Our October Chapter Meeting will be on Wednesday, 10/24
at WSTM/WTVH/WSTQ, 1030 James St., Syracuse
6:00pm Dinner
6:30pm Business Meeting
7:00pm Presentation
RSVP to Tom McNicholl by 5pm on 9/24
Presentation by Greg Martin, Account Manager Broadcast & Media, Rohde & Schwarz
The Internet is an unmanaged network and suffers from packet loss. But packet loss is a problem when streaming live content. This is particularly a problem, when distributing live streams across long distances – from one country to another country, or continent.
When using UDP for content distribution, packet loss immediately results in visual artefacts, drop outs or even interruptions of several seconds – simply because UDP is unreliable.
In contrast, TCP is a reliable protocol. It is therefore used as basis for HTTP and all protocols for Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming. But when using TCP, packet loss immediately results reduced bandwidths and thereby reduced saturation of your link – simply due to the inherent design of TCP. And this becomes worse when using TCP on long-distance links.
When streaming to end users’ client devices, adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) helps to overcome this problem by switching to a stream with lower bitrate. But this does not help, if you want to originally distribute or contribute your content using the original bitrate providing the highest quality.
RelayCaster™ servers employ a proprietary protocol – called RelayCaster Streaming Protocol (RCSP™) – to overcome these problems. This protocol is fully Internet compliant and works with all existing IP network infrastructure. Using RCSP™ as streaming protocol between two RelayCaster™ servers allows for the optimized transmission of live IP streams to remote company sites, data centers, or networks. Streams received on one side are transparently provided again on the other side. In between an arbitrary Internet link is used.
Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming, adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), and RelayCaster™ work together nicely: In each data center, streams received by RelayCaster™ are forwarded to OTT streaming servers providing streams to end users’ devices that are ‘nearby’ (in terms of Internet distance). To this end, RelayCaster™ helps ‘pushing’ streams close to end users.
This approach can be scaled. You can create your own Content Delivery Network (CDN) of RelayCaster™ servers: Live IP streams from a central data center are re-distributed to various intermediate and terminating data centers that are spread around the world.
About Greg Martin
Greg has worked in the commercial video and broadcast industry since the early 1990’s. His earliest position was with Sony Broadcast and Professional Products as a Senior Service Engineer and Sales Support Engineer.
Following Sony, he joined Tektronix as an Account Manager covering their Video and Audio test products portfolio including baseband, MPEG, and RF solutions. Studio test solutions and MPEG analysis were highlights during this portion of his career.
Currently, Greg is employed with Rohde & Schwarz USA. He’s had multiple roles over the last decade. Initially brought aboard as a member of their Video Sales force covering the Upper Midwest, focusing on RF test and measurement for broadcast accounts in the terrestrial, CATV, and Satellite markets. In mid 2016 he was transitioned to the Broadcast and Media division as an additional resource focused on sales of television transmitters, due to the FCC Spectrum Repack initiative.
2019 SBE22 Expo
The Chapter 22 Expo will return in 2019. Save the date, Wednesday, September 25th at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool, which will be Wyndham by that time. Renovations of the hotel will begin shortly and will be completed by April.
To make the Expo a success, We need your help.
Please volunteer a few hours a month – click here