What Adoption of SMPTE ST 2110 Means for the Broadcasting Industry

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE®) recently finalized the SMPTE ST 2110 Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks standards suite, which streamlines the transition to video over internet protocol (IP).

A major contributing factor in the movement toward one common IP-based mechanism for the professional media industries, this standards suite is all about interoperability.

SMPTE President Matthew Goldman, Senior Vice president of Technology, TV and Media at Ericsson, says, “The formal standardization of the SMPTE ST 2110 documents enables a broad range of media technology suppliers to move forward with manufacturing to meet the industry’s high demand for interoperable equipment based on the new suite of standards.”

Manufacturers now have the guidelines for creating products that seamlessly interconnect uncompressed video, audio and other important metadata between devices that support every conceivable video processing function.

“The industry is coalescing because you need a rock-solid foundation for how next-generation facilities and studios will be built,” explains Chuck Meyer, CTO, Production, at Grass Valley, an IP solutions provider based in Quebec, Canada. “A key to that is interoperability since this is the only way the industry can develop and grow at scale.”

Adoption Benefits

The adoption of SMPTE ST 2110 is critical in ensuring the interoperability that customers need to transition smoothly from traditional serial digital interface (SDI) to IP. With IP technology, broadcasters benefit from lower costs associated with producing and delivering the high-quality content audiences demand.

Some of the changes that SMPTE ST 2110 will bring about for broadcasters include:

Common Timing: IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol allows devices to be driven by a common master clock at accuracies of better than 1 microsecond, providing complete video and audio synchronization across an entire facility.
Simplified Infrastructure: Say good bye to individual cable connections for each signal path. Using high-speed Ethernet, a single connection can support multiple uncompressed HD video along with hundreds of uncompressed audio signals.
Reduced Bandwidths: SMPTE ST 2110-20 signal with 1080p video occupies less than 2.67 Gbps, freeing up about 300 Mbps of bandwidth, almost enough capacity to carry one hundred audio signals. By sending only image pixels, the new standard moves to a system of only sending elementary signals, and removing the need for audio and metadata embedding and de-embedding.
Improved Versatility: SMPTE ST 2110 includes a robust mechanism for defining a wide range of video formats, including multiple bit depths, multiple colorimetry schemes, any conceivable frame rate, and other associated parameters. Separating the transport format from the video format gives broadcasters the ability to choose exactly the right format they need at each step along the broadcast chain, and still be able to transport every version over a common infrastructure.

Free Webinar: What is SMPTE ST 2110 & Why Does It Matter?

Learn everything you need to know to help your company make the most of this valuable standards suite. Register today for IEEE’s free webinar, taking place at 1:00 p.m. EST, Tuesday, June 5, 2018.

You can also pre-order the Understanding SMPTE ST 2110 course program now.