Helping to accelerate IP deployments are two industry standards: SMPTE ST 2110 (the set of SMPTE standards for sending digital media over an IP network) and the Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) suite of protocols. Together, these two advancements further the way IP networks transport media including uncompressed video, PCM audio and ancillary data that are carried over separate routable streams, as well as device connection management on a network.

The new headquarters will give the news operation an IP-based SMPTE 2110 infrastructure that will make it easier for the news division to move content seamlessly through many sources and will provide Fox 5 DC with much greater flexibility to reconfigure systems to add new programing or digital offerings in the future.

Pebble Beach Systems, which had already worked with Bloomberg UK to deliver a similar system, was mandated to build a modern 2110 NMOS-compliant set-up capable of providing the dynamic and complex switching required for a business news channel. Its real benefit is that it is future-proof and flexible, using the latest technology advances to build a complex pipeline (transmission chain) encapsulated in a redundant server pair with no compromise on reliability.

Typically, SMPTE-2110 systems afford more flexibility, as its ethernet transmission base allows for embedding and disembedding of audio or video. NMOS (Networked Media Open Specification) control of all IP converters, for instance, can be centralized to a remote laptop station to ensure the safety of the operating staff and allow the operator to dynamically route video and audio essences with ease. New sources can be added dynamically as needed, and just as with fiber, an existing network can be easily updated by using an appropriate IP converter at each end of the video signal chain, to provide safer distancing with high quality and low latency video. IP offers advantages to both live production for OB trucks as well as to permanent studio installations, with the ability to scale to almost any format and frame rate further down the road. IP does require much more complex installation and management than fiber.

The broadcast industry is understandably focusing on the infrastructure of the future, and without doubt this will be based on IP, and built on standards like SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS IS-04/05...broadcasters must concentrate on building out the IP media network, which of course provides the greatest benefits in terms of costs-savings and workflow transformation. As part of this though, they need to consider how to accommodate SDI equipment, and indeed in some cases SDI networks.