In our last newsletter, OmniBus CTO Ian Fletcher talked about the accelerating movement toward software-based transmission solutions designed for IT hardware. OmniBus iTX is leading the charge in this transition, among both traditional and new media broadcasters. Since the introduction of iTX at NAB in April 2006, several of our competitors have announced new products that promise IT-based transmission in various forms. Frankly, we’re glad for the competition. It validates the inherent benefits of IT as a less costly and more manageable platform for broadcast transmission, and allows OmniBus to demonstrate the unmatched features, scalability and redundancy of iTX in comparison to these other products.

Among the many transmission applications that iTX supports, one of the most compelling is disaster recovery or "business continuity planning" (BCP). A few of the reasons for this are obvious, including:

	Significantly lower cost of operation as compared to conventional transmission systems.
	Inherent capabilities of an IT-based system to operate within a corporate, wide-area network for content replication and remote control.

While these benefits could be applied to most transmission solutions based on IT hardware, it’s the unique capabilities of iTX that set it apart from other IT transmission products for BCP. These include features that are especially important for BCP, yet can only be provided by an all software transmission system like OmniBus iTX:

	Multiple Content File Formats – iTX supports a growing list of compressed content file formats, including the "native" formats used by video servers from GVG, Omneon, Pinnacle and SeaChange. This means that with iTX, your BCP transmission system can use the same files used by your Primary site video servers without the need for re-ingest or transcode.
	Automatic Evergreen Insertion – To reduce costs, BCP operations often use some "evergreen" program content to reduce the volume of current program content that must be replicated to the Backup site each day. iTX facilitates this process by providing a software plug-in to manage the automatic insertion of evergreen programs into your Backup site transmissions schedules.

Perhaps you're not clear on what we mean by an "all-software" transmission system? Aren’t all transmission automation products, even conventional ones, based on software?

Certainly, but here’s the difference: Conventional transmission automation systems use IT servers and software for the schedule automation function, but rely on specialized broadcast hardware like video servers, mixers, and logo inserters to process the actual video/audio signal. Conversely, some of the new iTX competitors are based largely or entirely on IT hardware, but use specialized video/graphics cards within an IT server to process the video/audio signal.

In both cases, video/audio processing such as content file decoding, transition effects and graphic overlays is provided by specialized hardware, not by the transmission product’s software. As a result, the transmission system can only provide the video/audio processing features that are available from the broadcast hardware or video/graphics card. These "hardware/software hybrid" products have no ability to expand their video/audio processing features by enhancing the product software.

For BCP, this inability to support new requirements with enhanced software means that additional or replacement hardware is needed instead. This increases cost and complicates the workflow required to maintain and operate the Backup site. Faced with this increased cost, broadcasters will often compromise the capabilities of their Backup site to stay within budget. For broadcast operations of all sizes, iTX is changing the rules for business continuity planning by providing an option for backup operation that is both cost-effective and full-featured.

John Wadle, VP for Technology