Broadcast Video

The conversion to digital television broadcasting is creating new business opportunities for broadcast equipment manufacturers, as well as broadcasters and broadband service providers. As these industries make the transition to HD, LOGIC’s video products help engineers maximize opportunities and minimize development costs & risk.

High Definition without High Overhead

Television service providers use video delivery equipment in cable, terrestrial, and satellite plants, and within electronic news gathering vans. Video delivery equipment includes modulators/demodulators, encoders/decoders, encryptors/decryptors, transport stream multiplexer/de-multiplexers, video editors, network routers, test equipment, and video servers. Modulation schemes vary based on delivery mechanism and geography. Figure 1 shows an example of the digital television delivery chain. In video delivery, encoding schemes compress video. Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) compression techniques are commonly chosen worldwide. Service providers use encryption and decryption algorithms to ensure that programming can only be accessed by subscribers.

Figure 1. Video Memory Delivery Chain

In the digital video delivery environment, data is mainly transported as a single-program transport stream (SPTS) or a multi-program transport stream (MPTS) at 270 Mbps using the asynchronous serial interface (ASI), defined by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Consortium. If the video program requires modification (for example, to insert local programming), the video serial digital interface (SDI) will be used to transport data. SDI is defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) digital video formats. SD video is transmitted at SDI rates of 270, 360, or 540 Mbps. The 270 Mbps transmission rate is the most common data rate for SD. HD video is transmitted at the SDI rate of 1.485 Gbps. Equipment may support SD, HD, or both video formats. Figure 2 highlights the equipment used in a typical video delivery setting.

Figure 2. Video Memory HD Broadcast Chain

Video Production Studio

Video production equipment is used in television stations, cable, terrestrial and satellite plants, within electronic news gathering vans, and in film and advertisement production environments. Production equipment includes video switchers, routers, and servers, professional video cameras and monitors, videotape recorders (VTRs) and disk recorders (VDRs), editors, and compression equipment.

Figure 3. Video Memory Production Chain

Within the production environment, video and audio data are primarily transported using the video serial digital interface (SDI), which is defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). This equipment can support standard definition (SD) digital video formats, high definition (HD) digital video formats, or both. SD video is transmitted at SDI rates of 270, 360, or 540 Mbps; HD video is transmitted at the SDI rate of 1.485 Gbps. With its superior visual quality, HD video represents the future of digital video broadcasting. As a result, there is an increasing need for hardware that can handle the larger data throughput required when transmitting HD video. Figure 1 highlights the equipment used in a typical video production setting.

Broadcast Video solutions include:
- SD/HD video cameras
- Video switchers
- Logo insertion
- IPTV