IPTV Technology Evolution Benefits the Broadcast Sector with Improved Video Engagement and Cost Reduction

Digital Journal recently published an article about how IPTV technology radically improved the broadcast sector’s ability to harness the power of video technologies to access more content in a dynamic manner and enable more interactive applications. IPTV provides access to a vast array of content over the internet—and easily delivers external feeds coming to the news center via satellite by converting traffic to an internet protocol (IP) stream. Excerpts from the Digital Journal article based on the interview with Mark D’Addio, Senior Vice President of Sales at VITEC, below:

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/ … efficiencies-across-the-broadcast-sector#ixzz7mipIsBQI

IPTV Evolution in the Broadcast Market

VITEC’s first customer for IPTV was a broadcaster located in Rockefeller Center in 2008. Since then, IPTV has been deployed in every major news organization—from CNN and Reuters to Fox News, NBC, and NBC Sports. Many of the larger broadcasters utilize IPTV in multiple facilities and link them together.

The story is different for stations serving smaller markets. Many, if not most, in this category have not yet made the transition. For these news organizations, the largest hurdle is their internal enterprise network. It is difficult to deploy IPTV effectively when organizations lack a strong IT infrastructure.

The situation, however, is beginning to change. Organizations across industries—including broadcasting—are making investments in technology to address the challenges–and opportunities–of our increasingly digital economy. As they modernize their systems by adopting cloud services and embracing new collaborative platforms, they are making infrastructure upgrades. In so doing, video traffic is a workload for which they are planning.

In fact, VITEC research has shown that video traffic is the fastest growing category of content flowing through enterprise networks today. Broadcasters have consequently concluded that RF networks are no longer feasible–or necessary–abandoning RF in favor of IPTV over enterprise networks.

Indeed, once broadcasters invest in enterprise network upgrades to support other corporate priorities, adding IPTV is a simple and relatively inexpensive add-on. Moreover, IPTV scales incredibly well. It can manage small stations with five video streams delivered to 20 viewers as efficiently as it can manage thousands of streams to thousands of viewers.

When IPTV technology is paired with the latest compression algorithms, broadcasters can experience very high-quality video streams without overwhelming network resources. This is especially true when Multicast-to-the-Edge™ technology–a solution developed by VITEC–is applied. It removes the need for a dedicated network to support video applications.

It is a technology that has received critical acclaim. This year at NAB, VITEC received an Engineering Emmy Award because of the solution’s ability to manage IPTV streams in a technically effective, cost-efficient manner.