DIY Broadcast Tech

Tribune, a company consisting of 43 stations, has been profiled in TVNewsCheck about their DIY broadcast systems. The station group has built a series of nine core systems ranging from playout servers to more complex systems for master control and a replacement for ENPS. I had initially written a long post summarizing the article but my browser crashed and lost most of it. So you can read the details following the link.

I have to say their undertaking was rather impressive. I've always been impressed with the type of equipments that's come out of BBC R&D and have wondered why you don't here about this type of development in the US. I assume a lot of it has to do with station groups downsizing their technology teams, and find it cheaper in the long run to just buy the equipment rather than spend the time and money on development.

I think the fragmented nature doesn't help either.

Good post, thanks!

I suppose a lot of it comes down doing a cost-benefit analysis of supporting your own home-grown stuff versus paying for a support contract for something commercially available! If it breaks 30 minutes before you go on air, will the engineers on shift be able to fix it themselves?

I was having a chat at a trade show recently about IP in the broadcast domain with someone from Snell Advanced Media (his surname was Snell so I imagine he knew what he was talking about). He made the point that it could bring down the cost of broadcast installations - you'd obviously need a bit of custom video processing kit, but when it came to routers, you'd be buying commodity hardware from a multi-billion dollar industry rather than specialised kit from a multi-million dollar industry, so it becomes a bit more affordable. But then when the video processing just becomes something that you run on a fancy PC with a GPU, then maybe it becomes easier to write your own code for it.

On a related note, one BBC home-grown system which has spread around the industry a bit is BNCS - the Broadcast Network Control System. It's a suite of Windows-based software which talks to lots of different broadcast kit, but presents a common interface to control it all. It ended up being outsourced along with BBC Technology, and is now owned by Atos - but once you've bought it then you can also write your own stuff for it, to extend it or customise it. And it's in use in most of the major UK broadcasters.

That's something that puzzled me as well. Not many stations in the US have the skilled broadcast technicians that can build or under take major repair anymore*. Maybe because it's based on commodity computer hardware they're thinking that if something goes down their IT department could purchase a new computer and install the software toreplace it? Where as systems designed solely for broadcast require a specialist skill set.

*Edit : I should correct myself and say I'm not being fair. Most stations do have good engineers in place that can maintain current systems. That being said there have been significant layoffs in the past significantly reducing the amount of positions available. I imagine most of the positions that were eliminated were the longtime employees that knew of a time to repair or manufacture equipment. I'm thinking of a recent TVTechnology article that seemed to lament the fact that the tinkerers and builders of past generations are gone. Where they needed to skillset to be able to manufacture things to keep the station on the air because what was needed wasn't available.

I wish there were more open source broadcasting technologies that people can deploy in their own projects. (like CasperCG etc)

TVNewsTalk's MetroCity apparently has used the Tribune homemade tech and it's not that good and nobody likes it. Despite what the article Says about quickly fixing the technology apparently most of the people stationside don't know how to fix it and have to wait for a handful of corporate engineers to come in.

I was wondering based on the reported lack of user friendliness of the Tribune equipment how does the BBC equipment stack up? Is it easy to use or is it connected to Mozart or the BNCS to the point where it's like any old manufacturer?

Not sure I understand your question. What BBC equipment are you talking about? Do you mean equipment the BBC uses - like ENPS, Viz Mosart, or equipment the BBC develops in-house (like Elvis, Davina, BNCS, Jupiter, BigTed etc.) In fact ENPS could be considered a BBC developed product - as it was originally developed by the BBC in association with AP, to replace the old BASYS newsroom computer system (which evolved into iNews).

BNCS is a BBC-originated product (and the version used within the BBC is pretty similar to that developed by the BBC, whilst the commercial product used at Sky, IMG, BT Sport - and I believe a number of US broadcasters - is a little different, though similar)

The products developed in House that haven't been commercialized (sold off or licensed).

They are usually relatively simple, lightweight and usually pretty user-friendly, though with UIs that may not have had a lot of graphic design time spent on them.