It is an important year for facilities that are moving away from a broadcast-specific (SDI) infrastructure to an IT-based one. Alhtough the industry has started to offer various ways to integrate audio and video components into network-based studios, they are not necessarily interoperable. Many media companies which are designing new facilities soon will have to choose the technology that will form the basis for all of their operations. That is not an easy task, especially as it is a decision that will carry consequences for many years. The EBU's Network Technology Seminar will help users by providing an overview of the options available in this domain and the outlook in terms of their deployment.
Presentations include a look at 'The Beast' created by Belgium broadcaster VRT to ease the
contribution of videomaterial using a mix of communication technologies. photo: http://media.vrtnieuws.net
Presentations on 24 June will cover the new networking concepts, use cases of new studios, inclucing the BBC's Virtual Local Radio concept, CBC/Radio-Canada's new control room model and the Low Bandwidth Remote Production approach offered by Eurovision. Technologies for Time & Synchronization (by the IRT) and Multi-Channel audio over IP (from the AES) will also be explained. Three tutorials will offer a deeper look into Time Sensitive Networks (or AVB), Software Defined Networking and Professional Multi-Channel Audio over IP. The second day of NTS will cover other important aspects of the media production infrastructure: Contribution, Storage and Network Techniques and Optimization. Finally, the closing keynote from CERN will provide a glimpse of the huge potential of using IT by looking at the power hungry domain of physics computing. The keynote may actually offer a comforting message to media representatives, because however complicated the current network challenges may be, they are dwarfed by the requirements subatomic particle research puts on technology...