“Best of Show Up Close” is a series about nominees and winners in the annual Future Best of Show at NAB award program.

We spoke with Dr. Alexander Hackmann, product owner digital products with Rohde & Schwarz, about the Best of Show winner R&S PRISMON.cloud.

TVT:Cornelius Heinemann recently took over as R&S' new CEO, what are some things customers can expect with this new leadership?

Dr. Alexander Hackmann: The strategic orientation of Rohde & Schwarz Broadcast & Media is mainly based on two areas of core competence. With its unique expertise in broadcast equipment and high-efficiency power amplifiers, the company offers an industry-leading line of high-quality transmitter and amplifier products. Rohde & Schwarz also has comprehensive expertise in software-based signal processing, which it uses to develop market-leading solutions that are pioneering the transition to IT-based workflows in the media industry. Cornelius Heinemann will mainly further expand the business with the transition to digital products, like the shortly introduced R&S PRISMON.cloud Monitoring as a Service solution.

TVT:Tell us about the R&S PRISMON.cloud, what does it offer broadcasters?

AH: Constantly changing consumer behavior means broadcasters and OTT service providers have to adapt to new transmission paths. Permanent error monitoring and the resulting quality assurance, especially of audio and video data, are the key to high customer satisfaction. R&S PRISMON.cloud is a cloud-based A/V OTT monitoring solution that broadcasters and content providers can deploy quickly and without dedicated hardware. An intuitive analysis dashboard displays the latest quality of service (QoS) data to respond to errors in real time. A flexible and scalable pricing model allows users to reduce investment costs (CAPEX) by ordering their individual monitoring services based on current requirements.

TVT:What is it about PRISMON.cloud that separates it from similar offerings?

AH: There are several UPSs:

• Flexible up and downscaling of monitoring resources
• Subscription based sales model (three and 12 months) via webshop generates CAPEX savings
• OTT and SMPTE 2110 end-to-end monitoring
• Always up to date since this model allows our software engineering team to continuously develop R&S PRISMON.cloud and keep users up to date with regular updates—even on mobile phones and tablets.

TVT:What does it cost? Is it shipping?

AH: It starts from the Silver package with one sensor and Live view and live status, but no analytics for three months for €750. The most expensive package is the Gold.Sensor with one sensor for 12 months including live view, live status and analytics for €3,750. You can order it on our homepage directly. After payment process you can set up an account.

TVT:What else should we know about PRISMON.cloud or R&S in general?

AH: In live media delivery solutions, the consumer delivery path will inevitably include live production, management, distribution or contribution links. By combining virtual R&S PRISMON.cloud probes with physical R&S PRISMON on-premise probe, much improved all IP end-to-end QoS data can be made available. Consequently, errors such as video or audio degradation, switching errors or poor CDN performance can all be detected by combining both tools, giving our customers a higher level of transparency and control over their whole delivery chain.

Another focus at Rohde & Schwarz at the moment is 5G Broadcast. As a part of the Bavarian research project “5G TODAY,” Rohde & Schwarz is investigating large-scale TV broadcasts in the FeMBMS mode over a HPHT 5G Broadcast field trial near Munich. Using high power high tower (HPHT) transmitters will allow broadcasters to distribute video over 5G networks with all the advantages of classic broadcasting like high-quality levels as known from HDTV broadcasting, low-latency live content as well as enormous spectrum efficiency and wide coverage. In this way broadcasters can bring in their valuable assets for efficient distribution of high-quality video into the future 5G ecosystem. Also content providers can profit from 5G Broadcast, because it offers a better Quality of Service and higher Quality of Experience when it comes to their customers.

AMSTERDAM—Rohde & Schwarz’s IBC booth this year plans to introduce attendees to a number of new products that cover varying sectors of the broadcast industry, including 5G broadcast, studio production, content mastering, storage and distribution.

A new 5G broadcast core system will be part of the demonstration, which enables R&S terrestrial transmitters to deliver LTE/5G broadcast content. The company will also offer updates on the 5G Today trial taking place in Bavaria, Germany, for which it is a participant.

R&S is also bringing its PKU100 family of satellite solid-state Ku-band uplink amplifiers, including the new addition of a 750 W outdoor variant. R&S will demonstrate the new models live operation wrapped around the latest T&M equipment.

Following its stop at the 2019 NAB Show, the R&S PRISMON.cloud monitoring-as-a-service platform will be on-hand at IBC, which now provides monitoring of SMPTE 2110 on-premise streams in the dashboard, incident notification via email and an REST API for integration of status data in network management systems. The entire R&S PRISMON monitoring and IP multiviewer family is set to benefit from increased capacities for SDI/ASI-I/Os, enhanced configuration for PTP and support for extended color spaces with SMPTE ST 2110-based input signals.

Other R&S products will showcase a number of new updates. The SpycerNode media storage system now comes in a compact 2U height unit version and new JBOD capacity extension units. The SpycerPAM is a production asset management system that allows for workgroup editing and integration of various editing and mastering platforms.

A new version of CLIPSTER DCI/IMF mastering system includes a Dolby Vision iCMU to facilitate media conversion from high peak luminance HDR to low peak luminance HDR or SDR on live output through SDI or HDMI, as well as support for Dolby Atmos Home workflows.

In addition, the Venice studio production platform now supports NMOS IS04/IS05 and configuration via web service, while the RelayCaster has new software updates for greater reliability of contributing and distributing live content via unmanaged IP networks, and the ability to provide link redundancy with the use of two separate internet connections.

R&S will showcase all of these technologies at booth 7.B21 during IBC 2019, which runs from Sept. 13-17 in Amsterdam.

LAS VEGAS—At the 2019 NAB Show, Rohde & Schwarz announced that it is expanding its R&S PRISMON product family by adding R&S PRISMON.cloud, a cloud-based A/V OTT monitoring solution that broadcasters and content providers can deploy quickly and without dedicated hardware. An intuitive analysis dashboard displays the latest quality of service (QoS) data to respond to errors in real time and a flexible and scalable pricing model allows users to reduce investment costs (CAPEX) by ordering their individual monitoring services based on current requirements, according to the company.

R&S PRISMON.cloud is designed to enable OTT providers to adapt their monitoring infrastructure, for example when peak loads during the transmission of large events require extended service. A setup wizard is available for users to add new virtual sensors at different locations and connect them to the dashboard at anytime. A live multiview function, automated analysis of A/V data and error assignment in real time make it possible to permanently measure the QoS, store it in a cloud and visualize it in a timeline format on a web interface.

In combination with the widely used on-premise R&S PRISMON monitoring solution, analysis data from physical and virtual sensors can be displayed on a single dashboard. End-to-end analyses quickly and easily reveal errors such as deterioration of video or audio quality or poor CDN performance as a cause of churn–with just one tool.

The software as a service model allows Rohde & Schwarz to continuously develop R&S PRISMON.cloud and keep users up to date with regular updates–even on mobile phones and tablets.

R&S PRISMON.cloud is available in three service packages: silver, gold and soon platinum. These packages can be ordered in the Rohde & Schwarz App Store as three-month and twelve-month subscriptions.