OREANDA-NEWS. The broadcast industry is undergoing a significant transition, from the more traditional SDI (serial digital interface) workflow environment to one that leverages the power of IP (Internet Protocol) to increase speed, agility and flexibility. A number of other industries have already undergone the transition to IP, and Belden has played a key role in many of those transitions. Now, through solutions available today from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, broadcasters are leveraging that expertise along with a commitment to open standards, to capture the many advantages of IP technology.

Grass Valley’s “Glass-to-Glass” IP strategy delivers IP connectivity across its entire product portfolio, making it easier for customers to transition at their own pace and minimize costly and unnecessary SDI-to-IP conversion gear. The strategy is referred to as “Glass-to-Glass” because it encompasses all equipment from the camera that captures the images to the monitors that manage the content so it can be sent to viewers’ homes. IP makes the movement of content much more efficient, provides broadcasters with the agility they need to adapt quickly as technologies improve and the flexibility to add new services to help them win and retain viewers.

IP technology is well established and delivering benefits in a number of similar applications, including IT data centers. The broadcast industry can benefit from a model like this, one that relies on the same scalability, load balancing, use of commodity hardware and redundancy that make IT data centers so ubiquitous, but adds vertically accurate switching, low latency and the familiar workflows of broadcast. Grass Valley’s Broadcast Data Center, now available for purchase, is the solution to this requirement, and it’s a critical component of the Glass-to-Glass IP Solution.

At the center of Grass Valley’s Broadcast Data Center are two key products:

  • The GV Convergent IP router control and configuration system transparently manages facility routing as the industry migrates from SDI to IP infrastructures, maintaining familiar control interfaces as well as introducing intuitive new GUIs for configuration, management and control through software defined networking (SDN). GV Convergent is both infrastructure and signal format agnostic for easy system scalability and provides easy integration and control of IP edge devices and third-party IP devices.
  • GV Node allows broadcasters to combine many of the advantages of a data center model with the specific requirements of a live broadcast production environment. It is a true real-time IP processing and routing platform, offering multipurpose IP processing, IP aggregation and vertically accurate switching capability for live applications. When GV Node is combined with common off-the-shelf (COTS) IP switches, extremely large capacity routing systems can be created with thousands of input and output channels. GV Node is designed to handle deterministic vertically accurate switching within IP, supporting open industry standards.

“We intentionally designed our ‘Glass-to-Glass’ IP solutions to enable broadcasters to start the transition with a solution that makes sense, and grow quickly and linearly as their needs change,” said Roel Vestjens, president of Belden’s Broadcast Solutions platform. “This is not a change that will happen overnight, but rather over time as facilities upgrade and add new equipment. We offer a unique value and insight to this transition because of our extensive experience helping Belden customers deploy IP within various critical applications.”

Mobilimage, a Canadian provider of on-location services for telecasting and recording of entertainment, sporting and cultural events, recently purchased GV Convergent and GV Node to bring IP capability to one of its HD mobile production trucks. The company is using the technology to enhance the efficiency and connectivity for its operation and cited the scalability of the solutions as a major factor in purchasing from Grass Valley.

To ensure that broadcasters have the flexibility to build an infrastructure solution that is best suited for their individual needs, Grass Valley is leading the charge toward interoperability and open standards in the industry’s IP transition. An open standards approach, with products and solutions developed to support these standards and tested in real-world environments, is critical in protecting current investments and ensuring long-term interoperability. For this reason, Grass Valley joined other manufacturers in the industry to form the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), a non-profit trade organization dedicated to fostering the adoption of industry standards for the broadcast and media industry as it transitions from SDI to IP.

“There’s a reason why our industry has always relied on the standards bodies to develop, test, and implement open standards—the process is collaborative and ensures that no one is locked into a proprietary solution. Flexibility is what our customers have asked for, and our Glass-to-Glass IP solution provides that,” added Vestjens.

 

About Grass Valley
Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, keeps broadcasters, content owners and service providers Future-Ready as they navigate the changing landscape of television. With the most comprehensive collection of workflow solutions in the industry, Grass Valley delivers end-to-end television production and content distribution workflows, combined with expert consultation and insight that lead to sustainable success. Grass Valley, headquartered in Montreal, is part of St. Louis-based Belden Inc. Belden delivers a comprehensive product portfolio designed to meet the mission-critical network infrastructure needs of industrial, enterprise and broadcast markets. With innovative solutions targeted at reliable and secure transmission of rapidly growing amounts of data, audio and video needed for today’s applications, Belden is at the center of the global transformation to a connected world.

About Belden
Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC), a global leader in high-quality, end-to-end signal transmission solutions, delivers a comprehensive product portfolio designed to meet the mission-critical network infrastructure needs of industrial, enterprise and broadcast markets. With innovative solutions targeted at reliable and secure transmission of rapidly growing amounts of data, audio and video needed for today’s applications, Belden is at the center of the global transformation to a connected world. Founded in 1902, the company is headquartered in St. Louis and has manufacturing capabilities in North and South America, Europe and Asia. 

Belden, Belden Sending All The Right Signals, and the Belden logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Belden Inc. or its affiliated companies in the United States and other jurisdictions. Grass Valley, GV Convergent and GV Node are trademarks or registered trademarks of Grass Valley. Belden Inc., Grass Valley, and other parties may also have trademark rights in other terms used herein.