If you’ve never been to the NAB, the show is broken down into a dozen or more broad categories ranging from acquisition and production to connected devices, post-production, online video and outdoor tech (you wouldn’t believe what Sony has planned for the next generation of stadium screens). Strolling through the massive Las Vegas Convention Center in the area designated for exhibitors specializing in distribution and delivery, it’s apparent that broadcasters and content owners of all kinds will soon be looking to move much of their programming and content away from traditional analog networks and migrate to an IP-based approach. This migration is going to inherently change the way companies in the industry consume switches and routers, build out their networks, and move and deliver content.
The benefits of switching to IP are plentiful. At the top of the list of advantages is that IP content delivery and transport offers advantages in agility and cost savings unavailable with current analog models. With IP, broadcasters will have the ability to move regional content and/or long tail content in a manner that’s tailored to specific marketplaces and devices and provides additional opportunities for monetization. As one example, Cisco is charging forward with their Virtual Digital Content Manager (DCM) which delivers industry-leading picture quality for any codec to any screen and any network. Taking full advantage of the elasticity, flexibility, and scalability of virtualized video functions, Virtual DCM promises to reduce costs and can be ready to support new functionality like HEVC, 4K, and HDR.
While presenters and subject matter experts in the various breakout sessions expressed much of this same forward thinking of the sponsors and exhibitors, it was clear that there is still work to be done. As with the advancement of any technology like Beta to Vhs, cassette tapes to compact discs or 803.11a to b,g,n and beyond, ability to scale, propagate adoption and agree on standards is always a challenge. While businesses and consumers, through market forces, will ultimately help the industry to settle on all of the new standards, there’s still lots of education and discussion to be had by market shaping organizations like Video Services Forum (VSF), Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) and Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE). Making this particularly challenging is the breadth of IT operations, in just about every industry, that the migration to IP touches. Unlike in the past, such as with the adoption of SDI, the technology is vastly more complex and the number of players is far greater.
As technologists, we’re always eager to see the next great technology come to fruition. It’s natural to want to see this type of progress. Progress means working more efficiently, exploring new capabilities and making more options available to our customers. Fortunately, the industry momentum is building toward an open standard for IP signal transport. For instance, workgroups are making progress on SMPTE 2110 which contains standards specifying the carriage, synchronization, and description of streams over IP and is expected to be completed in mid-2017.
As I looked around the voluminous participants at NAB 2017, I was filled with excitement. Whatever the future holds for the migration to IP, the technologies and standards will not be developed by one company, but will be shaped by the diverse experience of the many suppliers, partners, entrepreneurs and specialists in this industry. This means the future is not limited by the perspective of any single supplier but, rather, it will be shaped by everyone that has participated.
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