A few weeks ago I attended a symposium on Media over IP hosted by the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA). As with many of these events the topics seemed mostly TV-centric, but there are usually some radio gems hidden in the flow. Many of the presentations discussed issues around implementation of a new SMPTE standard called ST-2110.
The point of ST-2110 is so that a TV station can pass all its content around inside their plant using IP. Most of our public radio stations have been doing this for years. Many have been using a Live Wire version of network. Others have been using Wheatnet as their primary IP system. The TV people by and large have not been IP based, but rather have used SDI or HD-SDI as their data format. In fact, HD-SDI is exactly the sort of system we put in during my time in Nebraska when we went from analog to digital TV. That was in the early 2000's.
One encouraging thing I heard in all this conversation was that the architects of the SMPTE ST-2110 standard decided to adopt AES67 as their format for managing audio. We at NPR use it at places in our system, and our recent RFP requires AES67 interoperability for the new IRD (satellite receiver) that will be placed at each station. Both Live Wire and Wheatnet claim some level of interoperability with the AES67 standard. This is good news for public radio stations that are dual licensees, meaning they are also a public television station. More than 70 of our interconnected stations are dual licensees. If both their radio plant and their television plant are using AES67 for moving audio around, it would help break down some technical silos/boundaries that often exist in these locations.
Here is a slide highlighting the main subdivisions of the new standard:
The point of ST-2110 is so that a TV station can pass all its content around inside their plant using IP. Most of our public radio stations have been doing this for years. Many have been using a Live Wire version of network. Others have been using Wheatnet as their primary IP system. The TV people by and large have not been IP based, but rather have used SDI or HD-SDI as their data format. In fact, HD-SDI is exactly the sort of system we put in during my time in Nebraska when we went from analog to digital TV. That was in the early 2000's.
One encouraging thing I heard in all this conversation was that the architects of the SMPTE ST-2110 standard decided to adopt AES67 as their format for managing audio. We at NPR use it at places in our system, and our recent RFP requires AES67 interoperability for the new IRD (satellite receiver) that will be placed at each station. Both Live Wire and Wheatnet claim some level of interoperability with the AES67 standard. This is good news for public radio stations that are dual licensees, meaning they are also a public television station. More than 70 of our interconnected stations are dual licensees. If both their radio plant and their television plant are using AES67 for moving audio around, it would help break down some technical silos/boundaries that often exist in these locations.
Here is a slide highlighting the main subdivisions of the new standard:
One advantage of the proposed standard is it eliminates one layer of data. In the current approach, the SDI transport stream contains the "essence" (meaning video, audio, metadata) wrapped in the SDI format. The SDI is then wrapped in the IP format. When a station wants to decode the video or audio they have to first unwrap the IP packets, then again the SDI format to get to the essence. Using ST-2110 means the essence is directly combined in the IP stream and there is no additional SDI layer.
Time will tell how quickly the TV folks catch up with us in their trek toward an IP-based station infrastructure. Public radio is not 100% either, but we are significantly closer than our TV cousins.
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