In Broadcast - March 2018 - 49

49

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 8 - Issue 3 | March 2018

InStudio

Systems Integration - Part II
Frankie Yeung,
Regional Marketing Manager,
IDEAL Systems Asia Pacific:
"2017 saw our business grow by close
to 50%. We also saw the emergence of
new customers and opened two new
offices in Shanghai and Dubai. Demand
has been increasing in China, and
South East Asia. We see the Enterprise
sector as growing fast with customers
like newspapers that now approach
video as a much more important
part of their business. With video
becoming a more prevalent medium in
companies and social media, we see a
trend of demand for more professional
grade approach to playout, production
and storage.

"Head Architecture of Hong Kong
designed the new Ta Kung Wen Wei
Media Group (TKWWMG) office space
and IDEAL Systems was awarded
the technical aspect project which
consisted of the design and installation
of a television studio and social media
video production facility, along with
the internal Audio Visual facilities, 6x3
videowall, video conferencing and IPTV
system.
"The Broadcast Division designed
and built the two-set studio including
VR Set with tracking, and the physical
set with open office backdrop. All
ancillary systems such as studio
lighting, production control room, post
production station, and a small central
equipment room were also designed
and built by IDEAL.
"Also, PCCW Global and IDEAL
Systems collaborated for the world's

cont'd...

first live 360 virtual reality broadcast
of the 2017 Cathay Pacific/HSBC
Hong Kong Sevens. The collaboration
involved IDEAL Systems delivering the
content acquisition using a number of
pitch-side Nokia OZO 360° cameras.
These cameras provided a UHD IP
signal which was delivered over HKT
fibre to Nokia servers in the control
room, to facilitate live stitching from
each of the cameras' eight 2K lenses
to create multiple stitched 3D UHD
streams.
"These 360° audio and video streams
were switched and passed through
to the Harmonic Electra VS encoders
for delivery to the PCCW Global media
delivery network.
"There are a few emerging
technologies in the Cloud domain that
are set to fundamentally change the
face of broadcast media; both how

it is consumed and the architecture
of the systems that support media
consumption.
"The notion of 'infrastructure as
code' has really caught on in the
enterprise Cloud market and this is
increasingly shaping design patterns
in the media industry. The abstraction
permitted by virtualisation and
software as a service has allowed a
separation between infrastructure and
software architecture.
"Taking the notion of infrastructure
as code even further is the ability to
run arbitrary code 'functions' in a state
machine that is not tied to any server
or hardware at all. This is particularly
important to systems integrators to
master as it allows for integration
code to exist outside of any fixed
server. Serverless is very efficient for
orchestration and integration tasks
and promotes a service-based design
paradigm.
"Finally, Machine Learning has huge
implications for the Media Industry. In
the next few months we will start to
see traditionally specialised manual
tasks such as compliance viewing,
subtitle authoring and dubbing
transcription automated to the point
only a tiny footprint of staff are
required to verify selection of ML
algorithms."
Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group TV studio

Jon Flay,
Managing Director,
Megahertz:
"2017 was a record-breaking year for
our order books. Our bread and butter
of OB truck builds and HD upgrades
were more buoyant than ever. We
also experienced an increase in fixed
installation work and, admittedly, we
delivered two very large projects into
Asia and Europe that boosted turn
over considerably - both of which
awarded us with further expansion
work on service contracts. All in all, a
fantastic 2017 - especially considering
the 'down-turn' that the SI's are
rumoured to have experienced lately.
"We've done a huge amount of
business in Asia recently - we're still

seeing many broadcasters in the
region going through the transition
to HD, which is why we brought Paul
Jones in as Asia Pacific Sales Director
in September. The Middle East is also
a key geographical area for us at the
moment, along with mainland Europe.
The OBmarket continues to thrive
as broadcasters experiment with
different sized vehicles for different
productions and there is a lot more
noise in the market and questions from
our clients about IP.
"While most budgets are still under
tight caps, and while IP infrastructure
is perceived as too big an investment,
the industry is not making the IP
transition as quickly as predicted.
That said, we've invested a lot of time
strengthening our understanding of
key vendor IP offerings and their IP
roadmaps, and last year we facilitated
a landmark migration to IP of a South
East Asian pay-TV service provider by
designing and implementing a media
head-end at the organisation's new
state-of-the-art hub.

"So far IP has been confined to
islands within a facility and tasks that
naturally lend themselves readily to
the transition. Now, the technology
allows the use of the basic three
elements: storage, computing (servers)
and networking, supporting software
solutions that can run in a private or
public Cloud. For broadcasters, this

offers huge opportunities in the longer
term. The old toolbox of stand-alone
hardware is gone and replaced by a
richer and more extensive software
toolkit which increases flexibility and
workflow efficiencies whist reducing
operational costs and generating
new revenue streams - as long as the
implementation is managed properly."

Megahertz kitted out RT France's new studio
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.idealsys.com/ https://www.megahertz.co.uk/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - March 2018
