Video Delivery
Television service providers use video delivery equipment in cable, terrestrial, satellite plants, studios, and within electronic news gathering vans. Video delivery equipment includes modulators/demodulators, encoders/decoders, encryptors/decryptors, transport stream multiplexer/demultiplexers, video editors, network routers, test equipment, and video servers.
Figure 1 shows a very high level digital broadcast infrastructure based on today’s set up for delivering 480p, 720p, and 1080i. The main blocks include a studio where content is created and edited, head-ends where content is aggregated, encoded, and modulated for delivery to consumers in their homes.
Figure 1. Broadcast Infrastructure
Studios typically have the ability to receive live programming locally or globally through satellite receivers on the ingress side. Studios have storage and servers to store the programming content and serve as demand arises. Studios also are equipped with workstations and routers to edit and route the program content as seen in Figure 2. The audio/video backbone, which connects the different equipment within the studio, is typically serial digital interface (SDI). SDI is defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) digital video formats. SD video is transmitted at SDI rates of 270, 360, or 540 Mbps. The 270 Mbps transmission rate is the most common data rate for SD. HD video is transmitted at the SDI rate of 1.485 Gbps. Recently, a new SMPTE standard was ratified to support a 2.97-Gbps data rate to enable higher resolutions such as 1080p (full HD). Studio equipment may support SD, HD, and full HD (or all three). Once the program content is ready to be delivered to consumers, the head-end encodes the content to reduce the bandwidth required and recover from errors during transmission. The content is then modulated to match the medium used such as cable, satellite, or terrestrial.
Figure 2. Head-End Architecture
Altera Programmable Solutions for Video Delivery Equipment
The feature-rich architectures of the Stratix® III and Stratix II GX device families provide an excellent solution for developing digital video production and delivery equipment. The Stratix III architecture includes high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) blocks, up to 16 Mbits of embedded TriMatrix memory, up to 340K equivalent logic elements (LEs), and flexible I/O standards. The Stratix II GX and ArriaTM GX device families have up to 20 full-duplex transceiver channels that can support HD SDI rates of 1.485 Gbps and 3G-SDI rates of 2.97 Gbps.
Along with the full spectrum of FPGAs, Altera also offers various system solutions that you can use in video delivery and production. Together with our partners, Altera offers high-quality, off-the-shelf designs that eliminate the need to create industry-standard or best-in-quality functions from scratch. Easy-to-use HD quality solutions free up your valuable resources from standard tasks while letting you focus on your value-add competencies and get your broadcast designs out the door faster and at lower cost.
Video Delivery End Market Applications
Reference Designs
|
 |
|
Literature
> 
