IP: inevitable, integral & invaluable
From BNC to IP
BY JOE IGOE
A
debate arose in my team
while we were designing
our new facility. We have several sites that
needed interconnection for media and IT
data, and we knew our capacity requirements
justified a dark fibre network. The ownership
had to be assigned to either the IT group or
the broadcast group. The question arose as
to whether this was an IT network carrying
media, or a media network carrying IP data.
The same question is facing us with
broadcast facilities. Are these broadcast
infrastructures leveraging IP technology, or IP
infrastructures used to carry media? It seems
clear that the “next big thing” to change
broadcast facilities is the transition from video
cables to IP for interconnection.
This change has been slowly permeating
our facilities in various ways for many years.
We’ve been watching the migration of
dedicated broadcast systems to off-the-
shelf PC platforms. Video editing moved to
computer-based non-linear editing, along
with similar transitions for effects and audio.
Larger post-production systems were
built around a central server or SAN, often
with IP data interconnections. Studio graphics
quickly transitioned from the dedicated
hardware systems to PC-based systems in
www.tw i t te r.co m/AP B_ News
the late 1990s. Digital asset management
leveraged large-scale IT data storage systems
to become the IP-based f