SEATTLE—NAB 2018 was a watershed year for IP technology introductions in the intercom space, with a bevy of new products showcased from various vendors. As these products have begun delivering, customers are learning the advantages of IP-based facility communications.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND SCALABILITY

For Guy Low, content and creative manager at RTS/Bosch, the company’s introduction of its ODIN OMNEO digital intercom matrix at the show marked a significant milestone in the company’s product line. “For our existing RTS matrix customers in the broadcast field, this is an active way to incorporate a new, more compact, more energy-efficient system, with all the technology required, into their existing infrastructure,” he said. “Energy efficiency is a key component. Scalability is very important. So there’s a lot going on inside this rack unit format here.”

Doug Heinzen, North American marketing manager for the company, noted ODIN’s “Swiss Army Knife” characteristics.

“You think of all of the cards and boards that we used to have to put into the Atom, or the Atom M chassis, are now actually all integrated on an FPGA and they’re done in software,” he said. “So you never have to open the chassis to have an additional functionality.”

Customers can start off with an initial 16 ports on the box, but through software upgrades or licensing, the number of ports can be increased up to 128 ports in a single chassis, according to Heinzen.

HIGHEST DENSITY

Clear-Com has rolled out its E-IPA high-density audio-and-intercom-over-IP connection card for the Eclipse HX digital matrix intercom family, which it claims “offers the highest density for IP connectivity for any of the major intercom manufacturers at 64 ports in a single card,” according to the Bob Boster, president of Alameda, Calif.-based company. “We actually license it at different number of ports, so you don’t necessarily have to buy it with the full 64, but 64 ports is far in excess of our competitors who are at lesser numbers than that.” Boster added that there are a number of advantages to the new product, though not all of them will all be relevant to every customer.

“For some customers, there is a simplicity in wiring infrastructure,” he said. “There’s a management advantage in terms of routing and moving around and dynamically modifying their system elements very simply. There’s a standardization advantage to being able to put in a platform where everything is all on the IP platform, and it allows them to have a sort of standardization of infrastructure, that otherwise would have been some mixture of fiber and copper, a variety of different connection types, so there’s kind of an advantage there.”

A WHOLE NEW SET OF SKILLS

Riedel has been leveraging IP for its Artist digital matrix intercom ecosystem for several years, offering integrated support for AVB, AES67, Dante, and VoIP, according to Rick Seegull, systems consulting manager for the German-based company.

“Our Bolero wireless intercom system uses antennas that are distributed over AES67 networks that can be layered atop existing IP infrastructures,” he said. “Our SmartPanels link to the Artist matrix using AES67.“Because of lower bandwidth requirements, audio is simply easier to move,” Seegull added. “And for customers that aren’t quite ready to change their entire workflows over to IP, audio is a great way to ease into the world of IP while learning new skills.”

He pointed out that the challenge of managing and maintaining IP networks requires a whole new set of skills for technicians and new levels of cooperation between technicians and their IT departments.

“IT networks are collaborative in nature, so it will be up to everyone—manufacturers, operators, engineers, and IT professionals—to work together on delivering the best results for the technical infrastructures of the future.”

IP BRINGS SCALABILITY

John Schur, president of TV Solutions Group at Telos Alliance, emphasized the importance of a simplified infrastructure with IP.

“Where traditional intercoms have used a matrix, where you have point-to-point cabling from the matrix to each individual device in the system, there are tremendous savings in an IP-based system because, just like a computer network, you run Ethernet cabling from routers and switchers,” he said. “Almost an infinite number of devices can be attached to the network without having to run additional cabling.”

Schur says the Telos’ Infinity system is scalable for similar reasons.

“For the IP infrastructure, you’re able to plug in almost any number of belt packs and panels to your network,” he said. “In our case, we’re supporting open standards, so an IP-based intercom can use AES67. That allows the intercom to seamlessly interface with other devices.

“We make a VX telephony system and so you can interface your telephone system to your intercom system with no additional hardware,” Schur added. “Everything’s on the network, and it’s a matter of making those connections in software.”

INCREASED FLEXIBILITY

Gordon Kapes, president of Studio Technologies said that its platform offers the benefits of using the Dante protocol over standard Ethernet networks.

This Dante Audio-over-Ethernet Technology “is a major strength, eliminating the need for a separate proprietary wiring scheme,” Kapes said. “This can save cost on the initial implementation, adding yet another application to the Ethernet network resources that are now so ubiquitous to all facilities. Long-term benefits of utilizing Dante is that it allows for simple moving, adding, or rearranging of the physical intercom resources. “For users, I think the biggest benefit is flexibility and having the ability to utilize products from a variety of vendors to achieve the desired system performance,” he added. “It’s quite simple: Let’s say that the core of the intercom system is provided by one vendor. This would be good as there would be consistent user interfaces, control, etc.; but then functions such as interconnecting the usual signal sources, and sending signals to other normal destinations, would be trivial.”

WIRELESS WORKAROUND

In addition to the IP revolution, wireless intercom vendors in particular, are dealing with changes in RF spectrum availability.

“The biggest challenge for wireless users is realizing how quickly the 600 MHz auction is impacting business,” said James Stoffo, CTO of Radio Active Designs in East Rutherford, N.J. “T-Mobile is rapidly deploying the channels they purchased. They are not only staying on schedule but are ahead in some areas. Many industry professionals have already opted out of operating in the 600MHz band, just to avoid any possible pitfalls.”

RAD manufactures the UV- 1G wireless intercom system that features the company’s proprietary Enhanced Narrow Band technology, according to Stoffo.

“UV-1G is a unique modulation scheme that is 10 times more spectrally efficient than the current FM technology on the market,” he said. “This proprietary approach is a form of Amplitude Modulation, and it makes the transmitter’s occupied bandwidth—a critical figure in wireless frequency coordination—more predictable. RAD made sure that setup was quick and intuitive, he added.

[Read: TV Technology's 2018 Guide to Intercoms]

“One person can set up a pair of antennas for a limitless number of belt-packs in no time,” he said. “The hardware interface and software app are simple to use, making it a breeze to change parameters of the pack including radio frequencies, assignments and audio routing. Users can move from studio to studio and quickly change parameters to fit their needs.”

PLUG AND PLAY

Eartec makes wireless headset systems that originally were developed for high school football coaching, markets that have guided the company’s product development, according to company President John Hooper.

“These people, whatever they get, it has to come out of a box and work,” he said. “They’re not going to read instructions, they’ve got to be able to put the batteries in and turn the thing on, and it better work.” For the full duplex communication industry, we’re supplying a set that’s very simple to use and therefore very cost effective,” Hooper added. “We’re just getting ready to introduce a set where you can get eight people all talking, without a base station. This set is designed to work in theaters and TV studios.”

There will be lots to watch in the next few years for intercom systems as IP standards firm up.

SYDNEY—After previewing the lens at the 2018 NAB Show, Fujifilm has announced that it will make its Fujinon UA46x9.5BERD” (UA46×9.5) lens available in January 2019. At 46x zoom, the company says the new lens features the world’s highest magnification in a broadcast portable lens for 4K video production.

The UA46x9.5 has a focal length that stretches from 9.5mm to 437mm, giving it the world’s widest angle among any broadcast portable zoom lens 40mm or greater, according to Fujifilm. It can be mounted onto HD broadcast cameras and sports an anti-vibration mechanism and drive unit for steady shooting. It captures in high dynamic range (HDR) to improve light transmittance and provide vivid color reproduction, along with higher contrast images, while also reducing color aberrations.

[Read: Is It Time To Think About 8K?]

“The response from the market since the launch of this new lens, which was first debuted at NAB 2018 earlier this year, has been excellent,” said Simon Becker, Fujifilm Australia national sales manager for optical devices.. As a result of its high specification and ability to support such a wide variety of video productions with HDR, we have already taken several pre-orders in Australia and have many more in the pipeline.”

Fujifilm plans to expand its line of broadcast portable lenses for 4K video production with the Fujinon UA46x13.5BERD, also in early 2019. It will feature the same specifications as the UA46x9.5, but with a focal length from 13.5mm to 621mm.

With 4k video content expanding around the globe, Fujifilm said it released the new lens to meet the need for high-quality 4k-compatible equipment in sports broadcasts such as soccer and baseball.

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In this sixth of six installments related to the 2018 NAB Show, colleagues Roger Sherwood, Global Industry Director of Cisco’s Media & Entertainment group, and technology communications specialist Leslie Ellis –who’ve covered umpteen millions of square feet of trade shows—talk shop. The question they’d been posed was this: “Talk about things you’d only know or see because you’d been there; stuff you won’t find online.”

Leslie Ellis: I think I’d start with the “numbers behind the numbers” that Josh (Stinehour) revealed at the Devoncroft conference, about NAB exhibitors over time.

Roger Sherwood: You mean the bit about how one major exhibitor purchased 41,950 square feet of space at the 2005 NAB --and 9,900 square feet this year?

LE: Yes. Hello, industry consolidation! And what puts those numbers in perhaps even sharper contrast is that NAB is one of the remaining gathering places for “video people” in general. So many other trade shows have shut down. As a result, it seems like a lot of adjacent communities are seeking and finding ways to “bundle in” with NAB.

RS: There was a lot of “show within a show,” too –all of those mini stages sprinkled around the various show floors.

LE: Three that I counted, probably more.

RS: This isn’t news by any stretch, but I loved when John Stroup (CEO of Belden) said how they’ve seen so many other industries “go digital” –manufacturing, retail, and so on— but that media and entertainment is the one of the last to go fully digital. I loved it because it reiterates something we’ve been seeing for several years now.

LE: As you know, I live mostly in the industry we used to call “cable,” and from that prism, sometimes it seems like déjà vu, when listening to broadcasters talk about where they are along the continuum of “IP transition.” It feels like about a three-year gap.

RS: The other one that really stood out to me, and again from the Devoncroft conference, was the whole thing about how “remote production” had risen to No. 4, from somewhere far lower than that, in their list of most important tech trends, [which was] defined as “not where you spend money, but what will have impact.”

LE: Right! That was on my list, too. And then that supporting quote from Michael Harabin (President, Gearhouse Broadcast) –“I saw all those trucks pulling out there for production … it’s like looking at dinosaurs moving around.” I’d read about trends in remote production, but I didn’t realize it was moving that quickly.

RS: Yes, that’s a biggie. And I think we both agree that the quote of the show goes to my colleague and friend, Dave Ward (Cisco CTO of Engineering and Chief Architect), with his “1-800 Save My Ass” quipo. You have the killer notes, what was the context, exactly?

LE: He had been asked “Who puts all of this together?” as it relates to the virtualization of everything. Dave said, “It goes back to who’s going to be the 1-800-SAVE-MY-ASS when something is broken… which will depend on who the end customer trusts. Who they think is actually going to answer the phone when something is broken.”

RS: And then something about how that’s us, that we’ll be the 1-800.

LE: Right. The quote was, “We’ll take the lead, the solution partners.”

RS: Speaking of field notes… did you tell me you spent some time just writing down things you heard people say in passing? Kind of like “scenes from a mall,” except in this case from LVCC?

LE: I did! I always do. I only write them down if I hear them a few times, or if they’re particularly funny or illuminating. You know –what you hear when you’re walking from one place to another. This year, the one that came up enough that I wrote it down and ended up putting six check marks behind it –so at least 7x overheard— was “I didn’t say I want it, I just want to see it.”

RS: Could apply to almost anything.

LE: Could, but, among the “bright sparkly things” this year was HDR, AR/VR, and let’s not forget the most frequently used acronym of the 2018 NAB, “AI/ML.”

RS: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.

LE: In one of the Show dailies, I counted 25 incidences of it on a single page.

RS: You’re a weirdo. I mean that in the nicest way.

LE: Thank you. What’s next?

RS: IBC.

LE: See you there!

The 2018 NAB Show, along with a few lingering snowstorms, income taxes, and the alleged arrival of spring, are all theoretically behind us now -- but not without leaving a chunky trail of acronyms, at least in the case of NAB. Acronyms are a necessary evil in any industrial life, not because engineers are trying to drive us bananas with the grand geekery of it all, but because it’s just easier to say (as one of hundreds of examples) “SMPTE” (pronounced “simm-tea”) than it is to say “The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.”

Like many of us in the video realm, we attempt to keep tabs on what is a steady flow of such impressively nerdy acronyms dotting the conversational landscape. Especially those that mark the transition of pretty much everything to IP, Internet Protocol. It started with the transition of SDI (Serial Digital Interface), essentially the starting line for the broadcast transition to IP.

There’s SMPTE 2022, in the works since 2007, as a “unidirectional, IP-based protocol for the transport of real-time video, audio and ancillary signals … in particular, a method for the encapsulation of the payloads of a variety of existing SMPTE serial digital video standards.”

The new one (to me, anyway) this year was SMPTE 2110, which builds on 2022 by unpacking each part of a signal (the video, the audio, and any ancillary data) into different IP streams, instead of being rolled together into one big transport stream. Each individual stream contains its own time stamp, which can be used at the receive end to line everything up so that it plays out correctly. (So, kind of like the IP version of lip sync.)

As someone much smarter than me took the time to explain in Las Vegas (thanks again, Subha!), SMPTE 2110 spans three pillars. The first: Off-the-shelf switching, as in video switching, so that broadcast and media providers can get away from buying big, all-in-one, monolithic switches. The reasoning: The inputs to any video switch tend to scale at different rates, dynamically. Therefore switches need to be able to also scale at different rates, dynamically.

Which brings up the second pillar: The ecosystem. One of the highlights at the Central Hall this year was the (always crowded) IP Showcase, where 56 suppliers representing the broadcast landscape came together, again, to demonstrate their collaborative work to interoperate -- not just as a “plug fest,” but more this year at an operational level. Background: That IP Showcase tends to move back and forth, across the Atlantic, from IBC to NAB and back again; that will be the case this September, in Amsterdam. It’s kind of assumed, by now, that one piece of gear can link to another, and they’ll both work as intended. This year, it was more about that next step -- how to make it work in real life, so that the people operating it can do so with relative ease. Meaning that their day-to-day, business-as-usual life stays reasonably the same, unfettered with the drudgery of relearning new ways to do the same things.

Last not least, SMPTE 2110 is further evidence of virtualization. Taking big, “bespoke” things, and unthreading them into their digital core. Maybe it’s an API (Application Program Interface) for a software-defined network (SDN) that gets teased out, standardized, open-sourced, and offered out to the community.

In theory and in practice (so far), SMPTE 2110 makes it easier for broadcast and media people to do more things, more quickly; to be more Internet-like. One example that came up over and over again was 4K video, already widely available on the display end (as evidenced in every consumer electronics store leading up to the Winter Olympics). Or prepping a venue to shift from, say, the Madonna concert on Saturday night, to the soccer match on Sunday afternoon. Or outfitting a control room for a multi-site production, without having to re-encode video multiple times.

So what does it take for the industry to be SMPTE 2110 ready? At the most basic level, it’s about those acronyms that are getting all broadcast applications and gear “souped-up” for IP. The next step is about how to work in that 2110 environment. What changes are necessary, in traditional broadcast operations, to accommodate the dynamic scaling of inputs and outputs?

The work of it is all shifting towards operating in IP. And scaling a network that previously would transport a few monolithic flows, but now has multiple IP-based flows -- all going to different end-points, but needing the precise timing to maintain broadcast accuracy and fidelity. If you visited the Cisco booth, for instance, it is that level of operations which were on display. You can find out more about that here. And you can be certain that in September, on the other side of the Atlantic, we’ll be talking more about operating in a 2110 environment.

Until then, be well and thrive!

About the Author: Leslie Ellis is a respected “technology translator,” known in cable and telecom circles for her award-winning, 20+ year “Translation Please” column in Multichannel News. She took on this Cisco-sponsored pre-NAB series to point out common and frustrating obstacles, for anyone on the sliding transition toward “being more Internet-like.” It is less of a comprehensive representation of available options and more a glimpse into what’s worrisome, on a day-to-day basis for engineers and IT people who work in media and entertainment.

Fourteen leading developers of the NDI video/IP protocol joined together at NAB 2018 to exhibit their latest products and solutions. NewTek, the developer of the royalty-free standard, hosted the event from the NDI Central Pavilion. Those who couldn’t make it to NAB can watch the coverage on NewTek’s Twitch livestream. The stream showcases NDI developers and creators who are at the forefront IP video production.

Since its introduction in 2015, NDI has become a popular industry standard for sharing video on a standard Ethernet network. The protocol is now in use by thousands of products and millions of users worldwide and is potentially the most widely used protocol of its kind.

 “These fourteen companies represent some of the best innovators among the roughly 1,000 companies incorporating NDI into their products. NAB attendees will be able to explore the NDI ecosystem and discover the amazing devices and applications powered by NDI,” said Michael Kornet, executive vice president and general manager of NDI for NewTek prior to the show. “These developers share our vision of the end-to-end all IP workflow that is a reality today and we’re excited to bring them together at the NDI Central Pavilion.” 

· AJT Systems 

· Boinx Software 

· Changsha Kiloview Electronics 

· Production Bot LLC 

· Easy Media Suite 

· Etere 

· FingerWorks Telestrators 

· LiveXpert by 3D Storm 

· Medialooks 

· NewsMaker Systems 

· NIXUS · Panasonic 

· RT Software 

· Stream Circle

For more coverage on Newtek, visit the TV Technology/NDI Central Hub. 

You’re probably reading this as you finalize your plans for NAB in Las Vegas. You booked your travel, with an itinerary that spans maybe a couple days. And NAB is likely only one of the stops in those plans. But even seasoned travelers can’t quite imagine what it’s like to put on an 18-day event, with 2,914 Olympic athletes, halfway around the world.

I’m talking, of course, about the 3,000 people at NBC Olympics who flawlessly delivered 2,400 hours of Winter Games in February -- about 126 hours each day, and more than any previous Winter Games. Across 7,000 miles. With a 14-hour time difference.

These are the same people, it’s worth noting, who headed to PyeongChang a week or so after they wrapped up a little sporting event we know as SuperBowl LII (go Eagles!), in Minnesota.

Viewers tend to think of the Olympics as something that happens every two years. But for the people who bring the Games to our screens -- from on-air talent to production, engineering to IT, and everyone in between -- it’s a considerably shorter timeframe. Their travel itineraries stretch across weeks and months, not days, and almost always require a passport. Talk about “Passion.Connected”! (That was the slogan for this year’s Winter Games. Get it? P-C? PyeongChang?)

The point is, it takes a certain kind of person to make a life commitment like that. I say “life commitment,” because most of the people on the NBC Olympics team are repeat performers themselves. There’s a magic that happens, when your job involves telling the stories of the athletes who train their bodies at a level the rest of us would consider utter torture.

There’s a magic that happens for those of us who build the technologies that power the Olympic Games, too. It’s partly the challenge of incorporating more and more IP and cloud techniques, designed to simplify the delivery of live and on-demand video, and partly the sense of excitement that comes with working with such a uniquely talented lineup as the NBC Olympics team. This was our 10th year as a technology partner with NBC Olympics, and the technological trajectory over that decade is worth a much longer article!

How Much Gear Did It Take to Put on the Winter Games?

Now think about the amount of gear it takes. Gear that ensures a reliable production of live and file-based Olympics coverage, with a deployment model designed to be rapidly configured. Gear that stretches the notion of scalability -- in this case, of IP-based infrastructure -- to deliver premium content between multiple venues, in South Korea, and the NBC Olympics properties, in the U.S.

That’s where we come in, at least in part (NBC Olympics counts many of us as technology partners.) Cisco eats, lives, works and breathes in the world of IP infrastructure. It was IP technology and routing that enabled the remote Olympic venues to work directly with NBC Olympics studios and control rooms in PyeongChang and Stamford, lowering the equipment footprint in Korea while supporting the capability to send more content back to the U.S.

Another and super cool part of our role in this year’s Games was to keep the 3,000-person NBC Olympics teams, connected. Connected in real-time, using Cisco’s Collaboration Endpoints in the broadcast areas, the athlete’s village, and the venues.

To bridge the distances, NBC Olympics installed Endpoints in the hallways, in their facilities at the PyeongChang International Broadcast Center and at their HQ in Connecticut. The intent was to generate a real-time, always on “water cooler effect,” connecting NBC Olympics staff with high-fidelity audio and video. Happy to report: It worked!

Here’s another behind-the-scenes factoid: It took 99 sea containers to carry all the gear it took to put on this year’s Winter Games. Part of what was inside is known as “RIBs,” for “Racks-in-a-Box.” I’m not sure how many RIBs held Cisco equipment, but, we made the trek in some of those 99 containers.

The RIBs were originally shipped from Rio de Janeiro, where the previous Summer Games were held, to Stamford, Connecticut, where NBC Olympics is headquartered. There, they underwent rigorous testing, modeling and configurations, with a goal of being completely ready (including a significant climate difference) ahead of time. RIBs essentially solve for faster, cleaner setup, from one Olympic Games to the next.

Needless to say, it takes a great deal of confidence to send more content back to the U.S. than any previous Winter Olympics, with essentially the same technology and operational footprint as the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. You need to know that the broadcast and IT infrastructure will perform reliably, at massive scale.

It’s an infrastructure boundary that’s blurring, which is a trend you’ll assuredly see at this week’s show. We’re living and working in a moment in time when new levels of trust, between traditional broadcast engineering, and traditional IT, are vital. Simply put, there’s a lot more IT in broadcast these days, and there’s a lot more broadcast in IT.

This is the 10th year Cisco partnered with NBC Olympics, to connect the necessary backchannels of “storytellers,” behind the scenes. To say that it’s an honor would be a masterpiece of understatement. I’m repeatedly awestruck by the camaraderie, professionalism and raw tech talent that flows, when putting on something as big as the Olympics. It’s as demonstrably impressive as the athletes we’re there to capture and convey to the world.

What happens next? Japan. Those 99 containers will float to Tokyo next, which, incidentally, is where NBC first broadcast the Olympics, in 1964. There, they’ll be received yet again by the behind-the-scenes army of NBC “Tech-Olympians.” They’ll get there months and weeks ahead of the Opening Ceremonies, on July 24, 2020. To the everyday viewer, that’s 28 months from now. An eternity! To the teams who make all that show up on your TV, tablet, smart phone, though, work is already underway.

This is the fourth in a six-part blog series preceding the 2018 NAB Show. Click here to read more about what broadcasters will be talking about at this year's show. 

About the Author: Roger Sherwood is a seasoned digital media leader, known for his ability to transform new and transitioning media sectors from chaos to cohesion. A degreed electrical engineer, his passion is the crisp communication of complex technologies -- like the vast landscape of Internet Protocol. A relentless advocate of customer experience, he’s known for an unshakable belief in questioning things, and pursing the power of simplification. Currently, his mission within the overall IP transition now facing broadcasters is to build bridges between traditional broadcast and IT people. 

Here’s another example of the blurring boundaries between “enterprise IT” functions and broadcast engineering: Security. Not so long ago, the IT side of the typical TV broadcaster handled Internet-facing security necessities, like email and firewalls, while the engineering side shored up distribution-related security, usually over dedicated links. Those links were plumbed in Internet Protocol (IP) but didn’t traverse the “big Internet,” so they were, in essence, cordoned off.

These days, securing the attack surfaces of broadcast and media providers is necessarily a collaboration between IT and engineering, increasingly buttressed by top-down mandates to do whatever it takes to keep the bad guys off the digital premises. Just ask TV5Monde, in France, which suffered a massive hack in April of 2015 that took down 12 of its 12 channels overnight. Like so many hacks, the bad guys had gained entry a few months earlier, maneuvering in the background to find the weak spots.

“The real-time nature of broadcast television doesn’t lend itself well to today’s time-to-detect metrics,” which can average 100 days, said Michael Korten, cyber security practice leader for Cisco. “Everyone knows the stresses that come from ads not airing, regardless of the reason.” To use a worst-case example, Super Bowl ads cost around $170,000 per second.

Korten’s group, and in particular Cisco’s Talos division –a team of nearly 300 cyber security experts– live for this stuff. They are scheduled to deliver a full readout of the latest trends during the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas. This will happen in the Connected Media IP Theater (which is in the South Hall, Upper Level of LVCC) on Monday, April 9, from noon to 1 p.m. They deliberately won’t compile their report until much closer to the date, so as to capture what happens between now and then. But here’s a short list of best practices and general observations they’ll likely cover:

1. You can’t protect what you can’t see –visibility is job No. 1.

 The prevailing wisdom over the last two or so decades was to buy hardware to secure different types of “perimeters” –the so-called “see a problem, buy a box” solution. Each hole gets plugged with a new thumb, which is fine, until you run out of thumbs. Plus, broadcast and media companies typically average 40 to 50 individual security products. But if the firewall can’t “see” the web security product –and so on down the chain– the entirety of the threat surface can’t easily be visualized, let alone pre-emptively protected.

2. Add “time-to-detect” to your vital metrics.

 According to the Talos folks, the average time-to-detect for enterprise companies (meaning beyond the media/broadcast sector) is 100 days. That’s a little over three months! How to get that vital metric down from months to hours is one of the things they’ll explain during the NAB keynote.

3. Know your attack entrances (which are anywhere there are end points).

 E-mail is a threat surface for its potential to disseminate malicious links. Web searches can be a threat surface because of rogue DNS addresses that redirect to unsafe places. Memory sticks, remote and unsecured (non-VPN) network access, cloud handoff points, connected devices, orphaned or neglected websites –all need to be sussed out, continuously.

4. Attacks increase with each new innovation.

 Whether it’s a new cloud platform, mobile offering or device, if it’s new, digital and “on-net” from production to distribution, it’s probably already being deconstructed somewhere for undesired access. Innovation cuts both ways –the intended uses and the unintended consequences. (This is why security people constantly talk about how security needs to be considered from the get-go of any new product or service and not bolted on at the end.)

5. Have a “before, during and after” plan, and check it frequently. 

Improved visibility across all potential threat surfaces is step one; gaining control after a breach is step two. “The first thing people want to know, after a breach, is scope –can we contain it?” said Cisco’s Korten. “The second thing they want to know is: how bad is it? How much damage, what does remediation look like?” That’s why it’s a good idea to know what levers to pull once the alarms have sounded. (Sometimes, it’s a matter of even having levers to pull.) That means a security blueprint with perimeter detection and a “cloud firewall” designed for real-time threat management and automation. Overall mission: Stay ahead of the hack.

The grim reality about broadcast TV and security is this: Attackers have unlimited opportunities to get where they want to go. They’ll keep trying and trying and trying. We’re likely see more evidence of this, even in the short run-up to the 2018 NAB Show. If this is a topic near and dear to your day-to-day, it might make sense to check out the Talos presentation and the rest of its security portfolio while you’re in Vegas.

This is the third in a six-part blog series preceding the 2018 NAB Show. Click here to read more about what broadcasters will be talking about at this year's show. 

About the Author: Leslie Ellis is a respected “technology translator,” known in cable and telecom circles for her award-winning, 20+ year “Translation Please” column in Multichannel News. She took on this Cisco-sponsored pre-NAB series to point out common and frustrating obstacles, for anyone on the sliding transition toward “being more Internet-like.” It is less of a comprehensive representation of available options and more a glimpse into what’s worrisome, on a day-to-day basis for engineers and IT people who work in media and entertainment.

Once upon a time, you probably owned a physical alarm clock. Maybe you even traveled with it. And a Rolodex. And an answering machine, a desk telephone, a wall calendar. A stop watch, a calculator, a bookshelf. “Bespoke” things, to lift a term from haberdashery that seems to be making the rounds in tech-talk lately.

Now look at your phone. All of those things are in it, plus a travel agent, television, mirror, document scanner, cookbook, pager, and whatever other handy apps you carry with you, every day, that used to be standalone things.

The same thing is happening in broadcast video facilities, to single out one (of many) industrial instances of the “bespoke-to multi-purpose device” phenomenon. Banks of switchers, servers, broadcast-specific production/playout hardware —all of the individual components that make TV signals get from where they start to your screen— are ultimately tilting toward the same general destiny as your formerly physical stuff is to their smartphone doppelganger.

It’s one of the things broadcast-side technologists are talking about during the run-up to the NAB’s annual gathering in April. So far, I’ve spared you the very Dilbert-esque language of it, but I can spare you no further: Virtualization. Orchestration. Automation. Three words, fourteen syllables, lots of room for interpretation, in the overall language of “the cloud.”

VIRTUALIZATION, ORCHESTRATION, AUTOMATION, HUH?

Here’s the short translation: Virtualization is what happens when a big, standalone device becomes the “app” version of itself. Point to any traditional piece of equipment in a broadcast TV control room, and ask the nearest engineer what percentage of the time it’s actively used. Chances are high that it’s a low number.

Chances are also high that when it’s idle, a lot of compute, connectivity and storage resources are essentially twiddling their thumbs. That’s what makes virtualization attractive, especially to the efficiency-minded.

Orchestration is what makes those previously standalone broadcast “appliances” easily navigable, all in one place, with a deliberately “web-like” user experience/UX. Log in, pick a desired event (sporting event, newscast, comedy), drag-and-drop, voila! Good to go.

Automation in a broadcast video sense, is what makes it so that a TV show —and everything about it, behind the scenes— can be set up and torn down, in seconds. It’s the work that automates a series of processes, across a pile of gear, which used to take much longer.

Setting up and tearing down a TV show used to take much longer —hours, or days, depending on the material— because studios and production data centers are largely hard-wired. Control rooms are connected to studios by lots and lots of SDI (Serial Digital Interface) cables, some still managed by physical patch panels. It’s not unusual for dozens of devices to be physically patched to multiple distribution channels via a patch panel.

Plus, today’s “bespoke” broadcast appliances each come with their own management interfaces. Usually, they’re ganged together in some fashion of back office management tool, but even so, a typical day in the life of a broadcast engineer still involves a lot of manual configuration, especially when a broadcast endeavor spans multiple facilities.

“For lots of us, the transition to IP starts with location independence,” said a European broadcast engineer. “When you have a handful of locations separated by hundreds of miles, unifying acquisition is very desirable —but to get on the ‘IP train,’ it has to be cost-effective.”

THE FINGERPRINTS OF IP ARE ALL OVER THIS

At the heart of all of this bespoke-to-virtualized activity is the steady progression of IP (Internet Protocol)-based technologies, permeating all industries, as the goods and services all around us become more “Internet-like.”

In the case of video, it started (as technological advances usually do) with consumer technologies: Internet-connected TVs, smart phones, tablets.

It’s happening now, in video distribution, as satellite providers and the industry we used to call “cable” shifts more and more of its total available capacity to IP-delivered video and services.

Broadcasters and studios are next, as the transition to all-IP marches further “up” the video food chain. If the global transition to “all-IP” could be illustrated, it’d look like one of those maps that follows a moving progression, like spring —a bloom of green to the South, edging ever northward. Except in this case, it’s a progression from what you’re seeing on your screen, all the way “back” to the camera that captured it.

WHY NOW?

The IP transition for broadcasters didn’t happen earlier because Ethernet networks and interfaces weren’t fast enough to carry uncompressed video. Virtualization didn’t happen earlier, because data centers lacked “GPUs” (Graphical Processing Units), plus they were originally built to support “web-based” and “non-real-time” applications. However, professional media applications, like broadcast video, are necessarily real-time animals, and need GPU heft to operate well. Add in the absence of network scheduling techniques, necessary to avoid packet loss — “no dead air” isn’t a “nice to have” when it comes to TV broadcasts. It’s a basic necessity.

Those restrictions are lifting, rapidly, as the exhibits and sessions at the 2018 NAB Show will assuredly demonstrate. Again, this is as close as I’ll ever get to an endorsement, but from the Department of Full Disclosure, Cisco commissioned this series and provided the engineering contacts and background that informed this piece.

So if “getting virtualized” is on your “figure it out” list, and you long for a web-like, drag-and-drop way to see and manipulate video workflows, or even better, if you need to convince your IT-side colleagues of the changes needed in the data centers for broadcast video, that’d be a good whistle-stop for your NAB wanderings.

Bottom line is, the triad of virtualization, orchestration and automation is both inevitable and a plausible way to optimize your gear. That alone brings cost savings. But like any other technological advance, it’s as much about slivering costs as it is the “gotta have it!” capabilities that come along for the ride.

This is the second in a six-part blog series preceding the 2018 NAB Show. Click here to read more about what broadcasters will be talking about at this year's show. Click the thumbnail below for the next installment in this series.

About the Author:Leslie Ellis is a respected “technology translator,” well known in cable and telecom circles for her award-winning, 20+ year “Translation Please” column in Multichannel News. She took on this Cisco-sponsored pre-NAB series to point out common and frustrating obstacles, for anyone on the sliding transition toward “being more Internet-like.” It is less of a comprehensive representation of available options and more a glimpse into what’s worrisome, on a day-to-day basis for engineers and IT people who work in media and entertainment.