In Broadcast - April 2014 - 72

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 30 - APRIL 2014

N E W S

InTEST

Meeting The Test & Measurement Challenge
Test and measurement continues to play a key role in the broadcasting industry.
InBroadcast highlights some of the notable developments....

By Andy Stout
Contributing Editor

I

72

f the entire broadcast industry can
sometimes be characterised as a
group of technologies trying to hit a
moving target at some distant point
in the future, test and measurement
is charged with not only hitting that
target but making sure the arrow
is made of the right material on
the way.
Mike Hodson at OmniTek sums up
the challenge for modern test and
measurement protocols succinctly
as: "Standards compliance, error
logging, loudness monitoring,
real-time picture and audio quality
measurement and the need for
correct measurement tools."
As Hamlet MD, Steve Nunney,
points out though, the devil is in
the detail. While it may be a given
that the hardware used will meet
specification, often the infrastructure,
cabling, patch panels and so on
are often normally overlooked.
"But all cables, connectors and
receivers have bandwidth limits and
equalisation which may degrade the
signals which will impair the quality
of the transmitted pictures even to
the point where the error correction
cannot recover it. Hence the
continued requirement for physical
layer testing using T&M devices is
a must," he says.

Moving Target

As the industry has evolved, so
have the T&M parameters evolved
to keep up with it, with the move
towards file -based working
throwing up some particular

Bridge Technologies VB288 in operation

issues. Signals need to be able to
cross from the IP domain into the
broadcast one and back again in
good order - for all the hype, these
are not yet one single entity - but
the interaction between the two
can cause unusual error conditions
which are difficult to isolate with kit
designed for that task.
OmniTek's 4K Tool Box is targeted at 4K/60 early adopters
Simen K. Frostad,
Chairman at Bridge
Technologies

"

[IP monitoring tools]
...don't help when the
data is also passing
through broadcast
technology because of
the cumulative effect of
errors passed across
the threshold

"

"On the face of it, when content/
data is in a file-based form you
should be able to use IP monitoring
tools to look after it, but these
tools don't help when the data is
also passing through broadcast
technology because of the
cumulative effect of errors passed
across the threshold," says Simen
K. Frostad, Chairman at Bridge
Technologies. "So file-based content
has to be monitored with systems
that understand that, although

an error condition may be within
acceptable parameters at a given
stage of the chain, it can cause real
problems further along."
One of the key questions the
industry has to face moving forward
is how much of that testing needs
to have human eyes and ears
associated with it. Increasing
automation of T&M is a given -
simple economics and a huge
expansion in content, to the extent
that the UK alone accounts for 4000
hours of primetime television every
night, demands it - so the value
comes in knowing where and when
to deploy that human expertise.
"There is a role for engineers in
test and measurement, but that
role has changed," comments
Ralph Bachofen, Vice President
of Sales and Marketing at Triveni
Digital. "Human ears and eyes
cannot effectively monitor the
large amount of metadata and the
complexity of broadcasting multiple
audio and video streams. The best
methodology is to deploy a realtime transport stream analysis
and monitoring solution for the
heavy lifting, alarming, and rely on
engineers for quick verifications.
The engineer then can focus on
other more important tasks and fix
impairments when they appear."
As Adam Schadle, Vice President
of Video Clarity points out, however,
there is a balance that needs to be
struck. While human perception is
still the preferred benchmark of any
delivery solution, with introduction
of any screen delivery criteria has
made it nearly impossible to make
accurate judgments based on
human perception alone. "Keeping
track of benchmarks and progress
as equipment is set up, deployed,
and then replaced through
generations of service provisioning

is a massive undertaking. There are
just too many permutations to leave
the job of quality assessment to any
single set or group of eyeballs, no
matter how skilled."
It's not a task that is getting any
easier as future challenges for
T&M are likely to be legion, with
accommodating 4K one of the
most immediate and pressing.
Like most things to do with the
format, the difficulties inherent in
policing it should not be undersold
in a stampede to fill the gap in
both broadcasters' plans and
manufacturers' product roadmaps
left by the failure of stereo 3D.
"Simply getting uncompromised HD
broadcasts to the end-user today is
still not fully there, let alone 4K and
8K," comments Uffe Kjems Hansen
- Product Marketing Director at
DK Technologies. "Technological
leaps like these always pose a great
challenge in transitioning the entire
workflow and not least equipment
involved in an ever increasing
competitive environment - we are
far from done!"

Adam Schadle,
Video Clarity

"...Too many to
permutations
leave the job of
quality assessment
to any single set or
group of eyeballs

"

CONTINUED ON PAGE 74


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In Broadcast - April 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - April 2014

In Broadcast - April 2014 - Intro
In Broadcast - April 2014 - Cover1
In Broadcast - April 2014 - Cover2
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 3
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 4
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 5
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 6
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 7
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 8
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 9
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 10
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 11
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 12
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 13
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 14
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 15
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 16
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 17
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 18
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 19
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 20
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 21
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 22
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 23
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 24
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 25
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 26
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 27
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 28
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 29
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 30
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 31
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 32
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 33
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 34
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 35
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 36
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 37
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 38
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 39
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 40
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 41
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 42
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 43
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 44
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 45
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 46
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In Broadcast - April 2014 - 49
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 50
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 51
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 52
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In Broadcast - April 2014 - 54
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 55
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 56
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 57
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 58
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In Broadcast - April 2014 - 78
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 79
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 80
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 81
In Broadcast - April 2014 - 82
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S1
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S2
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S3
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S4
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S5
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S6
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S7
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S8
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S9
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S10
In Broadcast - April 2014 - S11
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