The IBC Showcase has marched way past the endless chains of gateways that dominated last year to a look beyond IP transport to other layers of software definition.
The evident advances were identified by Mike Cronk, chairman of AIMS. He said: “We had 30-plus companies last year, of which 13 were demonstrating the drafts of ST 2110. Now all 52 are showing 2110.
“Apart from scale, the SMPTE standard is much further advanced and it provides an IP standard that will stand the test of time for broadcast, because it deals with the elementary streams – the holy grail the industry has wanted,” he added.
Timing has significantly improved, and features like automatic lipsync come into play. And the showcase has moved on from registration discovery (AMWA ISO4).
“With IP, there is the ability to automate and improve a lot of system functions, and the work of AMWA is very important here,” said Cronk. “IS05 is the connection management which will allow receivers and senders to connect in a common way.”
With SDI, this matched control systems and proprietary protocols. The new connectivity is a huge boost to interoperability.
“We are showing real applications with a host of equipment variety – cameras, vision mixers, audio consoles, multi-viewers – practically any product that a broadcaster needs is there with a ST 2110 interface,” said Cronk.
“We have opened the door to a lot of possibilities. Real equipment is doing real work in real apps. The roadmap is very well expressed in the JT-NM: we need to get to other layers of software definition, so we can realise a dematerialised infrastructure. At AIMS, we see this as the new phase and we will collaborate.”
Room E.106
