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Feature: Page (1) of 2 - 04/15/05

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Honey, I Shrank the TV Station!

Miniaturization in broadcasting is no small thing

By Charlie White

As broadcast technology becomes more advanced, devices in broadcast facilities have become smaller by many orders of magnitude. This is important for broadcasters because smaller means lighter, and smaller equipment uses less power. From TV cameras to switchers to editing equipment and all the way through to the transmitter, miniaturization has taken hold in broadcasting in a big way. In this special report, hear from some of the experts who are driving this evolution from large to small, and find out about the technology thats enabling the shrinking broadcast facility.

The process of making broadcast equipment smaller and more efficient has been going on since its inception. Who are the players in this miniaturization movement? According to Mirandas vice president of product development, Michel Proulx, ?Whos doing miniaturization? Everybody. Anybody whos doing electronic hardware design in the broadcast industry has to be doing miniaturization. 

Chief Technology Officer Ray Baldock

Smaller equipment means higher efficiency. According to Thomson Grass Valleys Chief Technology Officer Ray Baldock, these efficiencies can be beneficial for productions that are both on the road and in the studio. ?If you look at mobile production, which is where a lot of our products are used, smaller means lighter, and smaller generally means less power. When you put something on the road, youre talking about a lot of cost to carry that product around, Baldock told Digital Media Net. These advantages hold true in the studio environment as well. ?Real estate is cost as well. What we used to see in terms of huge rack rooms is now packaged in a couple of rows of racks. Ive seen facilities that probably had 15 to 20 rows of racks to house equipment 15-20 years ago, down to packages now that do the same thing that can be installed in a row of five or six individual racks. These efficiencies allow significant increases in equipment density and space utilization. As a result, there are now facilities that are set up in office buildings, something that never would have been practical in the past.

Whats making all this possible? By far the biggest advance in miniaturization is the FPGA, or field programmable gate array, which can combine numerous functions on one tiny electronic chip. These chips offer the speed of a hardware device, and the flexibility and upgradeability of software. Miniaturization and increased efficiency are both served by these remarkable devices. ?Its FPGAs that have done it, said Miranda VP Michel Proulx. Because the broadcast business is not particularly high-volume, manufacturers can take advantage of the economies of scale when designing custom chips, or ASICs. Thats where FPGAs and there customizable characteristics have been an influence on miniaturization of broadcast equipment. Added Proulx, ?FPGAs essentially allow us to do a lot in the small footprint of one chip, and the benefit is we do what other people are doing with ASICs but with low-volume, and its completely transformed our design process, and its completely transformed our products.

The benefits of smaller equipment can be seen across the television plant. A dramatic example is the way broadcast control rooms can now accommodate significantly more equipment than they could in years past. According to Thomson Grass Valleys CTO Ray Baldock, ?Multichannel facilities now are being built for 200 to 300 channels in the space that a single television station occupied in the 60s. And networks such as CBS are able to shrink their transmission facilities so much that they can utilize the extra space for other purposes. Frank Governale, Vice President, News Technology & Broadcast Operations at CBS told Digital Media Net that his companys remodeling efforts will be giving them lots of extra space. Said Governale, ?Now the good thing is that some of this equipment is smaller, or allows for areas that require a lot of space to use much less room. We have an entire record room right now thats got to be 65 feet long by about 25 feet wide. Thats going to become something one-quarter of that size when were done with this. This space-saving advantage is particularly important for mobile units. Jerry Gepner, president of National Mobile Television (NMT), a company which provides broadcast trucks for Monday Night Football and other high-profile sports and special programming, is thankful for the miniaturization thats prevalent in the industry today. ?The space you save, you can put in more toys. You can put in bigger routers, you can put in more monitors, you can put in a bigger audio desk that sort of thing. And you can get it all in one box, Gepner told Digital Media Net.