Virtualized playout on-premise and cloud - benefits and drawbacks

Pixel Power Thought Leadership

James Gilbert, CEO, Pixel Power

Read the full article in TVB Europe Magazine HERE

As consumers demand the same high-value experiences across every screen and instant access online, on social media or their big screen in the living room, the broadcast industry has, for some time, recognised the need for greater agility, flexibility and scale.

The shift towards IP and the transition to pure software-based playout has opened the doors to greater flexibility. The drive to deliver more content across more screens as cost-efficiently as possible has taken the needs of broadcasters one step further, pointing towards virtualized environments and the adoption of software-defined integrated playout solutions that can be deployed in private datacenters or the public cloud.

Cloud isn't the panacea

Cloud - like IP before it - was one of the hot topics at trade shows (remember those!) before the global pandemic and there's no doubt it offers a highly flexible, highly scalable, pay-as-you-use environment.

For live event-based applications, such as sports or concerts, it makes sense to only deploy - and pay for - capability as and when you need it, and this is where cloud really comes into its own. It lends itself strongly to use cases where there's a need to quickly spin-up and take down temporary channels and services.

While on the surface Cloud is the panacea that answers many of the business and operational needs of our customers, when you have the deeper conversation, it's not right for everyone - or at least, not yet.

Cloud is certainly a conversation starter, but in the here and now it's often more secure and more cost-efficient to deploy on-premise. Cloud is certainly cheaper when it comes to uploads, but it's at the download end that you get hit by a massive bill. Working completely in a cloud environment, from ingest to playout, is coming. It's also not easy to switch cloud infrastructure provider and any cloud-based solution must be able to work within the constraints of each specific cloud providers' offering or restrictions.

Virtualizable and on-premise

Whether something is all-cloud or fully SMPTE ST-2110 compliant isn't the big focus for our customers; they know as vendors we comply with industry standards and make our solutions work to meet customers' requirements.

What broadcasters need are the right functionality and flexible services that are capable of supporting a steady progression towards that all-cloud future. Moving to virtualized software-defined workflows, on-premise brings all the agility that broadcasters are looking for, opening the way to flexible applications such as full remote connectivity, and providing the future-proofing that every broadcaster requires.

On the downside, an on-premise approach is less deterministic than dedicated hardware when it comes to performance and requires a switch from traditional broadcast engineering know-how to an IT-centric skillset. The underlying off-the-shelf computing hardware performance also needs to be aligned to the needs of a broadcast environment and unlike public cloud, it will need upgrading as new functionality is added.

Giving the customer what they need

When we sit down with our customers, they tell us they want truly virtualized playout services that can run in the machine room, the corporate datacenter or the cloud and be able to easily handle 4K across playout, monitoring, multiviewers, graphics and storage. Branding also has to be applied to ALL of a broadcaster's channels and services, not just the flagship ones.

Functionality and flexibility are at the heart of what we do and for this reason, Pixel Power (a Rohde & Schwarz company) started by building an immediately virtualizable software platform from the get-go. That continues to be our ethos under the Rohde & Schwarz umbrella.

Based on over three decades of graphics experience and knowledge of 24/7 transmission operations, we've developed products such as Gallium and StreamMaster for automation and playout, and operate a licensing philosophy that allows each aspect of the functionality to remain the same, regardless of where that functionality is implemented.

Having the same software, with the same license, whether deployed on-premise, in a datacenter or in the cloud, opens up the ability for a broadcaster to implement services faster to meet their unique business strategy. The benefit to customers is the flexibility to start on-premise and move to a hybrid cloud or cloud environment as needed. A broadcaster can begin implementing a certain level of functionality then build on it to create a fully virtualized, IP-connected playout system as their business and operational needs evolve.

We are the only integrated playout provider that can give them truly virtualized capability with graphics and branding at the heart of a software-defined, virtualized and/or cloud playout solution.

Seamless and virtualized playout

Our recent project with a Swiss online news portal is a perfect example, delivering an integrated playout solution where each element is a virtualized software application running on commercial-off-the-shelf hardware, ensuring seamless operation.

The customer needed a comprehensive production, editing and playout system that provided the maximum automation and operational flexibility - allowing its team to concentrate resources on delivering excellent content - as well as the speed needed to get news on-air first.

The tight synergy and integration between ingest, live playout, content management, graphics and archiving - managed during installation and deployment by a single team made up of technical experts from Rohde & Schwarz and Pixel Power - was a key factor contributing to the success of this project. This customer is now strongly positioned to transiti

LINK:	https://www.pixelpower.com/tvbe-virtualized-playout/...
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