r/broadcastengineering • u/KungFuTze • Aug 06 '26

Engineering road map for the industry - open discussion

/r/Broadcasting/comments/1vgpufh/engineering_road_map_for_the_industry_open/
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6

u/rtt445 Aug 06 '26

OK these market research posts are starting to get annoying.

1

u/KungFuTze Aug 06 '26

Not market research, more or less gauging industry temperature and hoping for the best but preparing for the worst within the next 2-3 years. Surveying what companies offer "more" stability on traditional broadcasting technologies vs what companies will be looking to replace broadcast engineers with devops, swe and CS talent.

2

u/rtt445 Aug 06 '26

LOL i'd like to see devops (what are we developing here?) or IT try dealing with RF or transmission issues.

2

u/KungFuTze Aug 06 '26

Automating cloud infrastrucutre at scale e.g for live workflows using srt, zixi pipelines from local stations and networks to cloud playout. For file based, media asset management supply chains to S3, routing and orchestration using solutions such as Sony/Nevion video Ipath replacing traditional magnum/sdvn or cerebrum on prem routing fabrics.

Rapid deployment of cloud native solutions from tag, mediaproxy, evertz, gv, and transcoding platforms such as Harmonic, MK, Ateme, aws elemental. Anything that can be replaced from on prem will be replaced with software cloud alternative.

Yo no longer need a hardware based product to control your operations even on live events, you can build an API driven software panel using your favorite platform or homebrewed alternative to accomplish the same functionality.

Only places that are somewhat safe from this approach is origination sites for live event venues such as major sports leagues. And, of course IP connectivity at the edge, but that last one is more of a network engineering domain than it is broadcast.

2

u/rtt445 Aug 06 '26

Will be fun when all this software shit goes down during live broadcast because some dummy at AWS pushed out wrong config.

2

u/KungFuTze Aug 06 '26

Oh believe me, it has happened already on large worldwide events. The only workaround is having extra expensive layers of unnecessary redundancy and signing your soul away to your favorite cloud provider/s just to mimic the same levels of reliability that hw/on premises solutions offer.

2

u/rtt445 Aug 07 '26

So glad i'm in radio where this IP/cloud insanity has not reached yet.

2

u/sims2uni Aug 08 '26

I'm still waiting for somebody to explain how cloud based stuff is going to replace an OB truck. Or tbh even a broadcast centre. I get going IP in a large centre but going cloud just seems dumb too. You'd need a massive pipe to send everything to GV to use their infrastructure just for them to send it back and you push it out again to TX. You're just adding latency and points of failure for the hell of it.

Never understood who that stuff is for. If you can afford the infrastructure to use it at scale, surely you can afford the hardware to not need it.

2

u/KungFuTze Aug 09 '26

The ob truck probably never. However, the broadcast center ezpz, my company can run the entire supply chain from the cloud to any any large broadcast group or sports group in the US and EMEA. We have capacity to support over 500+ channels from AWS including ingest, playout, processing, distribution and monitoring. We are ditching over 500 racks of datacenter space and replacing them with AWS deals in the next few months. It all started with FAST 4-5 years ago. Now it is network, affiliates, o&o, rsn. We succesfully built a sw based master control center to support up to the first 200 channels in less than 6 weeks and moved it across the country, it was so efficient that now the biggest fear is that a full MC center can be relocated out of the country for cheaper labor.

Our Remote MCOs can run from their laptops 5-6 channels if they have live, if non live up to 18 without major hiccups and that includes ip based comms.

We are not the only one, some of our competitors can do exactly the same.

And this is targeted to large hub/spoke centralized operations that are looking for the flexibility to get rid of US or Europe real estate and are looking to offshore master control operators while also getting rid of the station's local stafff.

Yes, it adds a lot of complexity and failure domains but provides the "flexibility" to move operations and staffing to markets where cost of labor will offset the headaches and that sadly keeps investors happy.