Why go IP with our playout operations?


The pioneering, completely-virtual and IP environment is designed to accelerate time to market while reducing operational complexity and costs. Built around a 24/7 network operations center capability, our linear IP playout supports all international transmission formats, platforms and compliance requirements.
As a complete end-to-end, fully managed service, we ensure your content playout complies with the most demanding service level agreements, with process driven flexibility over signal aggregation, routing and transmission validation.
Our linear playout services are enhanced further through the management of complex graphics, subtitling and live programming, all overseen by our 24/7 Network Operations Centre.
most advanced private broadcast cloud, our fully virtualized linear playout environment, we help you to create the deepest levels of customization to service any platform requirement, ensuring you can meet all technical, legal and brand requirements while optimizing costs and enabling unlimited scale.
Playout automation touches every area of a broadcast television or video service distribution facility and the time is drawing near when it will run on virtual machines in a datacenter or in a public cloud over IP networks.
Yet just because we might be able to build broadcast publishing systems using virtually hosted applications, interconnected via IP networks, why would we want to?
Broadly speaking because software-centric broadcast playout can take advantage of the cloud as a flexible and cost-effective operating environment.
But what does that mean? Let's unpick ten business reasons for looking at software-based playout as your next investment.

  1. Simplified workflow. The pressure on current approaches to playout is driven by increasing demand for non-linear consumption and further complicated by the need to target multi-screens. Content creators need a simplified and unified workflow for creating and publishing content irrespective of its distribution method or target device.
  2. React to OTT. Playout in the cloud promises to lower the cost of channel creation and to extend channel brands into new markets at a time when established players need to react quickly to OTT.
  3. Rapid channel deployment. The potential to innovate enabled by a software-defined broadcast environment means channels can be deployed rapidly and changed dynamically in real time. We are talking of the ability to spin up a channel in hours, not months.
  4. Disaster-resistant. With built-in replication, the cloud is disaster-resistant and provides straightforward collaboration across multiple sites.
  5. Scale at will. Private data centers offer broadcasters capital equipment and real estate cost savings plus the ability to scale operations instantly – up or down – as they launch new ventures or respond to short term demand spikes with pop-up channels (such as around major sporting events).
  6. Rent, don't buy. They might do this using a a pay-as-you-go model. Otherwise known as Software as a Service (SaaS), its chief benefit is the ability to scale. With processing, storage and networking infrastructure as pooled resources serving hundreds, perhaps millions, of customers rather than using dedicated independent infrastructures, this model delivers economies-of-scale by reducing overall costs with every additional user. Network automation at scale reduces capital investment and reduces operating costs in staffing and distribution contracts.
  7. Overcome geographic boundaries. Virtualization takes the geographic dependencies that have previously limited playout, out of the equation. No longer reliant on cost-prohibitive satellite bandwidth, regionalization, localization and even hyper-localization of channel content can be achieved. Channels can be created on the fly, virtually at any location in the world.
  8. Alter content on-demand. Instead of storing assets in large proprietary data centers and tape archives, a cloud-based approach enables broadcasters to alter content on demand and reformat it for VOD and OTT multiscreen delivery.
  9. Create cohesive workflows. Current versioning workflows can involve multiple organizations, located in different parts of the world, for example, providing compliance and language versioning services. A software-defined network located in the cloud unites versioning as well as ad sales, scheduling, automation, traffic and video servers into a single managed workflow with browser-based access.
  10. Innovate, fast. As the components of a playout chain become software objects, the ability to interact and integrate with other related software and services increases, enabling innovation and quicker iteration of ideas.

More than just an IP-based replacement for SDI, full IP solution is a bi-directional transmission, not only enabling you to share video and audio over IP, but also to send and receive multiple input and output signals between devices on your network.
Full IP playout solution is scalable, easy to manage and cost-effective. It is a complete solution that includes Ingest, Media Asset Management (MAM), Transcoding, Quality Control, Playout, Graphics, Ettore ETX-M IP Multiview and Closed Caption capabilities. With, you can build an IP facility that does not require any SDI hardware and is less expensive than a traditional solution. has supported Newtek technology since 2014 when its IT-based channel-in-a-box system, ETX was integrated with NDI support.

Ready for Virtual Machines (VM)
IP technology allows you to use virtual machines. Only the ETX-M IP Multiview requires SDI cards. You can have a virtual environment to manage your MAM, ingest, transcoding and playout with cost savings in hardware and maintenance costs.

Performance and Flexibility
■ Latency compression for SD, HD and 4K video, audio and metadata
■ Encode, transmit and receive multiple streams of video and audio in real-time
■ Manages multiple high-quality and ultra-low latency video streams simultaneously
■ Low bandwidth consumption and CPU impact
■ Point-to-point IP connection with failover and automatic re-connection
■ Video data compression with the NDI codec which delivers 1080 full HD video at VBR data rates around 100mBit/seconds
■ Full resolution, full frame-rate video suitable for limited bandwidth wireless, remote and large-scale networks
■ Redundant with the use of standard IP adapters
■ Easy migration without hardware requirements
■ Requires only standard Gigabit cables, freedom from dependency on distribution amps, video matrix routers

Future-Ready Solution
■ Easy to expand and completely scalable without a change in the system
■ Open to the future, it is capable of managing SD/HD/4K signals
■ Ready for Virtual Machines and Cloud
■ Compatible with existing SDI and IP-based technologies, independent of changing specifications and formats
■ Supports integration with ASPEN, SMPTE 2110 and other emerging standards