Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) Systems Integration 2016 | Page 16

Adapt to changes by
adopting the right
approach – and partner
Clement Kwan, Regional Technical Director, APAC,
New Digital Technology (NDT), shares with APB some
insights on how broadcasters can make successful
transitions to new technologies in a new era of media
consumption.
Broadcast IP has been a topic that has
been much discussed and debated
in recent times. How would you
rate Asia’s transition to IP-based
broadcasting, and do you think
broadcasters are ready to embrace IP?

full IP transition. Other factors such
as conservative mindsets, legacy
components, entrenched practices
or finanical considerations can also
hinder the implementation of IP-based
broadcasting.

Clement Kwan: No one should expect
technology to go backwards and
people simply like doing things in an
easier and faster way.
Broadcasting has been transformed
and IP is making broadcast more
versatile. In fact, the concept of putting
media onto IP is not new but we
are seeing it widely deployed in the
industry today, and, of course, Asia is
one of the players in this transition.
From a technical point of view,
broadcasters here are ready for IP if we
are talking about a single sub-system
such as production, contribution or
distribution. Technical and operation
teams will probably encounter various
difficulties with a new IP system but
I believe these can be overcome,
if broadcasters partner with a
professional systems integrator.
However, I would not say the time
is right to deploy an entire IP workflow
in an end-to-end system, because IPbased technologies have not reached a
maturity level that will put broadcasters
at ease.
Currently, many manufacturers
are eager to apply or even develop
different approaches of compression,
coding, switching, software-defined
networks (SDN), and so on. This, in
turn, is creating different standards and
technical recommendations. It boils
down to the issue of compatibility,
or incompatibility, between different
hardware and software solutions in an
integrated system.
The mission of broadcast technical
and operation is to ensure the resilience
and robustne