In Broadcast - July 2013 - 28

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 21 - JULY 2013

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AVB Is A Game Changer For Axon
Axon’s CEO, Jan Eveleens, ﬁelds our questions on
the latest innovations, AVB and legacy infrastructures,
and customer demands…

28

InBroadcast: What new
technologies or innovations will
the industry see in the next one
to three years?
Jan Eveleens: We expect that
changes to broadcast infrastructure
will be one of the major innovations
for our industry, especially as
broadcasters prepare for a
‘media over IT’ networked future.
Historically, real-time audio and
video equipment connections have
been one-way; single-purpose
and point-to-point, and even more
recent digital video interconnect
standards – including the ubiquitous
SDI – were often one-way too. This
results in massive star-shaped
architectures and muddled masses
of cables, especially in complex
professional broadcast applications.
And although SDI isn’t going away
any time soon, we think that AVB
(Audio Video Bridging) will transform
the way broadcasters manage
and deliver live production video
content over the next few years.
As an open standard established
by the IEEE, AVB is a group
of network protocols for the
distribution of time synchronised,
low latency audio and video streams
over Ethernet. In short, all audio
and video streams, as well as
associated control, metadata and
synchronisation needed for a live
production, are on a single cable,
layer or infrastructure.
InB: What challenges or solutions
will this new technology bring to
the market?
JE: AVB brings a whole host of
beneﬁts to the broadcaster. The
design and build of a studio or
broadcast facility will suddenly
become a whole lot easier, more
flexible and less costly. By
removing the inherent bandwidth
and ﬂexibility problems of singlewire SDI infrastructure, AVB will
provide agile, easy and instantly
connected network access.
An AVB support system provides
the simple ability to have one
connection that can carry multiple
streams and work as both an input
and output. This is game changing,
particularly when combined with
AVB’s support of all existing
broadcast video formats, including

JE: We’ve been making a few
changes to help us meet the everchanging demands of customers.
Technology wise, we’re offering
our customers a complete solution
which will enable them to manage
a number of different processes
in just one set-up, one example
being our master control system.
Also, from a more organisational
point of view, with customers
transitioning to a world of media over
IT, IP and soon, AVB, we’ve been
building our support offering and
complementing our excellent team
of traditional broadcast engineers
with IT and software expertise.

AVB production table

support for new emerging UHD
formats (4K for example), as well as
high-quality audio and monitoring/
control/metadata. AVB will enable
a simple, single-layer infrastructure
and will provide completely
synchronous, stable, fast and lowlatency transportation of content.
Benefits range from increased
reliability and lower latency to
decreased weight from less cabling.
InB: Is this something the
broadcast industry can adopt
easily?
JE: It will take time for the broadcast
industry to fully adopt AVB, and
professional content providers
won’t just abandon tried-andtrusted SDI applications overnight.
There will be a ‘hybrid’ phase as
the transition to AVB takes place.
But as the broadcast community
becomes educated about what
AVB can achieve and how, AVB
standards will have been ﬁnalised
and compliance certification
processes in place. There will of
course be a transition period until
AVB switches are prevalent and
OEM AV manufacturers develop new
products incorporating compliant
AVB support natively. As AVB is
an open standard, it won’t be one
infrastructure or one networking
provider that dominates the market
and many organisations across
regions will need to embrace the
technology to advance its adoption
and speed creation of AVB devices,
equipment and applications.

InB: What effect will AVB have
on existing legacy infrastructures
and what’s Axon doing to help
with the implementation?
JE: We’ve been waiting for the IT
industry to catch up, but now there’s
the network speed and reliability
available at affordable cost levels
we can begin to deliver on AVB.
We’ll need other vendors to
help support AVB, so there’s a
planned and staged transition
with limited impact on current
infrastructures. But as some audio
companies have already invested
in AVB, we don’t think it’ll be long
before many others get on board.
We’re by no means expecting
broadcasters to completely
change their existing infrastructures
immediately, but what Axon
will be doing is preparing the
industry for an AVB future by
future-proofing its products –
and enabling a hybrid transition
from the old to the new world.
For example, by 2014, all relevant
new products in the Synapse range
will be AVB-ready. If customers
decide to update all or part of their
facilities to AVB later, the Synapse
products will already have the
capability to support this from the
start, helping broadcasters make
a seamless transition to AVB with
minimum additional costs.
InB: How is your company
changing to meet customer
demands?

InB: Which of your key territories
are you seeing that are getting
ahead of others in terms of
technological capabilities?
JE: Traditionally Western Europe and
also the US are faster at embracing
new and less-proven technology.
Other regions – especially in the
emerging markets – are often more
reluctant to put new technologies in
place due to unfamiliarity, knowledge
or their technical skill base.
They closely monitor technological
innovations that have been
embraced at broadcasters in the US
or Europe, and then begin to adopt
them when they are tried and tested.
That said greenﬁeld sites aren’t
constrained by legacy infrastructures
so as long as they are conﬁdent
in the technology, reliability and
support from the vendor, they are
willing to make the investment.
InB: Give some examples of your
products/technology/services in
action?
JE: In the UK – which is our
biggest single market – and across
parts of Europe, we have 6070% market share, and we work
with all the major broadcasters.
Putting it in some kind of
perspective, as we have such a huge
installation presence in the UK, if
all the Axon gear was switched off,
there wouldn’t be any TV across the
UK tonight!
InB: Thank you for taking timeout
to answer our questions.
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In Broadcast - July 2013

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