Peter Walker
-- --
SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE:
Written by Peter Walker, Senior Product Manager at Calrec
As IP connectivity becomes more accessible to all sectors of our industry, those with their sights set on interoperability are working harder than ever to play well together. AES67 defines a common language for the streaming of live, high-quality, low-latency audio over IP, and its adoption by ST2110 secures its place as the way forward for audio over IP in broadcast.
But what can broadcasters do to manage the transition from traditional connectivity, and how do they achieve the full benefits that have been promised with IP workflows?
In reality, many broadcasters are unable to commit to a full-scale shift. There are a number of reasons for this. Moving to a completely new system is not only financially draining but it also has a learning curve. This curve is steep; there is much to learn within even a modest broadcast facility to go full IP.
For this reason, many broadcast manufacturers offer IP interfaces that allow their equipment to be connected to an IP network, while maintaining other more familiar interfacing options. This allows broadcasters to migrate over time as and when they purchase new equipment allowing time to bed-in and expand within their comfort.
Using a gateway technology allows users to start leveraging the advantages of IP with a much softer learning curve. Not swapping out all the equipment simultaneously means current systems can continue to be used, keeping everything on air and allowing the transfer to be non-disruptive to the programming schedule. It allows the broadcaster to get the full value out of their investment.
And, once a gateway has been introduced and an IP network established, broadcasters can start introducing other equipment onto the network, either with native IP equipment or via other gateways. Gateways allow broadcasters to transition to full IP infrastructures in their own time.
They also ensure that the benefits of some proprietary systems, like Calrec's deterministic and self-discovering Hydra2 network, can still be utilised. This can be very useful, for while there are many positives switching to an IP infrastructure, there is still work to be done to achieve truly dynamic connectivity within the network.
The positives are clear: one of the key advantages of moving to IP is the ability to use existing network infrastructures and COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) hardware. Broadcasters want to be able to pass audio, video, control and other data over shared IP networks, and they want to use open standards to exchange media between devices made by different manufacturers. Standardised IP connectivity eradicates much of the cost, space, system complexity and cabling overhead of having a multitude of interfaces for analogue, AES3, MADI, SDI, etc. This is the goal of both AES67 and ST2110.
AoIP has been around for many years, with lots of broadcasters already relying on it daily to produce live on-air content, but it has tended to be separate single vendor systems and/or relatively small networks. Even with Dante, the hardware and software of the IP connection is produced by a single manufacturer. AES67 and ST2110 allow for much larger, truly multi-vendor networks that can replace the whole connectivity backbone of a facility, with a much wider range of devices that can be used, preventing customers getting tied in to new purchase based on previous investment
AES67 gives us a standardised protocol and parameter set so that a device from manufacturer X can exchange audio streams with a device from manufacturer Y, but it's still not necessarily simple to connect stream connections between different vendors. Doing so typically requires an engineer to configure output streams on each device and often manually enter complex configuration details in order to be able to receive streams from other devices.
While this works reliably, it relies on engineers to set up and it results in a static streaming configuration. For dynamic routing of audio, providing the operational workflows needed for live broadcast, we're still relying on expensive broadcast routers, albeit via IP. This is not the goal of using COTS IP.
With AES3, you plug in a BNC, and the receiving device knows it is expecting audio on that connection. With AoIP, a single connection to a network allows for the exchange of many channels of audio with many different pieces of equipment, but they can only receive that audio if they know it exists in the first place. The fundamental part missing from both AES67 and ST-2110 is advertisement and connection management.
In the absence of an agreed standard many vendors followed the Ravenna approach, which is helpful for advertising AoIP streams between those vendors, but still leaves us with labour-intensive configuration in the UI of each device, resulting in static streaming connections.
This is where AIMS and the JT-NM are making progress. They are promoting NMOS, a standardised mechanism for not only discovery/advertisement (NMOS IS-04), but also connection management (NMOS IS-05). This means you do not have to log in to each device on a network to configure its connections, they can be managed from a central UI providing familiar broadcast workflows and using the network to perform the routing. NMOS has gained strong buy-in across the industry, from both manufacturers and broadcasters. It's widely seen as the route to true interoperability, but its uptake has been slow in some areas.
As broadcast equipment manufacturers, true interoperability could be perceived as a threat because it increases competition, but we must protect our market share by making reliable, high-performing and easy-to-use products with feature sets designed for live broadcast applications, rather than by tying customers to proprietar
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Peter Walker
