Racing ahead in Broadcast: why the future needs to be flexible

For those that follow Formula One, it’s been an interesting year. Indeed, even for those that don’t, there have been some interesting lessons to take from it.

Formula One cars have long been held as the pinnacle of engineering - powerful drivetrains precision aerodynamics: a masterpiece of fixed purpose, designed to perform exceptionally… but only within a narrow set of constraints and conditions.

This year, those constraints have seen significant changes. Electric/combustion power split requirements and new aerodynamic rules have resulted in a fundamental change to the way the cars behave – yo-yo overtaking, a greater risk of accidents and slower lap times have all caused frustration for both audiences and drivers.

The central issue is lack of flexibility. A Formula One car is built for one track, one set of regulations, one definition of perfection. And it makes for an adrenaline-packed sport. But change the conditions, and suddenly it’s an entirely different story.

A rallying cry for the industry

Of course, broadcast engineers could have told F1 teams this some time ago. There has been increasing recognition that in the world of IP production, ‘track conditions’ are in constant flux. Dedicated hardware – performing one function in one set of specific conditions – doesn’t have the adaptability and flexibility needed to change as conditions change. Too many productions find themselves ‘in the pit’ or piled up in a bottleneck. And that’s a particular problem when you’re trying to deliver a live sports production (F1, perhaps?).

That’s where the concept of software-defined, FPGA accelerated tools emerges. In essence, these are the rally cars of the broadcast world, built to adapt and configure in a way that gets serious amounts of power down when and where it’s needed most. Where an F1 car would stall to a halt, software-defined FPGA accelerated approaches power right on through, delivering deterministic outcomes (in essence, a guarantee of crossing the finish line) regardless of the demands placed on it.

Adapt and overcome

To drop the racing metaphor for a moment: broadcast infrastructure today faces a similar tension between fixed-purpose hardware and the need for adaptability. And it’s exactly this that companies like arkona are seeking to address: encouraging broadcasters to move away from static systems where each function - routing, conversion, audio processing, synchronisation - requires its own dedicated box, toward platforms where those functions can be instantiated on demand.

Their flagship product, the BLADE//runner, is built on FPGA technology, and combines the flexibility of software with the deterministic performance that live production demands. The underlying AT300 blades are not locked to a single function, but instead can be reconfigured to handle gatewaying, frame synchronisation, colour correction, JPEG-XS compression, advanced audio processing or even video mixing - all within the same chassis, all controlled through software. And because the underlying structure is inherently and linearly scalable, freely routable and non-blocking, that means that unlike a dedicated hardware box, that immense power can be directed at operations of all sizes, delivering parallel operations for broadcasters from Tier One down to a single production truck.

Power in precision control

Of course, the return to the (somewhat laboured) racing metaphor again: it’s not just about the way you get power down through the drivetrain, handling matters just as much. With software-defined architectures – where the user is free to do a remarkable number of things with the raw power at their fingertips - it’s important that they are able to do so quickly, easily and intuitively.

This usability will be the battle ground on which races are won in the future, and it’s where arkona’s focus will lie during the upcoming NAB show. They’ve already persuaded the market of their approach – and seen competitors join them as a result. Now, their focus  moves to leading the way in delivering that power intuitively and flexibly. They’ve done this by creating seamless workflows and functionalities which can be accessed through existing third-party control systems, dropped into custom workflows through the use of APIs, or accessed directly through their newly developed BLADE//planner – a visualisation interface which enables offline configuration of entire systems, abstracting complexity for operators and allowing them to work with the system at whatever level of granularity best suits their needs.

The finish line

Ultimately, for broadcasters (and perhaps F1 engineers too), the lesson is clear: invest in flexibility, not perfection. Rigid, single-purpose systems become limiting as standards evolve and production demands shift. A software-defined, FPGA-accelerated foundation allows capacity to scale linearly, new codecs and formats to be deployed without hardware replacement, and operational efficiency to improve through automation. The platforms that will remain relevant are those designed to adapt - not those built for yesterday’s track conditions.

Rainer Sturm, CEO arkona technologies GmbH