In Broadcast - November 2014 - 58

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 37 - NOVEMBER 2014

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InREPLY

PlayBox Technology Celebrates The Big 15
Phillip Neighbour, COO, PlayBox Technology UK Ltd
discusses the changes and progress of the company
and the innovative playout systems...

58

InBroadcast: How is your
company adapting to meet
customer demands?
Phillip Neighbour: Like the
audience the television industry
serves, PlayBox Technology is a
watching and listening company.
Our aim is to produce the most
reliable, the most efﬁcient and the
most affordable broadcast playout
and branding solutions. That
requires ongoing dialogue with our
partner companies around the world
to ensure that each installed system
matches the required workflow.
We work in partnership with
systems integrators around the world.
This strategy ensures customers
have access to fast local support
from initial discussion right through
to system completion, onsite training
and ongoing technical support.
PlayBox Technology recently
celebrated its 15th anniversary as
well as 15,000 playout and channel
branding systems. Our success so
far is based on maintaining tight
control over the design of our
software and the servers on which
it runs.

PlayBox broadcast playout server

InB: What criteria are broadcasters
using to select products?
PN: A vital consideration for
every new project is the ability
to ensure easy compatibility with
third party products plus the
ever expanding population of ﬁle
formats and signal standards.
Customers also appreciate proven
and tested software supported
by fast online debugging if any
issues arise. Compactness is
also an issue. Channel-in-a-box
with us can mean exactly what
it says, or two boxes if you are
running 24/7 and want protection
for maintenance downtime and so
on. Compactness means relatively
fast installation, sensible use of
rack space and easy expansion.
We are also seeing growing
demand for IP connectivity which

looks set to become an alternative
to SDI offering major savings in
third-party routing and networking,
particularly if the industry moves
forwards into 4K.
InB: Which territories are showing
particular activity?
PN: PlayBox Technology has
reported recent deliveries in
Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe,
the Middle East and the USA.
The UK market also remains
strong with several major projects
currently progressing.
InB: Any product innovations
ahead that you can discuss?
PN: We launched at the NAB Show in
Las Vegas during April CaptureBox
PRO and ProductionAirBox, while
SocialMediaBox and TimeShiftBox
DUO made their European
debut at IBC in September.
A successor to the existing
C a p t u re B o x i n g e s t s e r v e r,
CaptureBox PRO allows multiple
channels of high-definition or
standard-deﬁnition content to be
captured from SDI digital feeds,
analogue sources and MPEG
transport streams. Four video
sources can be monitored on a
single screen and controlled via
a new streamlined user interface.
Audio levels can be monitored as
loudness/true-peak displays and
adjusted when required. Content
ingested to CaptureBox PRO is
available for playback within a few
seconds of capture commencing.
The CaptureBox PRO feature set
also includes capture-list import
from third-party traffic systems,
support for CEA-608/708 closedcaptioning and automated VTR
control via RS-422 with batchcapture listing. Additional features
include a GPU-accelerated encoding
engine, plus expanded metadata
handling and creation during the
ingest process. Loudness metering
with true-peak measurement
allows audio level monitoring
and adjustment at any time.
ProductionAirBox provides
content playout for news, live
broadcasts, virtual-studio screens,
and video walls. Four independent
players are accommodated in a
single server with built in aspect ratio

PlayBox Technology AirBox user interface

and resolution conversion as well as
integral support of a wide variety of
compressions. Content can thus
be played without transcoding.
A dedicated multiviewer is also
incorporated. ProductionAirBox
provides 2K/4K SDI output,
enhanced playlist handling and
end-of-clip actions. The server can
be operated from multiple locations
via its own remote application, also
GPI/VDCP/MOS control is available.
SocialMediaBox enables
programme production and
presentation creators to incorporate
comments from multiple social
networking feeds quickly and
efﬁciently into a single ready-forbroadcast stream. Comments can
be selected and moderated from
a variety of different social media
outlets, integrating sources such
as Facebook and Twitter on a
single feed for transmission. This
is extremely useful for live television
shows which produce auxiliaryscreen pages for viewer feedback.
The custom feed can be output
as an RSS feed and used in other
systems, or sent to TitleBox for onair presentation. Direct 'push' control
to the TitleBox character generator
allows better live interaction.
TimeShiftBox Duo allows
simultaneous programme delay for
more than one SD/HD channel. It
allows broadcasters to re-transmit
television channels across multiple
time zones. Designed for easy
integration into playout centers,
DTH operators or for other
applications where delay of SD/HDSDI is required, TimeShiftBox Duo
provides all the resources needed to

perform accurate time offsets for any
duration ranging from ten seconds
to more than one month. Logo
overlay and optional interactive
character generation are also
available. TimeShiftBox DUO is fully
transparent pass-through of ancillary
data, including audio streams.
We also showed enhanced
versions of AirBox and ScheduleBox.
AirBox provides automated content
playout for satellite channels,
cable head-ends, over-the-air
broadcasters and corporate TV
users. It can be programmed
locally or remotely to operate
unattended 24/7. The enhanced
AirBox incorporates a GPUenhanced graphics mixer which
allows video rotation effects and
depth-order laying effects to be
performed in real-time. Logo
animation facilities are also added
with a multiplicity of applications
in titling, captioning or channel
branding. The audio capabilities
of AirBox are also expanded with
support now provided for Dolby
E and Dolby Digital Plus. AJA
Corvid video cards are supported.
ScheduleBox allows templatebased management of single, or
multiple television channels. It is
easy to deploy via its web based
user interface. Operators can
select daily, weekly or monthly
views and perform programme
block management per television
channel. Gaps or overlaps are
easily identiﬁed in the programme
blocks. Block status such as Draft,
New and Ready-for-publishing
CONTINUED ON PAGE 59
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