In Broadcast - March 2014 - 40

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 29 - MARCH 2014

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InSTUDIO

Systems Integrators Part II
As major infrastructure projects are coming back on stream after a lean couple of years, systems
integrators are also amassing expertise in the seachange which is video over IP...

ATG Broadcast
At ATG Broadcast, 2013 was
the year the SD to HD transition
business began to reach saturation.
Demand for SI services began to
hot up, particularly in the areas of
live production and live news and
ATG is now active on major new
contracts but unfortunately these
are currently under NDA.
Contract timescales have been
the main change in the way ATG
has been asked to work in the last
few years. "We are increasingly
called upon to design, integrate
and commission systems within
very tight deadlines," remarks
Tim Felstead, Head Of Sales &
Marketing. "Fortunately we have
the experience required to do that
successfully and the option of
using the additional resources of
our Danmon Systems Group parent."

40
Tim Felstead,
ATG Broadcast

"...We are increasingly
called upon to
design, integrate and
commission systems
within very tight
deadlines

"

Since practically every consumer
television receiver on the market
can source direct from the cloud the
business potential for cloudcasting
is "absolutely enormous" describes
Felstead, "both as an extension
of the traditional multimedia
publishing model and for promotion
of major consumer brands."
In tune with other SIs ATG
Broadcast ﬁnds 4K in its early days.
That said, "many content
producers are already gearing
for 4K and camera prices are
so attractive that 4K will soon
be a natural way to future-proof
anything of potential long-term
value," says Felstead.
"4K is also useful when creating
content for release in HD as it
allows freedom to select from
speciﬁc areas of the source image.
Multimedia companies wanting
to move ahead of their competitors
are much more likely to adopt 4K
than they were to chase after 3D."

By Adrian Pennington
Contributing Editor

"...Internationally, to be
business seems

dB Broadcast
The UK broadcasting industry
has seen grand infrastructure
developments over the past few
years notably the Olympics, digital
switchover and facilities moves by
the BBC and Sky. dB Broadcast (dB)
has been involved in all of them.
According to Sales & Marketing
Director, Tom Swann: "There are still
several major projects on the horizon
as clients look to consolidate or
expand their facilities. Internationally,
business seems to be in the
ascendant after a quieter period."
Since SIs face increasing demands
from clients for higher added value
services, dB are often looking at a
partnership approach in which its
team integrates with that of the client
onsite. This kind of in-sourcing has
been undertaken with Turner and Red
Bee Media. "With the large number
of permanent engineers in our team,
this is a situation we welcome as we
develop a very detailed knowledge

Tom Swann,
dB Broadcast

of client requirements," says Swann.
As a matter of course the company
ensure its engineers are trained in the
latest technologies, among the most
important going forward being video
over IP. "In common with many other
sectors, the beneﬁts of sophistication,
reliability and cost effectiveness are
most evident here," says Swann.
"The move to video over IP using AVB
or equivalents leads to signiﬁcant
changes in system design and
product choices but also provides
a challenge in the transitional period
comprising both the current and new
technologies."

In Action
The digital switchover programme
(DSO) completed in 2012 was the
largest broadcast engineering
project ever undertaken in the UK;
everyone in the UK who watches TV
was affected. dB Broadcast played a
central role in delivering this critical

in the ascendant after
a quieter period

"

national infrastructure upgrade on
time and on budget.
dB were first appointed t o
manufacture, supply and install the
PIE bays and on site infrastructure at
all 90 UK main transmitters. As work
progressed parallel projects were
introduced such as the upgrade to the
new DVB-T2 standard (providing HD
and other beneﬁts to the UK), and the
manufacture, build and installation of
monitoring and protection systems
for high powered transmitter sites.
Working to a ﬁxed timetable, the
contract itself was massive, with
the manufacture, installation and
commissioning of over 550 bays at
90 key sites across the UK. These
bays included routers, MPEG-2
analysers, SI managers, network
and distribution equipment and more
than 500 Hawkeye frames with over
2,000 modules.

Dega Broadcast Systems
For more than a quarter of a century
in which Dega company director
John Cleaver has been in the
broadcast systems business, the
equipment and the requirements
have changed substantially, but the
SI's fundamental role of assessing
the market and providing the best
solution within a timescale has
remained constant.
"Much of our work is for content
production systems and these are
not directly impacted by the delivery
mechanism," says Cleaver. "The
major changes that we see come
from our customer's need to provide
services to multiple platforms, to
provide non-linear access to
content and to direct interaction with
the audience."
Cleaver spots a trend for customers
to secure a contract and then
provide the required facilities rather
than invest in a facility based on
generating future business. At the
same time, he says, upgrades are
required to happen without disruption
to service or revenue.

"This generally impacts the speed
with which a project will be turned
around and how it is approached," he
says. "Advances in technology have
allowed this to happen to some extent,
but there is a very different attitude
to the planning and implementation."
Cleaver also ﬁnds that clients have
less in house resource available to
specify, commission and support
new installations. Dega's teams
are often required to self-certiﬁcate
the systems and provide ongoing
support as well as managing third
party manufacturers.
"Sustainability plays an ever
increasing role in all that we do
and we now have to understand
the full life cycle of any component
of our systems and their impact
on the environment and its
resources," he says.
IP video is being pushed by all
manufacturers and it is reasonable
to assume that a new bespoke
carrier to supersede SDI will not be
developed by the industry. According
to Cleaver, this means we will make

John Cleaver,
Dega Broadcast
Systems

"...Sustainability plays
an ever increasing role
"

in all that we do

use of advances in standard data
transmission technology to eventually
carry all our content. The short term
challenge, he says, is to understand
how to sensibly migrate to the
commodity formats, when or where
there are real advantages and how to
manage the compromises of using a
technology not speciﬁcally developed
for the purpose.
"Cloud services are being
increasingly utilised by several
providers so for SI's this provision of
processing facilities at multiple remote
sites, rather than physical equipment,
could require some complex
management solutions," he says.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 42
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