My position on this is not very nuanced. I block ads simply because I can. I read free content simply because I can. I don't expect it nor do I feel entitled to it, but it's there so I read it. If it wasn't there I wouldn't read it and probably would go back to having a life outside of the internet. I definitely don't like being tracked (it's creepy ok?) and so will do anything to thwart attempts to do so, regardless of the detriment this may cause to some business models.
No business model has a god-given right to be sucessful. States may grant certain business models monopoly rights, but that doesn't always stop them from being gazumped by new disruptive technologies. We live in a time of change. The best business models are ones that "just work" because they provide a clear and well-understood benefit to all parties involved, making them attractive to both business and customers. Tracking is sneaky and erodes trust. Ads are annoying and and the precedent set by radio, TV and print says that media consumers cannot be forced to pay attention to them. Now media consumers are using computing devices on which to receive media, the avoidance of ads can be automated. Telling people not to block ads because it's the "wrong thing to do" sounds like the honor system to me. A nice idea but not a strong basis for a business model.
It's probably not appropriate for me to comment on SMPTE's paper approval process in this instance. I wasn't ever really told what the minimum standard for a paper was, but I did get it proofread by a number of my peers well before submitting it. Obviously I needed someone with a bit more expertise outside of outside broadcast engineering to look over it. All I will say is that your logic is sound.
Shortly after I submitted my last response I realised what you were getting at. Yes, there's more to a 100GbE switch than just the laser modules. I think the logic there was that I was starting my analyisis from a "cost per port" point of view. When I saw the price of the 100GbE laser modules I assumed (probably fatally) they were the bulk of the cost of the switch, and that the other parts were insignifigant from a cost perspective. I don't think the overall conclusion was wrong (timescale perhaps out by a few years), but yes, there are errors in my working it out. Looking back, and with the benefit of your criticisim, it would have been better to write it as an opinion article rather than as a research paper.
So - my opinion on another of your earlier comments - The nature of the outside broadcast business is fast turnaround, and that requires that many technical aspects be "plug and play". Another of the reasons I tend to favour Audio Video Bridging is that it presents itself as a "plug and play" approach to QoS, VLAN and other networking aspects. The promoters of the standard(s) specifically mention that very little networking knowledge is required to deploy an AVB-enabled network. I'm not aware of the particulars, but the 802.1ak standard hopefully should allow for things like multicast trees, spanning tree, VLANs, etc to be automated to a large degree by being established on an "as needed" basis. Indeed, a packet/frame-switched system is pretty-much useless to us outside broadcasters unless these things can be automated. Also, topologically speaking, a single outside broadcast facility resembles a single LAN. I would not expect anyone working at an OB to need or have knowledge of routing protocols at all. While we require expensive, high-bandwidth equipment, I don't see the need to make the network more complicated than it needs to be.
I do find the idea of a uni research program interesting. I will be attending the SMPTE meeting at CSIRO where I'm sure we'll discuss this further.
My main motivation for writing this paper (or article or whatever it is) is that I was fully aware that most people were thinking along the lines of circuit-switched TV production moving in a packet (and frame)-switched direction - the problem was that there was very little written about it, and what it would mean for the industry. Perhaps this sort of commentary isn't appropriate for SMPTE - it's certainly up for debate. But I wanted to write about it, and having written it, I submitted it to SMPTE on the off-chance they'd be interested. I felt that they wouldn't be interested for exactly the reasons you mention. Turns out, they were.
Yes, there's no new scientific or engineering knowledge in the paper. But I wanted to start the conversation. Multicamera production is a specific niche of the broadcast industry that packet-switiching technology hasn't yet penetrated. I did a lot of searching of trade publications and saw very little discussion of what this transition would mean and challenges it would pose. I don't personally have a lot of research resources at my disposal other than Google - and that was good enough to obtain the back-of-the-envelope figures you see in the paper. At least I cited my sources to allow them to be criticised. And I want criticisim such as yours. In an absence of publicly-available of information about the future of where the industry is going, I felt my paper would fill a gap. Judging by many of the comments here on Slashdot, despite it's failings it has succeeded in informing a wider audience about the issues that this transition will face.
I do take issue with your argument that laser transceivers are not interchangable with video routers. The entire point of the paper is that Ethernet switches will replace video routers (and other anciallary TV equipment such as CCUs). We will plug our cameras and vision mixers into Ethernet switches and will not need video routers. So a comparison of their relative costs is entirely appropriate - it's a direct replacement of one technology with another. Ethernet equipment follows a steep price curve because it is a commodity product. Broadcast TV equipment is not a commodity product and is not subject to nearly as steep a price curve - meaning that in 2015 Ethernet equipment will be much cheaper than today but TV equipment will not be. Yes the predicted figures are rubbery - I don't have access to proper price modelling and market research - that stuff isn't available for free. But I wanted to crunch the numbers in a way that would more show the relative orders of magnitude in play and general trends. I think the comparisons are good enough to get people thinking serously now about developing live-production systems that connect directly to Ethernet, eliminating baseband transmission entirely. Can you go out and buy such a system today? No. So it's not a solved problem.
I would be absolutely delighted if someone read my paper, recognised it's failings and decided they could do much better. I'd like the quality of discussion to be much higher. I want to see more written about this and there to be fierce debate. Debate is already beginning about acceptable levels of latency in a live-switched production facility. Despite your assertion that these discussions are a waste of time, I assure you there are those in the industry with differing opinions as to what constitutes an acceptable level of latency. Perhaps this is where more scientific research is needed - and I would like to do some trials on this at my workplace. Also - is resource reservation really going to work? Elsewhere in the comments on this page there are those with doubts about this. Is Audio Video Bridging the right technology, is it really needed, or are more standard QoS measures sufficient? Cisco and Xilinx are addressing these issues but they are being trialled in distribution and contribution environments - point-to-multipoint or point-to-point situations. What about the
100Gbit Ethernet would be very handy in plugging 30 cameras into a vision mixer. Or into a multiviewer. Or into a processing box (aspect ratio conversion, standards conversion, color correction, etc), or for recording into a video server. Inside a production facility there are 100's of uncompressed video signals flying about. Building these facilites where every signal needs it's own cable is expensive and time-consuming. It'd be much nicer to have 2 connectors instead of, like, 80 to plug into a device.
My bad, that one slipped through. I thought I had corrected it in a later draft - but I was basically conflating Ethernet and TCP for an IT-knowledge-challenged audience and I had a word limitiation. Oops.
I thank you for your criticism. I had hoped I'd get more comments like yours - so far yours is the only one, but that in no way diminishes it's relevance. Yes, the jury is out on the resource reservation issue - that's the most concerning part to me. I don't think in any way we should jump into packet-switched live production without doing extensive trials and tests. The reliability afforded by circuit-switching should not be given up unless the successor technology can give the same reliability (or 99.9% of the same reliabilty or whatever the market dictates).
However, I do think that Audio Video Bridging looks promising - standardised QoS management at layer 2 gives the concept the best possible chance of working. AVB's first application is for automotive and public-address sound systems. The audio production industry has been using proprietary Ethernet-based audio transport systems for years. AVB is an effort to replace these proprietary systems with open standards. But the point is, they obviously do work - I haven't read any accounts of how packet-switching is generally failing as an audio distribution medium.
That said, AVB is nowhere near ready for broadcast television - current AVB switches are only 1GB-per-port. My article was written in part to point out the economics of using Ethernet-based systems vs. Circuit-switched systems. The economics of packet-switched facilities will push development of more reliable systems. TV broadcasters face tightening budgets, so there is a big impetus to make this work. There was similar criticism of station automation. Fully-manned control rooms are always going to be more reliable than a mostly-automated station. Still, TV stations perservered with the teething problems (and there were many), and now most playout control rooms in most TV stations are run by one person (or none).
Author here. The numbers of CFP modules accounts in the article accounts for both ends of the links required.:) In my first draft I forgot that, but added corrected it in the version online. The numbers still favour Ethernet as being cheaper by 2015. I did point out that to account for bias I over-estimated the Ethernet costs and under-estimated the tradtional TV equipments costs. Even with these biases in place, Ethernet still works out cheaper by 2015.
Coordinating signals implies delaying them, inside the facility where the show is being produced. You're right - latency doesn't matter for the audience as they only see one point of view and are largely passive in their consumption. At the place where the show is produced, the director is interacting with the event in real-time. Gamers hate lag, and so do TV directors. In a TV control room, directors get very pissed off when the video doesn't cut at the *very instant* they press the button.
Blackmagic stuff is nice and cheap, but you wouldn't use it in a proper studio.:) So go up an order of magnitude in cost when dealing with reliable equipment.
Hi, Author here, I'll answer the question.:)
Yes, you are technically correct that buffering all the incoming signals with produce an output where all the sources are in sync. A couple of problems with this:
As you're probably aware, codecs used in the broadcast industry are patent-encumbered. And has been mentioned, in a typical TV studio there are 100's of video sources and 100's of video destinations. A codec on each and every one of these would be expensive, to say the least, and a nightmare in trying to ensure full compatibility and consistency (not all implementations of codecs are equal). With uncompressed this is not an issue at all.
The other issue is that adding latency to each and every signal every time it enters and leaves a piece of equipment creates a plethora of timing planes within the one facility. Another headache I don't want, which we don't have with uncompressed.
Also, live-produced television is produced in real-time (believe it or not). So the director is interacting live with the content he/she is switching - talking to commentators, reacting to events as they happen, etc. You're aware that gamers hate lag? It's exactly the same with directing live television - it's interactive, and lag/latency is the antithesis of interactivity. Lag is not a problem with the present, circuit-switched, uncompressed methods.
Yes. My article is talking about live-produced content. And as Ethernet bandwidth is increasing faster than video links (in the broadcast industry), I think Ethernet will easily have enough capacity if and when we start doing outside broadcasts in 4K.
A typical vision mixer unit (VMU) seen in a studio or outside broadcast truck can have up to 80 x 1080i inputs, and at least 40 outputs. Newer VMUs have more than this.
100Ge would be used at the core of a production facility. All the outlying signals, such as cameras, would converge on this core. The camera feeds could then be picked off for processing and returned to the core, post-processing, then sent, in bulk (100Ge link), to a switcher / real-time-video-effects-unit (vision mixer) where the director chooses the signal to send "to air".
Author here. In true Slashdot tradition, your comments are informed by lack of RTFA.:)
In TFA, you'll note that Ethernet Link bandwidth has increased an a much faster rate than the bandwidth required by an uncompressed television signal. By the time 4k becomes common in a live-switched environment (e.g. at a football outside broadcast), we may well have Terabit Ethernet available. Ethernet, of course, is completely agnostic as to the types of data streams is distributes. Older Ethernet technology is not made automatically redunant when a newer, higher-bandwidth TV stream is introduced, it just can carry less of them.
Broadcasters invest at the minimum level required to fulfill their technical licence requirements. In Australia there is still a lot of SD content being produced despite HD channels having been on-air for 10 years. It will be at least another 10 years before anything in Australia is produced and broadcast in 4k. I think the situation will be similar elsewhere. In the meantime, Ethernet will likely have increased it's link capacity 100-fold. In any case, my article is talking about Ethernet to *produce* the content, not to distribute or broadcast it.
Correction: After bailing out of the LLTV (Lunar Lander Training Vehicle), he went back to work later the same day - no doubt to start on the mountain of paperwork the incident would have generated.
So, you're suggesting that Firefox would have been wiser to install a rootkit to force it to be the default browser? "Take back the web" as a campaign to open up the browser "market" was their only option. Prior to Firefox, the only mainstream browser choice was Internet Explorer. Do you think a campaign slogan of "There is one other browser - Firefox" would have been better?
In the browser market, a set of standard technologies is a very good thing indeed. Having some browsers implement one thing and others implement other things is what breaks the web.
For it's shortcomings, the thing that keeps me coming back to Firefox is Adblock Plus. I have a chronic allergy to ads, and Adblock Plus does the best job of getting rid of them. I appreciate that Firefox is written is such a modular way that Adblock Plus is possible - that Addons are allowed to filter the page content right before it gets displayed. I think it's important that the user be allowed to filter page layout and content as he or she sees fit. It's good that Mozilla puts it's users' interests right up there or even ahead of the interests of media companies.
Slashdot Mirror
No business model has a god-given right to be sucessful. States may grant certain business models monopoly rights, but that doesn't always stop them from being gazumped by new disruptive technologies. We live in a time of change. The best business models are ones that "just work" because they provide a clear and well-understood benefit to all parties involved, making them attractive to both business and customers. Tracking is sneaky and erodes trust. Ads are annoying and and the precedent set by radio, TV and print says that media consumers cannot be forced to pay attention to them. Now media consumers are using computing devices on which to receive media, the avoidance of ads can be automated. Telling people not to block ads because it's the "wrong thing to do" sounds like the honor system to me. A nice idea but not a strong basis for a business model.
It's probably not appropriate for me to comment on SMPTE's paper approval process in this instance. I wasn't ever really told what the minimum standard for a paper was, but I did get it proofread by a number of my peers well before submitting it. Obviously I needed someone with a bit more expertise outside of outside broadcast engineering to look over it. All I will say is that your logic is sound.
Shortly after I submitted my last response I realised what you were getting at. Yes, there's more to a 100GbE switch than just the laser modules. I think the logic there was that I was starting my analyisis from a "cost per port" point of view. When I saw the price of the 100GbE laser modules I assumed (probably fatally) they were the bulk of the cost of the switch, and that the other parts were insignifigant from a cost perspective. I don't think the overall conclusion was wrong (timescale perhaps out by a few years), but yes, there are errors in my working it out. Looking back, and with the benefit of your criticisim, it would have been better to write it as an opinion article rather than as a research paper.
So - my opinion on another of your earlier comments - The nature of the outside broadcast business is fast turnaround, and that requires that many technical aspects be "plug and play". Another of the reasons I tend to favour Audio Video Bridging is that it presents itself as a "plug and play" approach to QoS, VLAN and other networking aspects. The promoters of the standard(s) specifically mention that very little networking knowledge is required to deploy an AVB-enabled network. I'm not aware of the particulars, but the 802.1ak standard hopefully should allow for things like multicast trees, spanning tree, VLANs, etc to be automated to a large degree by being established on an "as needed" basis. Indeed, a packet/frame-switched system is pretty-much useless to us outside broadcasters unless these things can be automated. Also, topologically speaking, a single outside broadcast facility resembles a single LAN. I would not expect anyone working at an OB to need or have knowledge of routing protocols at all. While we require expensive, high-bandwidth equipment, I don't see the need to make the network more complicated than it needs to be.
I do find the idea of a uni research program interesting. I will be attending the SMPTE meeting at CSIRO where I'm sure we'll discuss this further.
Cheers,
Dan
My main motivation for writing this paper (or article or whatever it is) is that I was fully aware that most people were thinking along the lines of circuit-switched TV production moving in a packet (and frame)-switched direction - the problem was that there was very little written about it, and what it would mean for the industry. Perhaps this sort of commentary isn't appropriate for SMPTE - it's certainly up for debate. But I wanted to write about it, and having written it, I submitted it to SMPTE on the off-chance they'd be interested. I felt that they wouldn't be interested for exactly the reasons you mention. Turns out, they were.
Yes, there's no new scientific or engineering knowledge in the paper. But I wanted to start the conversation. Multicamera production is a specific niche of the broadcast industry that packet-switiching technology hasn't yet penetrated. I did a lot of searching of trade publications and saw very little discussion of what this transition would mean and challenges it would pose. I don't personally have a lot of research resources at my disposal other than Google - and that was good enough to obtain the back-of-the-envelope figures you see in the paper. At least I cited my sources to allow them to be criticised. And I want criticisim such as yours. In an absence of publicly-available of information about the future of where the industry is going, I felt my paper would fill a gap. Judging by many of the comments here on Slashdot, despite it's failings it has succeeded in informing a wider audience about the issues that this transition will face.
I do take issue with your argument that laser transceivers are not interchangable with video routers. The entire point of the paper is that Ethernet switches will replace video routers (and other anciallary TV equipment such as CCUs). We will plug our cameras and vision mixers into Ethernet switches and will not need video routers. So a comparison of their relative costs is entirely appropriate - it's a direct replacement of one technology with another. Ethernet equipment follows a steep price curve because it is a commodity product. Broadcast TV equipment is not a commodity product and is not subject to nearly as steep a price curve - meaning that in 2015 Ethernet equipment will be much cheaper than today but TV equipment will not be. Yes the predicted figures are rubbery - I don't have access to proper price modelling and market research - that stuff isn't available for free. But I wanted to crunch the numbers in a way that would more show the relative orders of magnitude in play and general trends. I think the comparisons are good enough to get people thinking serously now about developing live-production systems that connect directly to Ethernet, eliminating baseband transmission entirely. Can you go out and buy such a system today? No. So it's not a solved problem.
I would be absolutely delighted if someone read my paper, recognised it's failings and decided they could do much better. I'd like the quality of discussion to be much higher. I want to see more written about this and there to be fierce debate. Debate is already beginning about acceptable levels of latency in a live-switched production facility. Despite your assertion that these discussions are a waste of time, I assure you there are those in the industry with differing opinions as to what constitutes an acceptable level of latency. Perhaps this is where more scientific research is needed - and I would like to do some trials on this at my workplace. Also - is resource reservation really going to work? Elsewhere in the comments on this page there are those with doubts about this. Is Audio Video Bridging the right technology, is it really needed, or are more standard QoS measures sufficient? Cisco and Xilinx are addressing these issues but they are being trialled in distribution and contribution environments - point-to-multipoint or point-to-point situations. What about the
Oh that's nitpicking. :) 1080i is interlaced so it has 60 fields. Typo, if you like.
100Gbit Ethernet would be very handy in plugging 30 cameras into a vision mixer. Or into a multiviewer. Or into a processing box (aspect ratio conversion, standards conversion, color correction, etc), or for recording into a video server. Inside a production facility there are 100's of uncompressed video signals flying about. Building these facilites where every signal needs it's own cable is expensive and time-consuming. It'd be much nicer to have 2 connectors instead of, like, 80 to plug into a device.
By CS I mean I'm trying to get TV-industry people to think more abstractly about CS-like concepts... like abstraction. :)
My bad, that one slipped through. I thought I had corrected it in a later draft - but I was basically conflating Ethernet and TCP for an IT-knowledge-challenged audience and I had a word limitiation. Oops.
We do too - lots of signal converters all over the place. But I wouldn't use a Blackmagic as the facilitiy's main router.
I thank you for your criticism. I had hoped I'd get more comments like yours - so far yours is the only one, but that in no way diminishes it's relevance. Yes, the jury is out on the resource reservation issue - that's the most concerning part to me. I don't think in any way we should jump into packet-switched live production without doing extensive trials and tests. The reliability afforded by circuit-switching should not be given up unless the successor technology can give the same reliability (or 99.9% of the same reliabilty or whatever the market dictates).
However, I do think that Audio Video Bridging looks promising - standardised QoS management at layer 2 gives the concept the best possible chance of working. AVB's first application is for automotive and public-address sound systems. The audio production industry has been using proprietary Ethernet-based audio transport systems for years. AVB is an effort to replace these proprietary systems with open standards. But the point is, they obviously do work - I haven't read any accounts of how packet-switching is generally failing as an audio distribution medium.
That said, AVB is nowhere near ready for broadcast television - current AVB switches are only 1GB-per-port. My article was written in part to point out the economics of using Ethernet-based systems vs. Circuit-switched systems. The economics of packet-switched facilities will push development of more reliable systems. TV broadcasters face tightening budgets, so there is a big impetus to make this work. There was similar criticism of station automation. Fully-manned control rooms are always going to be more reliable than a mostly-automated station. Still, TV stations perservered with the teething problems (and there were many), and now most playout control rooms in most TV stations are run by one person (or none).
Author here. The numbers of CFP modules accounts in the article accounts for both ends of the links required. :) In my first draft I forgot that, but added corrected it in the version online. The numbers still favour Ethernet as being cheaper by 2015. I did point out that to account for bias I over-estimated the Ethernet costs and under-estimated the tradtional TV equipments costs. Even with these biases in place, Ethernet still works out cheaper by 2015.
By the time we see 4k in outside broadcasting, we will have Terabit or even 10 Terabit Ethernet.
I'll keep that in mind when submitting my next paper to Slashdot. :)
Coordinating signals implies delaying them, inside the facility where the show is being produced. You're right - latency doesn't matter for the audience as they only see one point of view and are largely passive in their consumption. At the place where the show is produced, the director is interacting with the event in real-time. Gamers hate lag, and so do TV directors. In a TV control room, directors get very pissed off when the video doesn't cut at the *very instant* they press the button.
Blackmagic stuff is nice and cheap, but you wouldn't use it in a proper studio. :) So go up an order of magnitude in cost when dealing with reliable equipment.
Hi, Author here, I'll answer the question. :)
Yes, you are technically correct that buffering all the incoming signals with produce an output where all the sources are in sync. A couple of problems with this:
As you're probably aware, codecs used in the broadcast industry are patent-encumbered. And has been mentioned, in a typical TV studio there are 100's of video sources and 100's of video destinations. A codec on each and every one of these would be expensive, to say the least, and a nightmare in trying to ensure full compatibility and consistency (not all implementations of codecs are equal). With uncompressed this is not an issue at all.
The other issue is that adding latency to each and every signal every time it enters and leaves a piece of equipment creates a plethora of timing planes within the one facility. Another headache I don't want, which we don't have with uncompressed.
Also, live-produced television is produced in real-time (believe it or not). So the director is interacting live with the content he/she is switching - talking to commentators, reacting to events as they happen, etc. You're aware that gamers hate lag? It's exactly the same with directing live television - it's interactive, and lag/latency is the antithesis of interactivity. Lag is not a problem with the present, circuit-switched, uncompressed methods.
Yes. My article is talking about live-produced content. And as Ethernet bandwidth is increasing faster than video links (in the broadcast industry), I think Ethernet will easily have enough capacity if and when we start doing outside broadcasts in 4K.
A typical vision mixer unit (VMU) seen in a studio or outside broadcast truck can have up to 80 x 1080i inputs, and at least 40 outputs. Newer VMUs have more than this.
100Ge would be used at the core of a production facility. All the outlying signals, such as cameras, would converge on this core. The camera feeds could then be picked off for processing and returned to the core, post-processing, then sent, in bulk (100Ge link), to a switcher / real-time-video-effects-unit (vision mixer) where the director chooses the signal to send "to air".
Author here. In true Slashdot tradition, your comments are informed by lack of RTFA. :)
In TFA, you'll note that Ethernet Link bandwidth has increased an a much faster rate than the bandwidth required by an uncompressed television signal. By the time 4k becomes common in a live-switched environment (e.g. at a football outside broadcast), we may well have Terabit Ethernet available. Ethernet, of course, is completely agnostic as to the types of data streams is distributes. Older Ethernet technology is not made automatically redunant when a newer, higher-bandwidth TV stream is introduced, it just can carry less of them.
Broadcasters invest at the minimum level required to fulfill their technical licence requirements. In Australia there is still a lot of SD content being produced despite HD channels having been on-air for 10 years. It will be at least another 10 years before anything in Australia is produced and broadcast in 4k. I think the situation will be similar elsewhere. In the meantime, Ethernet will likely have increased it's link capacity 100-fold. In any case, my article is talking about Ethernet to *produce* the content, not to distribute or broadcast it.
Yep! It's me! :)
Correction: After bailing out of the LLTV (Lunar Lander Training Vehicle), he went back to work later the same day - no doubt to start on the mountain of paperwork the incident would have generated.
So there is a grain of truth to the so-called "Bad Guy Marksmanship myth"?
So, you're suggesting that Firefox would have been wiser to install a rootkit to force it to be the default browser? "Take back the web" as a campaign to open up the browser "market" was their only option. Prior to Firefox, the only mainstream browser choice was Internet Explorer. Do you think a campaign slogan of "There is one other browser - Firefox" would have been better? In the browser market, a set of standard technologies is a very good thing indeed. Having some browsers implement one thing and others implement other things is what breaks the web.
For it's shortcomings, the thing that keeps me coming back to Firefox is Adblock Plus. I have a chronic allergy to ads, and Adblock Plus does the best job of getting rid of them. I appreciate that Firefox is written is such a modular way that Adblock Plus is possible - that Addons are allowed to filter the page content right before it gets displayed. I think it's important that the user be allowed to filter page layout and content as he or she sees fit. It's good that Mozilla puts it's users' interests right up there or even ahead of the interests of media companies.
And what if my distro happens to be a trojan?