Many broadcasters now see their competition as not just other broadcasters, but also online offerings, such as Google or Netflix, which are completely IP-based, making it simpler for them to launch new services.
To give broadcasters that same agility, Grass Valley is showing a new non-proprietary Software Defined Networks-based system for managing IP networks that offers a familiar, broadcast-centric control environment for both SDI and IP.
“SDI is extremely low latency and uses determinism, which is great for live responsiveness, but difficult to scale in an economic way,” said Mike Cronk, SVP of strategic marketing, Grass Valley, who believes IP routing is the best way forward for video, particularly as Ethernet switches are progressing even faster than Moore’s law.
“We’ve made a very big investment in IP technology,” and aim to offer the first live glass-to-glass IP video in the market, he added.
The SDN control will embrace IP routing switchers from third parties using SMPTE 2022-6. “Our customers don’t want to be locked into proprietary switchers that are only controlled by a proprietary control system,” he said.
SDN is an out-of-band control, like SDI, with a separate signal path that talks to the switch, and delivers lower latency with high availability. It will also control traditional SDI routers, to enable easier migration, using the same control panels.
