cooleman wrote: <cooleman@xxxxxx>
"Grass Valley supposedly was (I only kept up online, and via my inbox),
it just delivered a number of 4K/IP trucks to Arena TV in the UK.
'Arena Television Launches New 4K UHD Trucks with All-IP Infrastructure
from Grass Valley' "
That is a great example, cooleman. The Grass Valley system in the
article/trucks is exactly the kind of system I would have like to have seen
up close and personable.
I didn't see any new, big, OB systems at NAB this year. Perhaps they were
somewhere else (in the past they were between Central and South Hall,
sometimes inside) or I simply wasn't paying attention.
Looking at the equipment list in the article, "...two GV Convergent IP/SDI
Router Control and Configuration Systems with SDN license, iControl
Customized End-to-End Facility Monitoring, Densité 3+ FR4 Frames with
IPG-3901 High Density SDI/IP Gateways, and GV Node IP Processing and Edge
Routing Platforms with Kaleido KMX-4911 cards enabling expansion up to an
18x2 multiviewer.", if I understand it right, shows an immaturity to the IP
infrastructure to date, but also a promise of where it is going. For
instance, the need for an IP/SDI router should/could eventually go away.
As transceivers (cameras, monitors) start putting the IP connection in the
equipment, the gateways can go away, too.
We have an all-IP audio production system for our radio station (Axia
Livewire). There is no router other than the Cisco 6905 central core
routers. There is no need for a separate audio router. There are control
panels (buttons and faders on a board), there are I/O nodes (for analog
transceivers (mic, speaker) or a few legacy baseband sources), there are
servers , there are DSPs, there is software to control it all. . Every
piece of equipment has only 1 connection, an Ethernet cable. Everything is
software-defined. The system has been wonderful, cutting our cable
infrastructure significantly, reducing maintenance and configuration labor
significantly. I look forward to the day when we can do the same with our
studio!
So, I know it is out there and, for lack of finding it at NAB, I look
forward to visiting some facilities that have put IP-video to use.
By the way, I took a tour of the new T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It was
rather interesting and I actually got to talk with the designer, but it is
still fairly traditional in all it's workings. Ikegami cameras, Ross
switcher, router, automation, and infrastructure (mostly). They have a lot
of signals running around but most importantly it was great to see a
prevalent use of fiber (Neutrik Opticon) for interconnecting the areas.
I'll send a link to the pictures if anyone is interested.
Dan