge: yes, but only in terms of processing and bandwidth. The biggest challenge remains the need for a clear standards direction, and the prospect of a real, large-scale move to 4K to justify extensive development. Shell: 4K will require the adoption of new generation codecs that can work efficiently in a software only environment. The challenge is how to achieve this with purely CPU-based processing, for multiple channels and with no dedicated hardware. Smith: We believe that even when 4K gains more widespread adoption, it will still be initially across a relatively small percentage of channels for quite a long time — limited particularly by content availability. Even as sports, movies and other select premium content become available in UHD, keep in mind that those account for just a fraction of the channels for most operators. So while it’s clear that handling UHD channels will require integrated playout solutions to have considerably more processing horsepower than they do today, the continual increases in processing power of the standard IT platforms that form the basis of these systems should be able to accommodate the needs by the time there is corresponding demand. From an input/output perspective, the existing movement towards IP-based connectivity also provides a natural foundation for eventual 4K support.
Weigner: 4K is here already today. Just buy a faster server and start 4K broadcasting. I do not see traditional playout ever being used for 4K playout. No broadcaster with any sense of financial responsibility would even consider this. Also, broadcast equipment vendors will not be so stupid to develop another generation of ‘traditional’ products for addressing 4K. Zdravkoski: Yes, of course, in many ways. On the one hand, 4K requires different hardware, more bandwidth and an additional codec support. On the other hand, it takes a higher performance in general to handle 4K files, but especially concerning Channel-in-a-Box solutions. To keep Genesix up-to-date in state-of-the-art technology we are constantly working on our 4K support.
In a previous Forum, there seemed little appetite for the idea of a ‘Channel- on-a-Chip’. Have there been any
developments that suggest this is
now more achievable?
Ash: Broadcasters appreciate the scalability and upgradability of server-based CiaB. That would be much more challenging to implement if the system were scaled down to a single chip or even a bag of them. Smaller processing and storage components will allow greater power in a given size of server but one RU is likely to be as small a form factor as any serious broadcaster will require this side of 2020, and probably beyond. Errington: If you define Channel-on-a-Chip as Channel-on-CPU/GPU, then ultimately I believe this is where
www.tvbeurope.com August 2014
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