Red Bee Media Prepares for All-IP Future with Rohde & Schwarz PRISMON Multiviewer

Red Bee is the trusted delivery partner to some of the world’s strongest broadcasters and media brands, providing a complete delivery outsourcing service for broadcast playout and online streaming. From its broadcast facilities in London and Salford, Red Bee provides playout and disaster recovery facilities for more than one hundred channels in a variety of management and monitoring configurations.

To ensure that each operator can monitor the right signals, Red Bee requires a readily reconfigured multiviewer system, which led it to choose PRISMON from Rohde & Schwarz. PRISMON is a software-defined multiviewer running on COTS hardware, and capable of handling signal formats up to 4k Ultra HD, both for displays and for individual streams within mosaics.

Red Bee selected the SDM (Scalable Distributed Multiviewer) and the MCC (Multiviewer Control Centre) options. SDM, unique to Rohde & Schwarz, enables any input to any output, and allows PRISMON to share resources across a network, for instance to create a view with multiple Ultra HD signals, beyond the decoding capacity of a single system. MCC provides a single point of control for a network of multiviewers. This gives instant reconfiguration of multiple displays, either in response to the intuitive user interface or on command from a system-level automation system.

“Multiviewers are mission critical to our playout centres,” said Robert Luggar, Head of Broadcast Media Solutions and Platforms at Red Bee. “We need to monitor around 450 streams, so we need scale and flexibility. Today those streams are SDI, but Rohde & Schwarz demonstrated that the PRISMON configuration could handle that, but more important could easily be switched to IP in the future.”

Andreas Loges, Vice President Media Technologies at Rohde & Schwarz, commented “We competed fiercely for this contract against a number of other vendors. We won because we could deliver a drop-in solution, a direct replacement for the life-expired multiviewer, and because our software-defined approach is inherently a hybrid platform, supporting SDI and IP signals, in both SMPTE ST 2022-6 and ST 2110.

“Broadcasters around the world are facing the same challenge,” Loges added. “Existing multiviewers are reaching the ends of their lives and were built solely around SDI. Because of this hybrid capability, and the power of SDM, PRISMON is well positioned for many more large-scale playout centres.”

The contract was awarded in December 2020 and, despite the challenges of social distancing and staff protection, it was installed, commissioned and put into use in May 2021.

Rohde & Schwarz
Rohde & Schwarz is a leading supplier of solutions in the fields of test and measurement, broadcast and media, aerospace | defense | security and networks and cybersecurity. The technology group's innovative communications, information and security products help industry and government customers ensure a safer and connected world. On June 30, 2019, Rohde & Schwarz had 12,100 employees. The independent group achieved a net revenue of EUR 2.14 billion in the 2018/2019 fiscal year (July to June). The company is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and has subsidiaries in more than 70 countries, with regional hubs in Asia and America.
 
 

Rohde & Schwarz Broadcast & Media
Rohde & Schwarz has been an innovator in broadcast and media for over 70 years. The Rohde & Schwarz product portfolio covers the entire signal processing chain for digital video and audio content – from ingest and playout to encoding and multiplexing, from contribution to satellite and IP networks to terrestrial transmission. It includes solutions for monitoring in the studio, as well as for monitoring streaming and broadcast services and entire broadcast networks. The T&M expert also offers a diverse range of instruments for testing end user equipment and infrastructure components in development, production, and quality assurance. Rohde & Schwarz invests in an IP and software-based future built with the blend of innovation, experience, and stability that the company can offer.
 

About Red Bee Media
Red Bee Media is a leading global media services company headquartered in London, with 2300 media experts in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and North America. Every day, millions of people across the globe discover, enjoy and engage with content prepared, managed, broadcast and streamed through Red Bee’s services. The company empowers some of the world’s strongest media brands, broadcasters and content owners to instantly connect with audiences anywhere at any time. Through an end-to-end, managed services offering, Red Bee provides innovative solutions across the entire content delivery chain – covering Live & Remote production, Managed OTT, Distribution, Media Management, Access Services, Content Discovery, Playout and Post-Production.  Red Bee – Wowing audiences. By creating what’s next.