Bridge Technologies notes well that IP is moving the frontier of the broadcast segments ever forward A Monitoring Perspective Simen K, Frostad, Chairman However, as it pushes boundaries for market leaders, it opens up Read more
A Monitoring Perspective Simen K, Frostad, Chairman
However, as it pushes boundaries for market leaders, it opens up space for the rest of the market to move into previously occupied territory.
In broadcast, we see satellite occupying both progressive and middle-ground spaces; complimenting IP in places where the infrastructure is underdeveloped, but also opening-up to developing markets as they improve their linear offerings.
From a monitoring perspective — which is Bridge Technologies’ raison d’être — last year saw consolidation of services as a really important activity in developing markets.
With this consolidation came the need to engage in detailed ingress monitoring in order to bring together a disparate range of Direct-to-Home (DTH) services and sources subject to their own peculiar quirks, and then embody them in a single platform with consistent, technologically progressive transmission standards and compression technologies.
Doing this well, and without error, required intuitive insight into the way data is behaving across the chain — which is exactly what Bridge Technologies provided.
In the South Eastern European market specifically, this meant moving from a situation where there were multiple satellite operators operating across an array of multi-orbital positions, broadcasting a varied range of compression types to disparate receiving antennas, to a situation where there will be one single orbital position, one form of uplink, and a standardized system of set-top access.
As a result of this move, last year saw a significant shipment of our satellite specific monitoring probe — the VB272 — to broadcasters covering various parts of the Balkans.
The VB272 input card offers monitoring and analysis of QPSK/8/16/32APSK signals found in DVB-S/S2 satellite transponders.
A chassis can be equipped with a VB120 or VB220 probe controller and up to two VB272 input cards under its control.
A complete configuration with a fully licensed VB120 and two VB272 interface cards provides real-time monitoring and alarming for as many as four DVB-S/S2 RF inputs, 10 IP MPTS/SPTS multicasts (upgradable to 50 streams) and one ASI TS input and output. Full ETSI TR 101 290 analysis is performed on all DVB-S/S2 inputs, the ASI input and the IP input in parallel.
Bridge Technologies invites readers to learn more about the firm’s advanced systems for ensuring high-quality, profitable, digital media service delivery in satellite, production, broadcast, cable, terrestrial, OT T and telecoms applications.
If you’re vaguely familiar with linguistic theory, you’ll be aware of the idea that far from us being the masters of language, language is the master of us. Many theorists argue that language has a ‘materiality’ – it isn’t a mere invention that comes about through our will, but instead has a substance of its own in space and time through a process of intersubjective usage, and that substance has direct impact on the way we as people are able to think and behave.
There have been some interesting studies to show that the language we have access to shapes our fundamental cognitive functions. For instance, a few languages have no sense of relative direction (left and right), only cardinal direction (north, south, east, west). It’s been found that people from these groups have an exceptional sense of navigation; they can navigate in unknown locations far faster than their English counterparts. They even know where north is in a dark room with no windows. More than this, societally they tend to be much more collectively minded with a lower sense of individuality. Linguistic theorists say this is because the language they use is not centered around relativity to a self, but instead to the world as a whole body.
There are other thought experiences we can use about how language gives shape to the world around us. Think of something completely unique in your head. Something nobody has ever seen. Now try and describe it. You’ll only be able to do that in relation to words, classifications and concepts that we already collectively share. Your ability to ever manifest anything truly ‘new’ in the world – not just in your head – will be bound by the language you have for its expression.
Website woes
This idea of finding ourselves limited when trying to communicate something new has been playing on our minds at Bridge this month. The VB440 has been making waves for approximately 5 years now, and we decided it was well time to give it its own refreshed web page to showcase its incredible abilities. Well, that was a task easier said than done.
See, the thing is, there really isn’t anything else like the VB440 on the market. And so when we finally sat together to try and pin down what it is and why it matters, we met an obstacle. How exactly do we communicate that to others?
In the offices, we’ve had no problem working together on it because the understanding of the concept and the project has been implicit; born of a kind of symbiotic understanding of each other and Bridge itself; philosophy, goals, modus operandi, ways of thinking. There’s an understanding between and around the words we use to talk with each other that keeps us all on the same page. But – interestingly – when we brought a good friend of ours in to consult a little bit, she looked at us all like we were talking gobbledygook. There was much talking at cross-purposes and a failure to capture the subtleties of what we all meant, because she didn’t share in the same linguistic culture that we’ve all been working together in for years.
So then – we figured it must just be an issue of translation. How do we capture these implicit ideas we’ve all shared in the office, and translate them into a ‘mainstream’ language understood on a wider scale? Well, that too proved difficult; because as we identified in the first paragraph, when you use common language to communicate something completely new, you end up being reduced to a process of relativity, where everything can only be described in terms of that which already exists.
And that’s a problem, because it ends up reducing the unique nature of something to a chimera of existing things, laden with the preconceptions and expectations that users already have of those component elements. Yes, the VB440 is a range of audio and visual scopes. Yes, it’s a range of packet analysis tools. Yes it’s got this, and yes it’s got that. So, who’s it for? Well… everybody. Does that mean it’s generic in its application? Well, no – it’s one of the most comprehensive production tools out there for both creatives and engineers alike.
How do we get this down on the page and have people understand it, when current paradigms over understanding create an automatic correlation in people’s heads: single unit equipment = specialist, multi-function = generic. How do we communicate the idea of the VB440 as more than the sum of its parts?
We tried all of our known tricks to get the job done (by that, we mean we went to a nice local place to drink champagne and have a fancy cream tea). And slowly, slowly we started to get there. Through iteration after iteration, refinement and redraft, hour-long ‘lively discussions’ about the precise meaning and connotations of individual words, we arrived at something that just about works.
We hope that walking away from it, you understand the idea that there really isn’t anything like the VB440. Not just technologically, but conceptually: the idea of using next-to-no-latency, IP-based monitoring to manage huge chunks of the production process, for both creatives and engineers; the idea of freeing up reams of space on the rack and in the studio or OB van (not to mention energy consumption and wiring), by allowing browser-based access to an extensive host of in-depth data visualisations in real-time; the idea of creating a full ‘in-a-box’ approach to distributed, remote and collaborative production that maintains all the depth and quality (if not more) of ten supposedly ‘specialist’ pieces of equipment. That’s what we hope the website says. Whether it does or not depends on the shared language between us.
Seeing is believing
Ultimately, and perhaps unfortunately, despite our best and most diligent efforts, we know that what we’ve managed to get on the web page will never match the understanding that comes when people witness the VB440 first hand. Such is the nature of experience; language operates within us and shapes our thoughts, and it operates in the space between us as individuals to create meaning; but there remains a particular internal space where even language doesn’t touch – where we ‘understand’ in a way that’s intangible, beyond expression.
So regardless of how you end up reading the website – with enthusiasm or scepticism, we’d urge you to get in contact for a demonstration. You can even come to visit us in our beautiful offices on the Akerselva river in Oslo – we pride ourselves on being quite the hosts. After all, the pen might be mightier than the sword, but drinks, dinner and a demo are our preferred weapons of choice.
A Monitoring Perspective in Broadcast and Satellite
by Simen K. Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies
Bridge Technologies notes well that IP is moving the frontier of the broadcast segments ever forward. However, as it pushes boundaries for market leaders, it opens up space for the rest of the market to move into previously occupied territory.
In broadcast, we see satellite occupying both progressive and middleground spaces; complimenting IP in places where the infrastructure is underdeveloped, but also opening-up to developing markets as they improve their linear offerings.
From a monitoring perspective — which is Bridge Technologies’ raison d’être — last year saw consolidation of services as a really important activity in developing markets.
With this consolidation came the need to engage in detailed ingress monitoring in order to bring together a disparate range of Direct-to-Home (DTH) services and sources subject to their own peculiar quirks, and then embody them in a single platform with consistent, technologically progressive transmission standards and compression technologies.
Doing this well, and without error, required intuitive insight into the way data is behaving across the chain — which is exactly what Bridge Technologies provided.
In the South Eastern European market specifically, this meant moving from a situation where there were multiple satellite operators operating across an array of multi-orbital positions, broadcasting a varied range of compression types to disparate receiving antennas, to a situation where there will be one single orbital position, one form of uplink, and a standardized system of set-top access.
As a result of this move, last year saw a significant shipment of our satellite specific monitoring probe — the VB272 — to broadcasters covering various parts of the Balkans.
The VB272 input card offers monitoring and analysis of QPSK/8/16/32APSK signals found in DVB-S/S2 satellite transponders.
A chassis can be equipped with a VB120 or VB220 probe controller and up to two VB272 input cards under its control. A complete configuration with a fully licensed VB120 and two VB272 interface cards provides real-time monitoring and alarming for as many as four DVB-S/S2 RF inputs, 10 IP MPTS/SPTS multicasts (upgradable to 50 streams) and one ASI TS input and output.
Full ETSI TR 101 290 analysis is performed on all DVB-S/S2 inputs, the ASI input and the IP input in parallel. Bridge Technologies invites readers to learn more about the firm’s advanced systems for ensuring high-quality, profitable, digital media service delivery in satellite, production, broadcast, cable, terrestrial, OTT and telecoms applications.
Bridge Technologies today announces completion of the sale of a VB440 to All Mobile Video (AMV), a provider of end-to-end video and audio solutions across the globe. The powerful IP probe is equipped within new Production Truck ‘Eclipse’, with the sale facilitated by Bridge’s US Business Partner 2110 Solutions, who offer focused consultation and implementation of IP-based production tools for broadcasters.
The Eclipse production truck operates through the use of a Cisco leaf-spine network architecture following ST2022-7 for total redundancy, and will incorporate both 4K and HDR production abilities. At the heart of this powerful production truck is the VB440; facilitating monitoring, analysis, and visualization of all high-bit rate broadcast media content as defined by the ST2110 and ST2022-6 standards. The VB440 facilitates HD, 4K, SDR, HDR and combinations of immersive audio, thus allowing AMV’s engineering and production teams to continuously monitor all layers of media transport, on both redundancy layers, in real time.
The VB440 provides particular benefit in applications such as that of the Eclipse truck, because it facilitates both technical network engineering and creative decisions in-the-moment, accessible by multiple users from their own HTML-5 browser-based layouts that can be configured to meet each specific user’s need. This means that the VB440 takes up significantly less rack and desk space, as well as maintaining a lower energy draw. Combined with the fact that it achieves multiple functionalities which would normally call for individual single purpose rack equipment, the VB440 represents a significant efficiency gain for OB vans and remote broadcast environments – though its application in conventional studios is also substantial.
Amongst the various functionalities it incorporates are a range of audio and video scopes, including HDR preview on SDR screens and 5.1/7.1 audio review across stereo, along with JPEG XS analysis, and signal generation for greater efficiency during studio setup. With these functionalities combined, the VB440 ultimately delivers ultra-low latency analytics of compressed and uncompressed data to provide operators and engineers with the deep insight they need to ensure error-free delivery of live and recorded broadcasts on-location, and from any remote location.
Speaking of the new integration, Paul Butkiewicz, Technical Supervisor for All Mobile Video, said: “The VB440 probe has become the “go to” tool on the truck before and during any live production. We use it to sweep and compare all the devices for errors across both redundancy layers to assure device, QSFP, and signal flow integrity, both before the truck rolls out of the bay and during live productions”. He continued: “Because the Eclipse covers high-profile events, it’s critical to know when errors occur on any of our sources and remote feeds, through the use of notifications and alarms. We’ve been really impressed with the ease of integration of the VB440 and how seamlessly it has worked in our NMOS environment”.
Commenting on the deal, Chairman of Bridge Technologies Simen Frostad said: “At Bridge we’ve been working to push the importance of IP as the future of the broadcast market. But when you have the fortune of working with Business Partners like 2110 Solutions and customers such as All Mobile Video, the job is made so much easier; they intrinsically share our IP understanding and their forward-thinking mindset means we can achieve some really impressive things together, technologically speaking. The VB440 is going to help the Eclipse production truck to deliver flawless live video to its audiences, which benefits everybody”.
More information about Bridge Technologies and its products is available at www.bridgetech.tv or by phone at +47 22 38 51 00.
# # #
About 2110 Solutions
A US-based company that provides consultation and implementation of IP-based production tools for broadcasters. The mission of 2110 Solutions is to explore and maximize the SMPTE ST 2110 and 2022-6 into productive applications that take advantage of both the technical and creative elements it has to offer. Because the promise of this new standard is real, it offers incredible flexibility, and big cost savings for those that can use it in collaborative environments both in studio, and via remote locations. We are bringing together a group of companies and services that are totally focused on maximizing the standard.
Bridge Technologies creates advanced solutions for protecting service quality in the digital media and telecommunications industries. The company’s award-winning monitoring/analysis systems, intelligent switchers and virtual environments help deliver over 20,000 channels to more than 900 million subscribers in 94 countries. From head-end satellite ingress to microanalytics in the home network, Bridge Technologies offers patented innovation and true end-to-end transparency. A privately held company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Bridge Technologies has worldwide sales and marketing operations through a global business partner network.
‘The King is dead, long live the King’ is a phrase that is often misunderstood. First uttered in 1422 (in French) after the ascension of Charles VII after the death of his father Charles VI, the phrase refers to the continuity of the monarchy. One King may have died, but another will always be there to take his place. The technicalities may change, but the fundamental regime endures.
In Norway, the King’s role may be largely ceremonial these days, but the same cannot be said of the broadcast market. Content delivery is just as important as it ever was – perhaps even more so, and in this sense then, the regime and royal lineage is still very much the same, with many of the key players still maintaining their market dominance. But the way they’re ruling has changed significantly.
The death of terrestrial TV
The death knell of conventional TV is one that industry professionals ring with something close to glee in article after article. It’s all but assumed to be a universal truth. But just three years ago, DTT was still the main source of TV reception for more than a quarter of the EU, and countries such as Croatia, Greece, Italy and Spain still saw penetration levels of more than 50%, with cable and satellite also adding a fair proportion. So industry experts do a disservice – and make a significant representation – when they paint a picture of a broadcast industry that has moved exclusively to broadband-based distribution.
We mention this because when we say ‘Conventional TV is dead in the Norwegian market’, we don’t want that statement to be met with a yawn. The extent to which Norway is pushing ahead with an IP rollout for almost all broadcast services can’t be overstated, and shouldn’t be underappreciated.
Why is it Norway leading the way on this transition, more than other EU laggard countries like Spain? The costs associated with maintaining traditional infrastructures is certainly one consideration; beautiful though the endless mountains and fjords of the countryside may be, and peaceful as the vast expanses of snow-laden Northern territory are, they represent a significant challenge in terms of the time and expense associated with truck roll-out. Not to mention the vast potential for signal disruption that comes with Norway’s meteorological extremes.
Along with prohibitive OpEx as a push factor (not to mention a relatively progressive consumer mindset ready to embrace new technology), there were also pull factors in relation to the significant developments being made in terms of broadband provision, with gigabit broadband access available to more than 87% of the Norwegian market. The countrywide shutdown of 3G and high-paced rollout of 5G – securing $445 million for the Norwegian government in spectrum auctions – only increased the ready availability of broadband as a ready platform for future broadcasters.
Coping with Change
In some markets the incumbent providers can become a little too complacent. Or if not complacent, at least stubborn. And if not stubborn, just downright scared of change. This gives room for small companies with more foresight and agility to move in and poach the market from beneath, or – more commonly – for the global giants to steal audiences from above.
No-such-thing has occurred in the Norwegian market. The four major incumbent broadcasters were quick to transfer their linear terrestrial, cable and satellite TV services over to a broadband-based provision service, leveraging satellite boxes where necessary, or simply tapping into the market’s growing appetite for smart TVs and dual-use screens. With this, they also bundled access to some of the major streaming providers’ content – thereby protecting themselves against replacement from more global competitors. The ‘big four’ resultantly continue to maintain a dominant market share, whilst the audience benefits from a much greater level of flexibility, quality, reliability and content choice.
Home Team advantage
It’s clear then that Norway represents an incredibly mature market in terms of broadband-driven broadcast. Which makes it no surprise that Bridge Technologies – long-term proponents and the earliest vanguards of the IP broadcast revolution – call it home, with offices on the Akerselva river in Oslo. Their analytics and monitoring technologies, which cover the full gamut of broadcast technologies – including RF, DVB, Satellite and Cable – increasingly serve broadcasters who are transitioning, or have fully transitioned, to IP and OTT-based provision. Their ability to provide insight across the full broadcast chain – from ingest, to playout, to distribution – is invaluable to broadcasters undergoing strategic adjustment to their fundamental content provision model.
As a result, Bridge products have been integrated into the networks of all four major providers from early-on in the transition from convention to broadband-based content provision. Initially, this transition took the form of IPTV, leveraging dedicated networks to provide services to set-top boxes and – increasingly – dongles. However, as the broadband scene has evolved and the backbone network – both wired and mobile – has increased in terms of capacity, resiliency and cost-effectiveness, there has been an ongoing transition to OTT. The VB330 – which constitutes a part of all of the providers’ analytics and monitoring setups – facilitates monitoring of IPTV, OTT or both, meaning that providers can engage in a transition from one to another at their own pace, confident that seamless monitoring will be facilitated regardless of the way in which content provision is coordinated.
Speaking of the IP-centric focus of Bridge Technologies in general, Chairman Simen Frostad said: “One can’t help but feel a particular sense of pride when you’re working with the broadcasters of your own country; after all, these aren’t just clients, these are the household TV names that we grew up with – their jingles and their logos are ingrained in the heart and mind. And of course it’s important to us that the country’s broadcasters as a whole echo our own mindset in terms of IP as the future – and now, increasing present – of broadcast: because if you can’t convince the industry on your own home turf, where can you?”
In relation to the increasing further progression from IPTV to OTT in the Norwegian landscape and Bridge’s own role within that, Frostad said: “Our new 6.1 rollout is crucial to assisting the rise of OTT, not only because of the flexibility it gives by harmonising provision across appliance, embedded and software-based probes, but because it extends OTT monitoring to up to 1000 OTT streams per probe. That gives extensive monitoring capabilities to broadcast providers in Norway – and allows them to not only provide in-the-moment operational reliability, but to make longer-term strategic decisions based on meaningful knowledge about how their OTT restructuring is performing.”
ARTICLE by Simen K. Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies and overed by SCTE Journal, September 2022.
The world of business always has an appetite for business buzzwords. Two popular but polarising concepts are that of ‘disruptive innovation’ versus ‘incremental improvement’. But at Bridge Technologies, we’ve been thinking – why does it have to be one or the other?
From a disruptive innovation perspective, we count ourselves as one of the earliest and staunchest supporters for the idea of broadcast over IP. Even 15 years ago when the concept was largely alien, we saw the potential of ‘disrupting’ how things were done, and we worked tirelessly from that point to hasten a real paradigm and mindset change in the industry.
We did the same again with our VB440, where we saw the incredible potential that network data – presented intuitively – holds not only for diagnostic engineers, but also for creatives. Through the power of IP – which all but eliminates factors of distance and time – we had the capacity to turn ‘conventional’ monitoring on its head, and create a first-of-its-kind tool that is now indispensable in the production space.
But we also see the benefit of incremental, ‘lean’ improvement – tweaking things to perfection and trimming the fat. We apply this in our product development philosophy every day. This has led to our most recent software release: 6.1. What is notable about this is that it’s a release across (almost) all of our probes, and across the embedded, appliance and software versions. By leveraging the same essential code library and architecture across our full product suite, we cut out bloat and excess, and we avoid duplication of effort. The net result is a joined-up, holistic suite of probes that can all work seamlessly with one another; delivering end-to-end monitoring solutions that work across complex media chains comprised of IP, Satellite, OTT, Cable and Terrestrial elements.
At the same time though, each probe series is tweaked to leverage its maximum potential – which we deliver to customers in incremental upgrades, rather than in shiny new boxes with fancy new names (and accordingly unnecessary price tags). This can be seen on three different levels: in relation to constantly expanding capacity – for instance, in the expansion of OTT, ETR and content monitoring from 100 streams to 1000, the support of increasingly diverse standards and protocols; including SRT, SCTE 35/104 and JPEG XS, and increase in functionality (particularly in our VB440) with signal generation, HDR preview through SDR monitors, and 7.1 to stereo audio downmix.
So for us at Bridge, it’s not a case of one or the other: revolution and evolution have a role to play together. Sure, it’s a complex relationship – but then at Bridge, we’ve always been about making the complex simple.
Article written for INBroadcast
by Simen K. Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies
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In placerat sit amet tellus quis tincidunt. Etiam a erat in erat bibendum vulputate sed ac ligula. Mauris nec sapien pulvinar, molestie dolor ut, pellentesque odio. Vivamus dictum, quam quis facilisis mattis, purus ante tempus libero, eget luctus tortor risus ac purus. Quisque feugiat porta dolor eget ullamcorper. Donec bibendum consectetur sodales. In interdum vitae felis eu pretium. Sed ex lorem, venenatis nec dui vitae, mattis maximus risus. Aenean sed sapien in sapien vulputate pretium vitae nec ex. Ut id sagittis tellus.
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Suspendisse quam leo, consectetur ac nisi non, feugiat euismod velit. Vestibulum finibus, lorem sed mollis consectetur, sem quam egestas ligula, et tempus massa elit eget elit. Nam semper scelerisque libero et placerat. Nam fringilla fermentum quam ac porta. Cras non dui vulputate dui suscipit rhoncus. Etiam auctor ipsum euismod egestas laoreet. Curabitur nec tellus convallis, feugiat nibh eu, facilisis felis. Fusce sit amet pellentesque purus. Nullam diam sapien, auctor in semper quis, eleifend vel diam. Praesent non aliquam nisl.
[/fusion_text][fusion_checklist hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” icon=”fusion-prefix-corporation-check” circle=”no” iconcolor=”var(–awb-color6)” item_padding_top=”20px” item_padding_right=”60px” item_padding_left=”0px”][fusion_li_item]Praesent sapien massa, convallis a pellentesque nec, egestas non nisi. Sed porttitor lectus nibh.[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item]Cras ultricies ligula sed magna dictum porta. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item]Nulla quis lorem ut libero malesuada feugiat.[/fusion_li_item][/fusion_checklist][fusion_imageframe custom_aspect_ratio=”100″ lightbox=”no” linktarget=”_self” align_medium=”none” align_small=”none” align=”center” hover_type=”none” caption_style=”below” caption_align_medium=”none” caption_align_small=”none” caption_align=”none” caption_title_tag=”2″ animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” filter_hue=”0″ filter_saturation=”100″ filter_brightness=”100″ filter_contrast=”100″ filter_invert=”0″ filter_sepia=”0″ filter_opacity=”100″ filter_blur=”0″ filter_hue_hover=”0″ filter_saturation_hover=”100″ filter_brightness_hover=”100″ filter_contrast_hover=”100″ filter_invert_hover=”0″ filter_sepia_hover=”0″ filter_opacity_hover=”100″ filter_blur_hover=”0″ image_id=”478|full” margin_top=”50px” margin_bottom=”30px” fusion_font_variant_caption_title_font=”var(–awb-typography5)” fusion_font_family_caption_title_font=”var(–awb-typography5-font-family)” caption_title_size=”var(–awb-typography5-font-size)” caption_title_line_height=”var(–awb-typography5-line-height)” caption_title_letter_spacing=”var(–awb-typography5-letter-spacing)” caption_title_transform=”var(–awb-typography5-text-transform)” fusion_font_variant_caption_text_font=”var(–awb-typography5)” fusion_font_family_caption_text_font=”var(–awb-typography5-font-family)” caption_text_size=”var(–awb-typography5-font-size)” caption_text_line_height=”var(–awb-typography5-line-height)” caption_text_letter_spacing=”var(–awb-typography5-letter-spacing)” caption_text_transform=”var(–awb-typography5-text-transform)” caption_margin_top=”20px” caption_margin_bottom=”40px” caption_title=”Our amazing team is always hard at work”]https://www.xpressocommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/banner-15.jpg[/fusion_imageframe][fusion_title title_type=”text” rotation_effect=”bounceIn” display_time=”1200″ highlight_effect=”circle” loop_animation=”off” highlight_width=”9″ highlight_top_margin=”0″ title_link=”off” link_target=”_self” content_align=”left” size=”4″ text_shadow=”no” text_shadow_blur=”0″ gradient_font=”no” gradient_start_position=”0″ gradient_end_position=”100″ gradient_type=”linear” radial_direction=”center center” linear_angle=”180″ style_type=”default” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” margin_bottom=”30px”]Pellentesque in ipsum id orci porta dapibus.[/fusion_title][fusion_text animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”400″ margin_bottom=”80px”]
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You’re likely aware (or perhaps you aren’t, in which case time to put your school hat back on) that at the heart of ‘the internet’ lies two central transport protocols: UDP/RTP and TCP. All other elements of the internet rest upon these two TPs (transport protocols), so understanding their differences is pretty crucial. And as with so many things, those differences come down to two central elements: reliability and speed.
UDP/RTP is the quick but messy version, whilst TCP is the insistent and pedantic but sluggish version. The difference is often best summed up in two popular programmers’ jokes: ‘I wanted to tell you a joke in UDP, but I’m not sure you’ll get it and I don’t really care’, versus ‘Here’s a TCP joke. Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it?’.
And the vastly different capabilities of these two transport standards excite the passions of two vastly different groups of people; namely, broadcast technicians and IT technicians. For all too long, IT technicians – and their Telco overlords – saw the world largely through the lens of HTTP and TCP. The latter – with its guaranteed checking of packet delivery – ensured that users received the contents of their static webpages in the right order, and it didn’t really matter if it took a few extra seconds to arrive. Anything else that was needed more quickly – such as video – had to be left to the vagaries of UDP/RTP, and a ‘best effort’ approach meant that data was sent off into the ether with fingers crossed, hoping there was enough ‘space in the pipes’ for it to get through, ideally in the order it was sent.
But as broadcasters sought to leverage the huge potential of IP, things started to change. The ST2110 opened the gates for video to make use of the speed of UDP/RTP, but control for the packet loss and disorder that come with it by ordering the way that packets are sent in a way that is much more manageable, taking account of bandwidth and buffer availability. Broadcast engineers started to use IP in a way that left traditional broadband engineers scratching their heads.
And this somewhat oppositional approach to the use of the same virtual space marked the state of play for some years. But increasingly that mentality has changed, and we’re seeing much stronger interaction between the ‘two sides’; with mindsets converging and collaboration marking the relationship between the two. Telcos are getting in on the broadcast game – and they’re borrowing from the vast pool of knowledge that IP-based broadcast engineers have been developing over the last two decades. Engineers like ours here in the Bridge offices.
One of the big mindset shifts that IT engineers are having to adjust to is the idea of compromise – and the idea that it has no place in video delivery. Traditionally, the relationship between reliability, speed and quality were viewed as a triangle which could be manipulated to prioritise two sides of the equation, and never more. But as the broadcast market became increasingly competitive and audiences increasingly discerning, broadcast engineers recognised that they could no longer afford to just change the skew of the triangle; the triangle simply needed to be made bigger and better. No tradeoffs of reliability for speed or quality for reliability – just sweeping improvements across the board. For IP to push the boundaries it has promised to for so long, it needs to deliver high quality broadcast, in real-time, with no dropped packets, no latency: nothing that could detract from the audience’s viewing experience.
So whilst in the IT world there was still a tendency to rely on legacy systems and structures to do increasingly more complex tasks, in the broadcast world engineers were getting creative – tearing down old ways of thinking and innovating relentlessly. It’s this kind of mentality that leads to big jumps in the progress that broadcast-focused engineering is making.
And it’s this mentality too that has led to the development of our own products at Bridge. The ST2110 standards (including their expansion into the realm of uncompressed production) do remarkable things in taming the vagaries of an underlying UDP/RTP transport structure and making it work for video – but it isn’t perfect. As a result, real-time, in-depth analytics and monitoring that give meaningful insight into network performance are vital; for broadcast and IT engineers alike – ensuring that video gets where it’s going, in the way that it’s meant to.
Indeed, we’d say we’ve been fairly fundamental in ‘bridging’ (sorry) the gap between the two factions, and indeed between engineers and non-engineers in a general sense, by translating our 20 years of IP insight into a message and a product that makes sense even to the non-technical; intuitive in its visualisations and capable of delivering information that allows for both in-the-moment adjustments (either to fix errors or, in the case of the VB440, to inform creative decisions), or long term strategic decisions taken at the board-room level.
Our membership of SMPTE and AIMS is indicative of exactly that collaborative mindset, where IT-based broadband engineers are starting to engage more directly with broadcast professionals, and are coming to understand the dramatically different needs that IP-based video delivery carries with it as compared to other data forms. Through this understanding of difference, shared ground becomes easier to find – and the wonderful events that SMPTE host certainly help us all to navigate that ground together. And speaking of living together in harmony, a perfect example of this collaborative mindset is our participation in the upcoming JT-NM (Joint Taskforce of Network Media) event from 22 to 26 August.
Duis mollis turpis ac diam scelerisque volutpat. Sed neque orci, auctor in convallis id, dictum sodales massa. Aenean nisl sapien, congue nec fringilla et, tincidunt nec sem. Proin faucibus, dolor vel auctor feugiat, ligula sapien venenatis augue, eget ullamcorper tellus justo nec felis. Aenean vel justo orci. Maecenas tempor imperdiet ante, hendrerit dignissim nunc porttitor nec. Aenean fringilla pulvinar vulputate. Mauris turpis tortor, euismod vitae mattis lobortis quis tortor.
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In placerat sit amet tellus quis tincidunt. Etiam a erat in erat bibendum vulputate sed ac ligula. Mauris nec sapien pulvinar, molestie dolor ut, pellentesque odio. Vivamus dictum, quam quis facilisis mattis, purus ante tempus libero, eget luctus tortor risus ac purus. Quisque feugiat porta dolor eget ullamcorper. Donec bibendum consectetur sodales. In interdum vitae felis eu pretium. Sed ex lorem, venenatis nec dui vitae, mattis maximus risus. Aenean sed sapien in sapien vulputate pretium vitae nec ex. Ut id sagittis tellus.
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[/fusion_text][fusion_checklist hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” icon=”fusion-prefix-corporation-check” circle=”no” iconcolor=”var(–awb-color6)” item_padding_top=”20px” item_padding_right=”60px” item_padding_left=”0px”][fusion_li_item]Praesent sapien massa, convallis a pellentesque nec, egestas non nisi. Sed porttitor lectus nibh.[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item]Cras ultricies ligula sed magna dictum porta. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item]Nulla quis lorem ut libero malesuada feugiat.[/fusion_li_item][/fusion_checklist][fusion_imageframe custom_aspect_ratio=”100″ lightbox=”no” linktarget=”_self” align_medium=”none” align_small=”none” align=”center” hover_type=”none” caption_style=”below” caption_align_medium=”none” caption_align_small=”none” caption_align=”none” caption_title_tag=”2″ animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” filter_hue=”0″ filter_saturation=”100″ filter_brightness=”100″ filter_contrast=”100″ filter_invert=”0″ filter_sepia=”0″ filter_opacity=”100″ filter_blur=”0″ filter_hue_hover=”0″ filter_saturation_hover=”100″ filter_brightness_hover=”100″ filter_contrast_hover=”100″ filter_invert_hover=”0″ filter_sepia_hover=”0″ filter_opacity_hover=”100″ filter_blur_hover=”0″ image_id=”478|full” margin_top=”50px” margin_bottom=”30px” fusion_font_variant_caption_title_font=”var(–awb-typography5)” fusion_font_family_caption_title_font=”var(–awb-typography5-font-family)” caption_title_size=”var(–awb-typography5-font-size)” caption_title_line_height=”var(–awb-typography5-line-height)” caption_title_letter_spacing=”var(–awb-typography5-letter-spacing)” caption_title_transform=”var(–awb-typography5-text-transform)” fusion_font_variant_caption_text_font=”var(–awb-typography5)” fusion_font_family_caption_text_font=”var(–awb-typography5-font-family)” caption_text_size=”var(–awb-typography5-font-size)” caption_text_line_height=”var(–awb-typography5-line-height)” caption_text_letter_spacing=”var(–awb-typography5-letter-spacing)” caption_text_transform=”var(–awb-typography5-text-transform)” caption_margin_top=”20px” caption_margin_bottom=”40px” caption_title=”Our amazing team is always hard at work”]https://www.xpressocommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/banner-15.jpg[/fusion_imageframe][fusion_title title_type=”text” rotation_effect=”bounceIn” display_time=”1200″ highlight_effect=”circle” loop_animation=”off” highlight_width=”9″ highlight_top_margin=”0″ title_link=”off” link_target=”_self” content_align=”left” size=”4″ text_shadow=”no” text_shadow_blur=”0″ gradient_font=”no” gradient_start_position=”0″ gradient_end_position=”100″ gradient_type=”linear” radial_direction=”center center” linear_angle=”180″ style_type=”default” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” margin_bottom=”30px”]Pellentesque in ipsum id orci porta dapibus.[/fusion_title][fusion_text animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”400″ margin_bottom=”80px”]
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Bridge Technologies Integrate SCTE 104 and SCTE 35 Marker Monitoring
Upgrade responds to growing customer demand
Press Release
OSLO, Norway — 8 August, 2022
In preparation of their participation in this September’s IBC (Booth 1.A71), Bridge Technologies today announces the addition of SCTE 104 and SCTE 35 marker monitoring to their suite of broadcast monitoring probes, including the flagship VB330. The new functionality will allow broadcasters the ability to more closely monitor and control the integration of downstream ad insertion.
With ad insertion increasingly important to broadcasters, the placement of SCTE 104 and SCTE 35 markers is of vital importance, ensuring seamless Quality of Experience for viewers, but also ensuring that the deliverables promised to advertisers are met by operators. With markers being used across the value chain, there is a need for joined-up and holistic monitoring of them across all service types, be this at the mezzanine, OTT, or broadcast level.
As part of Bridge Technologies’ suite-wide 6.1 software upgrade, SCTE 35 and 104 checking will now be moved to the QoE/Content checking tab, making it quicker and more intuitive than ever to access and assess. A greater range of event types have been added, along with the integration of support for newer SCTE 35 messages, including ‘time signal with segmentation descriptor’ and hierarchical messages. The range of alarming features available has also been extended, automatically signaling event occurrences (or the failure thereof), all of which can be customized according to need. Furthermore, recent SCTE 35 Cue Out events are now visualized within the thumbnail overview mosaic, along with their current state – giving at-a-glance insight into the status of advert cues.
As well as accessing this data in the moment to facilitate real-time correction, all of the raw data can be exported via XML, CSV, JSON and Eii API in order to facilitate long term review and strategic decision making – in line with Bridge Technologies’ wider philosophy, which sees monitoring as an integral tool not only in terms of day-to-day operational performance, but in terms of C-Suite level decision making.
Speaking of the new addition, Chairman Simen Frostad said: “As broadcast models continue to evolve, the integration of advertising has again seen a resurging importance. Our integration of the SCTE standards needed to facilitate this, represents the agility and proactive nature of our development team, along with the benefit of utilising a harmonised strategy across our embedded, appliance or software-based solutions. We’re able to both respond to and frequently predict the needs of our customers, and promptly roll out incremental upgrades which ensure they are always equipped with the best in broadcast monitoring and analytics”.
More information about Bridge Technologies and its products is available at www.bridgetech.tv or by phone at +47 22 38 51 00.
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About Bridge Technologies
Bridge Technologies creates advanced solutions for protecting service quality in the digital media and telecommunications industries. The company’s award-winning monitoring/analysis systems, intelligent switchers and virtual environments help deliver over 20,000 channels to more than 900 million subscribers in 94 countries. From head-end satellite ingress to microanalytics in the home network, Bridge Technologies offers patented innovation and true end-to-end transparency. A privately held company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Bridge Technologies has worldwide sales and marketing operations through a global business partner network.
For us, collaboration is a mindset – one that recognizes that the process needs to be geared towards mutual benefit and enhancement, adding value at every stage and aiming for the creation of something that constitutes more than the sum of its parts. At the heart of collaboration lies the presence of shared values and empathy, clarity of communication, and the selection of a team that takes genuine pride in their work and maintains personal integrity.
Content Strategies to increase eyeballs
We won’t say “content is king” but we would rather explain how content strategies are fundamental in building visibility while keeping engaged with your audience.
Is your company relying on experienced content creators?
Proactivity versus reactivity and the biases that guide our decision making
How do you face failure when you’ve never failed before?
Humans have a range of interesting and quite peculiar cognitive biases. Whilst economic theory and business practices are often based on the idea that we are all ‘rational operators’, the fact is that a range of factors subconsciously impact our decisions, not least of which our approach to risk and our understanding of the factors that we think have contributed to our successes and failures.
One of those biases is that when something has never happened to us, we perceive the likelihood of it happening as relatively low, regardless of what the statistics say. ‘I know it happens, but it probably won’t happen to me’ is the common refrain. This is referred to as a ‘normalcy bias’, and it’s a real problem in broadcast. Why? Well, because everybody’s happy when their network is working. Until it isn’t. And even though that point of failure might not have come for some, one thing is relatively certain: it will eventually.
Disaster comes to us all… But it doesn’t have to
And unfortunately, that’s a lesson that broadcasters all find out, sooner or later. We know this to be true, because we’ve seen it all-too-often. Still a great number of our initial points of contact with clients come from occasions where we’ve been brought in to diagnose existing problems. Often critical ones that have all but crippled a network. The assumption of many companies is that we’ll come in, identify where the network error has occurred using our extensive range of probes, pinpoint the problem and then pack up and leave.
But it only takes a few hours of us being on-site to demonstrate to the customer the idea that our tools provide a value that extends far, far past a point-of-failure diagnosis. We’re able to show how – by building Bridge Technologies tools right into the network – these failures never have to occur in the first place. Because the reality is, when our monitoring systems are present in a network from the very beginning, the chance of that point of failure ever occurring shrinks to an infinitesimally small number. As a result, clients who thought they were going to implement our probes for a single diagnostic activity suddenly realise how much their entire network would benefit from the on-going presence of extensive, in-depth, end-to-end monitoring: providing intuitive and insight-giving metrics that can detect brewing problems long before they manifest into something bigger.
But that’s such a difficult idea to communicate to those who haven’t experienced failure yet, because of the aforementioned ‘normalcy’ cognitive bias. Humans can make small and low cost concessions to avoid risk (we all wear seatbelts after all… hopefully), but we generally make decisions based on personal experience rather than statistical likelihood. So no matter how inevitable we tell the industry that network failure could cause crippling problems, until they’ve experienced it, they have difficulty internalising that message. Convincing customers of a need to proactively monitor their network and avoid problems before they occur is difficult – though not impossible.
Playing at the top of your game means acting at the top of your game
Indeed, that’s one of the reasons why Bridge Technologies products are so commonly found in the systems of Tier One operators – they often don’t need too much ‘convincing’ when it comes to the benefits of our monitoring solutions. This is because they tend to be better placed than most to understand the risk – in part because they tend to come from backgrounds of extensive experience and are more likely to have encountered catastrophic failures before (or at least near-misses), but also because the sheer scale of risk of failure is that much greater for them. With competition between streaming services at an all-time-high, an outage for more than a few minutes can be the nail in the coffin when it comes to a viewer’s decision to switch permanently.
So Tier One broadcasters are often quite open to our message – and willing to build Bridge monitoring systems right into the core of their operations. But what about Tier Two operators?
Well, there’s still a real need for up-and-coming or niche operator broadcasters to adopt a similar mindset. Indeed – they’re often best placed to, because they are exactly the kind of second-wave organisations that are starting to transition into fully IP-based network environments – giving them an unrivalled opportunity to be truly forward-looking in their approach. More than anyone, they are in a position to adopt our key mantra: ‘Build it in, don’t bolt in on’: able to adopt a proactive rather than reactive approach to network monitoring that avoids problems altogether, rather than scrambling to solve them at a point where it’s already too late.
Proactive rather than reactive is about so much more than just disaster prevention
The focus of this blog so far has been on the idea that insightful monitoring can trigger a warning of looming problems long before they occur and cause detectable impact on network performance and viewer experience. But our end-to-end Integrated Services Monitoring (ISM) approach provides for so much more than that – particularly in unusual, disjointed or hybrid network configurations with multiple moving parts. Our tools are versatile in the fact that they provide in-the-moment alarm bells for real crisis moments, but they also provide extensive data over time – something that can be used not only to predict potential issues, but actually enhance network performance by facilitating intelligent decision making. Our data – as insightful and usable as it is extensive – is a tool to be leveraged by every stakeholder in the business – from creatives making in-the-moment production decisions, to engineers planning their monthly scheduled maintenance, to the C-suite deciding where to make its next investment.
For Bridge Technologies, monitoring is not just about disaster avoidance, it’s about performance enhancement. We don’t just avoid failure, we build for success.
Celebrating our Tenth Birthday in Marketing Communications for Innovators
We look back at what’s changed within the broadcast industry. And what hasn’t changed about the way Xpresso does business.
When mindsets evolve, so does technology
That technology in the broadcast industry has evolved over the last decade is readily apparent. What’s sometimes less apparent is just how much attitudes and mindsets have changed though. Once upon a time, the prevailing industry attitude seemed to be that competition meant developing a standard or approach that was by some objective measure ‘the best’, and then forcing the hand of others (be that customers or non-competitor complimentary manufacturers) to fall in line. It was a zero-sum game and survival of the fittest.
In many ways it didn’t matter too much; analogue technologies only had a limited range of directions that they could really evolve in – interoperability was all but a de facto position in most realms anyway. And in the small amount of situations where competing standards or technologies resulted in attempts to ‘push everyone out’ and thus close off a few avenues of development, nobody seemed to mind too much.
Fiorenza started celebrating with Bridge Technologies in Oslo!
But then digital hit – and suddenly the world was everybody’s oyster. Broadcaster engineers were bombarded with 70 different ways to do something, none of which would work with one another. There was a terror in getting locked into a vendor’s proprietary approach knowing that they might not evolve their technologies in line with the market, or might even fail to go the distance. No broadcaster wants to lock themselves into millions of dollars of equipment which in three years is going to be counted as ‘legacy’, has no ongoing support, and won’t talk to anybody else’s shiny black boxes.
Fortunately, vendor mentalities started to shift. There was a realization that in zero sum games, too many people were being left with exactly that: zero. Slowly, slowly, interoperability moved from being the antithesis of competitive business practice, to a buzz word at the core of every marketing strategy. Vendors clambered over themselves to reassure customers that the headache of getting disparate equipment to talk to each other was a thing of the past.
And this didn’t just come in the form of APIs. Vendors were actually starting to talk to each other. Things moved from a state of not just interoperability, but collaboration. The sharing of best practices, knowledge and ideas, the formation of alliances and groups – in essence, coordination of resources to achieve three central goals; progress in the industry on a technological level, ease and straightforwardness for customers, and – most significantly – mutual profit for all the vendors involved. Far from a zero-sum game, there was a recognition that when the broadcast industry works well (and together) it produces gains that are more than the sum of its parts.
NAB as a reminder for what matters
Nowhere has this been more apparent than NAB this year. The spirit of collaboration and community on display there has never been greater – and we imagine that Lockdown had a lot to do with that. And for us at Xpresso, it was hardly a surprise. The industry has been moving towards a collaborative model because it makes strategic sense for some time. But we’d argue there’s a deeper motivation behind it too: human instinct; a desire to interact, share ideas and innovate together. We just needed a collective reason to really recognize it. Lockdown finally gave us that.
Certainly, competitive forces may have subdued that instinct for a few decades (let’s face it, the 80s may have given us some great things – as Kate Bush’s resurgence is testament to, but we could perhaps have done without the Gordon Gecko ‘Greed is Good’ mantra). But when lockdown truly denied us of our instincts to interact, it gave us all a chance to reassess the paradigms that sit at the heart of our personal and professional practices, and the collective industry had an opportunity to fully embrace a concept of ‘winning together’.
And the best thing is that rather than leaving each competitor – and the industry as a whole – feeling like it is constantly precarious; balanced on a knife edge – instead, it feels like we’re setting the basis for something sustainable, something meaningful and capable of continued growth.
Nothing new for us, after ten years in the game
We’d hate to blow our own trumpet, but for us at Xpresso, we didn’t really need to reevaluate our approach. This month we’ll be ten years old, but right from day one we were driven by the centrality of human psychology – a force that we believe will always end up trumping cutthroat capitalism. We adopt a mentality driven by openness; to collaboration, opportunity and connection. And we’ve encouraged our clients to do the same – which we hope has helped in some small way to three of them being awarded industry awards for innovation this year. We too were recognised for our still somewhat unique mentality with our very first Global Content Creation Agency of the Year award (2021-2022), granted in recognition of our progressive and strategic approach to content creation – particularly in relation to our development of blog content; something almost unheard of in tech-industries just ten years ago. These days, companies are now understanding our vision – communicating in a way that straddles the professional and the personal, the technological and the strategic, the comedic and the corporate.
Tempus Fugit
It’s funny to think that ten years have passed – and that a great many of our clients have remained with us for that entire duration. In that time we’ve also expanded outside of the broadcast world, developing relationships with clients across Pro-AV and even further afield. The one thing that unites all of our community of clients is their commitment to creativity and innovation.
Sometimes it feels like the blink of an eye. But time flies when you’re having fun.
In person or on screen, 2022’s Bridge Event was as grand as ever!
It’s that time of the year again…
We know, we lead with that line a lot, but that’s because there are simply so many brilliant highlights in our year – especially now that we’re allowed out to mingle again.
In this particular instance we’re talking about the return of our Bridge Event and Bridge Awards show. This is something we undertake annually to celebrate our successes, and more importantly, the business partners who are the lynchpin of that success. It’s an intense and exciting two days of swapping experiences, stories and knowledge (both professional and otherwise), combined with a fair amount of indulgence and a little excess – because at Bridge we recognize that if you can’t have a good time whilst you’re doing something, there’s probably not very much point in doing it in the first place.
Sharing Knowledge and Experience, In-Person and Online
This year constituted yet another ‘first’ in how we approached the Bridge Event. Last year, by necessity, the entire event was held online. This year, people are slowly emerging from hibernation, but we still didn’t think that a full-scale Bridge extravaganza was quite the right call. So we created a hybrid event – broadcasting both the day-long lecture series to Business Partners through Teams, and then sharing our evening celebrations with a wider audience on YouTube, but also inviting a number of our award winners and lecture contributors to join us in our Oslo offices over the course of the two days.
The hybridity of how we did things this year actually serves as quite a nifty metaphor for what we do. So much of our technology involves bringing disparate standards, technologies and approaches, and encompassing them in something that is seamless and intuitive for the user. For instance, our VB440 accommodates – amongst many other standards – ST2022-6 SDI-IP encapsulated SDI over IP, allowing legacy SDI studios to still gain all the benefits of the incredible monitoring power of the VB440. Or to take another example from the VB440, we allow camera painters to monitor both HDR and SDR images in tandem – including an image preview – directly through an SDR screen. You could also call the VB440 ‘hybrid’ in the sense that it takes so many technologies and functionalities from other specialist applications – signal generation, audio monitoring and a host of other elements – and puts them all in a single box: reducing energy expenditure and rack space, and most importantly, displaying it all through an HTML5-based browser.
During the Bridge Event, a fantastic talk from our senior development engineer Frank Ekern, helped all of us to understand just how far version 6.1 has pushed the potential of the VB330, VB220, VB120 and NOMAD with all of their ‘hybrid’ elements; uncompromising in terms of the quality and insight delivered. Then of course there’s our Integrated Services Monitoring (ISM) approach – this works well with the hybrid metaphor too. This allows for hybrid and mixed broadcast operations to monitor their full chain in a coordinated and joined up manner, no matter how layers of the broadcast and media cycle they maintain; from production through signal acquisition, contribution streams, OTT/streaming media, traditional broadcast distribution with DTT or Satellite to picture archiving. Indeed, the deployment of ISM approaches for clients with complex networks was one of the key focuses of many of our guest speakers, including Jeppe Schäfer of 24i.
So yes, our ‘hybrid’ approach to the event and show proved to be a nice metaphor for what we do more generally. Because crucially, for us, hybrid doesn’t mean compromise, it means enhancement; taking the best features of two things and adding them together to achieve something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s exactly what we managed to achieve with the Bridge Event; the hybrid live party/online broadcast allowed us the excitement and challenge of a full-scale live production (something we think is vital in allowing us to speak with authority on how our technologies are game changers in the field), it allowed us to share our gratitude and energy with our business partners across the globe, but it also gave us the pleasure of the silly conversations and serendipitous interactions that can only come from meeting with our good friends in person.
Pomp and Circumstance
Of course there’s only one really pressing question that people want to know about the event: what did we eat? Well, to start with, let’s say it’s pretty fortunate that Norwegian salmon is a sustainable fish, because the Bridge offices consumed half of Norway’s supply over the course of three days, whether it be during decadent breakfasts, lively communal lunches, or on fancy canapes. You can also throw in a bit of lobster and scallops for good measure; this is Oslo after all. Dinner out at Smia galleri was also an excellent opportunity for us to re-engage with business partners as friends, and lively debate flowed as freely as the wine.
Because of course, a little bit of alcohol and a few cigars greased the social wheels too. Our Awards Show night saw the presence of one of Oslo’s top barmen, who remained unfazed by the complex drinks orders that rained down on him (and some will testify as to the quality of the Negronis he mixed). And let’s not even get started on how excited our Business Partners were when they discovered the ‘secret fridge’.
Now, we’re not looking to show off here (well, we are a bit, but that’s not the main point). The thing is, for us, what business and food have in common is that they’re about a shared experience. They’re a mechanism across which we express our bonds with each other; our values, our tastes, the things that fulfill us. Getting ‘the fancy stuff’ in is our way of showing our business partners, friends, collaborators, stakeholders, employees and general supporters how much we value being connected with them. It’s about sharing an experience, a memory and a bond that goes beyond that of impersonal emails and Zoom meetings.
Making a Song and Dance of things
After an intense day of learning and sharing business experiences, it was time to celebrate with the Bridge Awards. Whilst a chance for our guests to let their hair down, for us in the offices it was a slightly more nerve-wracking affair. Even though we’ve become masters of live production over the course of the pandemic (through our weekly Bridge Show) the Awards show has many more moving parts: three camera people, a director, a four piece live band, and as ever the charismatic Tim, enchanting Gry and marginally eccentric Philip freestyling on stage for an hour. Not to mention the extraordinarily talented Deniz holding it all together behind stage directing and (wo)manning the picture switcher.
As mentioned earlier in the blog, doing these shows is as much about the process as it is the final result. By really engaging with the trials and tribulations that come with live production in a non-conventional production space (in this case, half of our dining hall and a corner of our reception area…) we gain first hand insight into what our customers need, want and expect. We can talk to them as equals with a grounding in reality, not shysters with false promises.
But of course the Bridge Awards particularly are about celebrating our Business Partners, who are at the heart of making what we do possible. Without them, we’d be a bunch of sad and very hungry engineers sitting in our offices with an incredible product, but nobody to show it to. We have developed a number of award categories in recognition of the fact that different Business Partners bring different strengths to the operation – from communication, to innovation, to big hitting sales, and of course we are grateful to all our business partners and their efforts, regardless of whether they are eventually nominated for an award.
If you haven’t seen the live show (and why not – it’s right here!?) then fear not – we’ll be devoting upcoming social media posts to our category winners, so that you can see them in all their white tie glory, and get to know a little bit more about what drives them to be a part of Bridge’s growing domination in the field of broadcast monitoring.
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With plans already underway for making next year even more impressive, we’ll sign off here with a final round of thanks: thanks to our business partners and guests who watched and attended, but also to all of our hard-working, creative and frequently slightly madcap employees who threw themselves into the process with gusto, and only had to pay with a sliver of their sanity. Thank you all!
Have you ever used an iPad to monitor your production feed?
Do you know the answer?
Which HTLM5-based product can satisfy both engineers and creatives in production?
And… What about monitoring your feed on an IPAD? Have you tried that? Simen Frostad and Joe LoGrasso having a chat at the NABShow!
Bridge Technologies Integrates SR Live Metadata into VB440
Development sees Bridge support Sony’s SR Live for HDR technology
OSLO, Norway — 3rd May, 2022
Bridge Technologies today announces the integration of a new functionality to the VB440 that provides the ability to monitor and display SR Live Metadata directly within the VB440’s GUI.
The VB440’s inclusion of this monitoring ability currently represents a new and the latest third-party hardware able to accommodate and monitor using Sony’s SR Live for HDR technology in the context of both live and post-production broadcast.
This addition is very much in line with the raft of developments that have been made to the VB440 over the past two years. Bridge’s leading production-based IP probe has seen a host of expansions which have led to its development as an increasingly holistic tool that serves creatives, producers, technicians and broadcast executives alike, in a range of production contexts. The addition of SR Live Metadata capabilities represents yet one more expansion to the multitude of tools, standards and formats which the VB440 can not only monitor, but turn into meaningful and usable data for creatives to use on-the-fly in remote and live production settings.
Concerned as they are with simultaneous HDR and SDR delivery, the SR Live Metadata is perfectly aligned with the VB440’s increasing focus on facilitating dual HDR/SDR production. SR Live Metadata can be embedded in SDI signals, MXF files, and IP networks, and by combining with compatible products, it is possible to simplify operations and prevent setting mistakes during conversion. Thus, the purpose of SR Live Metadata within the VB440 is to register the creative decisions and adjustments from the cameras during production, from which the data can then be checked to ensure that the quality of signals and packet behaviours across the broadcast chain – from the initial camera output, all the way along the chain through switches, encoders and other network components – matches that which was originally defined by camera shaders at the point of production. Providing this initial point of reference in relation to SR Live Metadata direct from cameras on the network makes the identification of potential issues further down the chain clearer, easier and more efficient.
The focus of Bridge Technologies is to support Sony’s SR Live for HDR technology to push the boundaries of HDR production. The technology pursues the ability to do more with less, using single production crews to deliver outputs which can be flexibly distributed according to a range of standards and needs. This sits at the heart of the VB440’s mission statement, which is to eliminate the need for complex (and expensive) additional rack equipment and display monitors, and instead allow for a holistic suite of production activities to be undertaken through nothing more than an HTML5 browser.
Speaking of the new addition, Chairman for Bridge Technologies, Simen Frostad said: “It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be working with Sony in pushing forward their impressive and much-needed SR Live for HDR workflow by accommodating the use of SR Live Metadata within the VB440. And becoming an SR Live for HDR licensee simply makes good sense to us; we’ve been leading the way when it comes to forwarding IP workflows in the field of broadcast, and so aligning with other like-minded, high-level and progressive industry practitioners is always rewarding”.
He continued: “The addition of the SR Live Metadata as a tool for both creatives and engineers making decisions at the point of capture and further down the broadcast chain aligns with exactly what the VB440 has been doing – and will continue to do – for some time now, across an increasing range of standards, formats, workflow approaches, network setups and production environments. The integration yet further cements the indispensability of the VB440 as a multi-purpose but highly focused tool in remote and distributed production environments”.
More information about Bridge Technologies and its products is available at www.bridgetech.tv or by phone at +47 22 38 51 00.
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About SR Live Metadata and SR Live for HDR
SR Live Metadata is a group of data required for mutual conversion of HDR/SDR contents in the “SR Live for HDR” solution that simultaneously produces HDR/SDR contents. It can be embedded in SDI signals, MXF files, and IP networks, and by combining with compatible products, it is possible to prevent setting mistakes during conversion and simplify operations.
SR Live for HDR is a solution proposed by Sony Corporation which enables simultaneous and efficient HDR/SDR content production.
About Bridge Technologies
Bridge Technologies creates advanced solutions for protecting service quality in the digital media and telecommunications industries. The company’s award-winning monitoring/analysis systems, intelligent switchers and virtual environments help deliver over 20,000 channels to more than 900 million subscribers in 94 countries. From head-end satellite ingress to microanalytics in the home network, Bridge Technologies offers patented innovation and true end-to-end transparency. A privately held company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Bridge Technologies has worldwide sales and marketing operations through a global business partner network.
Benefits and complexities of adopting a ‘continuous improvement’ mindset in a market that thrives on big announcements
Evolution or revolution?
Change and progress can be found in two particular forms. The first of these is revolutionary. We’ve seen a few examples of this in the world of technology over the decades (and centuries); the lightbulb, the combustion engine, the microchip, the internet, the smartphone. Whilst they inevitably build on the science and progress of those that have gone before, they tend to represent something entirely new – a leap forward that is not just profound in what is achieved, but in the paradigm shift it resultantly brings about.
And then on the other hand, you have incremental change. Incremental change will generally follow from revolutionary change, and gradually push the boundaries of what can be achieved with it. One easy example is the car – we’ve been refining the combustion engine for decades, and only very recently thought to fundamentally re-approach how personal transport might work. The other clear example is the microchip: microchip evolution has really been a process of ongoing refinement and improvement over the years – the fundamental concept has remained the same – and it’s only now we’re starting to reach the physical limits of that refinement. In the meantime though, the result of that refinement process has been a modern-day product that is a million miles from where it once started, even though it’s really not that different at all (how many of our readers were actually around to see the days when a computer filled a room?).
The thing is, we tend to view revolutionary change as the more ‘meaningful’ form of change, with incremental change languishing behind in terms of how beneficial and significant it is perceived to be. And this impacts the way technology is marketed to a massive degree. Look at the world of smartphones – there have been only a few big leaps in what they can do and how they do it; ultimately, the changes have been very much incremental. Despite this though, each brand launches something brand-new and shiny every year, as if the product is an entirely revolutionary contribution to the market. It’s an approach that plays on our desire for novelty, excitement and ‘revolution’.
But the truth is, a journey of a thousand miles is made up of a million steps. And it doesn’t always need to be undertaken with dramatic fanfare.
The Bridge Technologies Philosophy of Continuous Improvement
It’s this philosophy we hold at Bridge Technologies. Take for example the VB330 (which covers wider broadcast network monitoring) and the VB440 (which operates centrally in the field of production) still maintain the same product names from when we launched them in 2012 and 2017 respectively.
But are they the same product as they were seventeen years ago? Not even close! Their capacity, performance, usability and functionality are all dramatically improved.
Sure, we add on new version numbers every so often – just to keep track. But what we absolutely avoid is repackaging tiny changes in a brand new box and making grand product announcements. We just don’t think it helps anybody – we don’t want to squeeze artificial purchases out of the market on the basis of smoke and mirrors, we want to ensure that we are constantly delivering the best product and service to our clients on an ongoing basis – which is embedded in our commitment to provide ongoing version upgrades to our existing client base. We’re not against revolutionary change – when it’s real. But in the meantime, we focus our daily efforts on continuous improvement of what we have (because what we have is actually just about as revolutionary now as it was all those years ago).
The progress our increments have brought
Some of our ‘incremental’ improvements are tangible enough for us to make a little bit of a fuss about – it’s not like we’re entirely against announcing our efforts to the press and industry (you only need to look at our awards cabinet to know that we occasionally like to show-off our new developments). It’s just that we don’t repackage them in a whole new product every year or so, just so we have something ‘exciting’ to show.
These include some of our more recent developments, such as a revolutionary approach to HDR monitoring that can be undertaken even through a browser with only SDR output. Or alternatively, advanced audio monitoring capabilities which allow for browser-based stereo downmix monitoring of 7.1 audio formats, along with a remarkable range of data visualisation. Then there’s the constant extension to format capabilities that we add on a regular basis; JPEG XS analysis, closed caption and packet analysis. Not to mention our constant mission to expand capacity – with the VB330 having seen a ten-fold increase in the number of channels it can now handle.
And finally of course, there’s the way we’ve developed our code to stretch and harmonise across embedded, appliance and software-based solutions – providing maximum flexibility to our customers and the particular context of their operations.
These are all things we can ‘announce’ without the need to launch yet a new product. Other improvements though are ones you couldn’t even put a name to – but which have a fundamental impact on stability and user experience. Our remarkable development team invests their efforts on these elements on a day-by-day basis.
How to market the unremarkably remarkable?
But this all leads us to the question that we kicked off with: How do you make a big deal of not very much (even though actually, that ‘not very much’ is really pretty significant…). For a market that is geared around bombastic messaging, competitive statements of grandeur, and a philosophy of newer, bigger, better – how do you communicate to a market that your product is growing, evolving and improving incrementally, month-by-month, in ways that are imperceptible and not worthy of announcement on their own, but which put together speak to a product that delivers market-leading quality, and will continue to stay at the forefront of technology by virtue of its incremental improvement approach?
It’s a tricky one. We understand the temptation of other companies to repackage, relaunch – to give the impression of ‘revolution’ even when not much has changed. In essence, to make a fanfare out of not very much. It’s a good way of staying front-and-centre in the attentions of your audience.
But we’ve decided that we’ll let the outcomes of our incremental improvement approach speak for themselves. Our existing clients know – and hopefully our future clients will come to know – that when they purchase a Bridge Technologies product, they are purchasing something that leads in the market by virtue of the fact that it is built on a revolutionary understanding of monitoring, and has since been tweaked to absolutely maximise the potential, stability and usability of the technology. A product both expanded and refined to a point that gets ever-closer to perfect.
Creativity Is A Beacon That Drives Us All Forward
As we look back across the year that has just passed, one thing that strikes is the way that creativity has shone throughout, and continues to be a beacon that drives us all forward. It’s nothing new to find that challenging times often sit at the heart of inspiring new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things – after all, necessity is the mother of invention. And yet, even with this knowledge, it still brings joy to us to see our industry peers, clients, friends – and indeed society as a whole bringing ever greater levels of creativity to the things that they do and the ways that they adapt.
So at Xpresso, we will spend the end of this year being thankful for the creative mindset that has led our approach to communications since right back when we started, in 2012. And our New Year’s resolution will be to maintain and develop yet further our inquisitive, multi-disciplinary mindset – always pushing forwards to look beyond the practical core of our clients’ businesses, and into the creative possibilities that surround and envelope them.
And of course, we’ll continue to use creativity to carve out meaningful spaces online where we can share, connect and innovate together. Though of course, our fingers are always crossed for the possibility of us doing that again in person too…
So once again, from all at Xpresso: we wish you a very Merry Christmas, and a prosperous and rewarding New Year!
As we look back across the year that has just passed, one thing that strikes is the way that creativity has shone throughout, and continues to be a beacon that drives us all forward. It’s nothing new to find that challenging times often sit at the heart of inspiring new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things – after all, necessity is the mother of invention. And yet, even with this knowledge, it still brings joy to us to see our industry peers, clients, friends – and indeed society as a whole bringing ever greater levels of creativity to the things that they do and the ways that they adapt.