One of the most significant opportunities for growth in the broadcast industry is the delivery of content across more platforms in more formats with increased efficiency. At the 2015 NAB Show, Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, will preview capabilities based on the foundation of its new version 2.6 iTX integrated playout engine. These previews will show how iTX can enable broadcasters to expand format support to 4K and move completely to IP and virtualized operations, while maintaining the operation of high-performance channels featuring live content, highly dynamic schedules and late-arriving media that iTX customers have become accustomed to with this industry-leading platform.
Grass Valley’s commitment to keeping customers “Future Ready” means that broadcasters can be confident that their investments in playout are protected when they transition their broadcast infrastructure to IP networks, consolidate more of their servers into virtual machines or launch 4K services.
“We are at a critical juncture in the market, and regardless of whether broadcasters are ready to make the move to IP or 4K now, they want to know that the investments they are making today are the right ones to prepare them for the future,” explained Mike Cronk, senior vice president of strategic marketing, Grass Valley. “The iTX technology we are previewing at NAB gives broadcasters the confidence to move ahead with an advanced playout solution that is right for the long term.”
iTX, as the original integrated solution, already offers the widest range of functionality on the market to play out fully composed channels, including dynamic forms of programming and featuring ultra-rich branding.
The next step for playout, as the mission-critical real-time engine, is to leverage IP technology as both an input and as an output. This will provide production systems with simplified in-facility routing and signal management, and will reduce the downstream complexity in encoding and multiplexing magnified by the need to distribute to OTT platforms.
In addition, we are ensuring that support for 4K on iTX will enable broadcasters to deliver content in ultra-high definition—providing viewers a compelling viewing experience.
A number of industries are finding benefits in virtualization, and the broadcast industry is seeing movement in that direction for a number of applications. iTX within a virtual environment is designed to deliver frame-accurate flawless programming while making deployment and maintenance simpler and reducing hardware costs further. We believe this enables new business models to become practical around disaster recovery and event-based pop-up style television channels.
The enabling factor behind all three previews of these delivery methods and formats (IP/4K/VM) is a core playout system, the new engine inside version 2.6 of iTX. Leveraging the rich base of experience in real-time server engines from both the former Miranda and former Grass Valley design teams, this new engine delivers unprecedented quality and reliability, all while possessing the capacity to address multiformat delivery without having to compromise with regard to live content, highly dynamic schedules or late-arriving media.
