AVoIP, Industry Buzzwords and Market Hype – Cutting Through the Cr*p to Focus on What’s Important.

 

Don’t you just love industry buzzwords. AV over IP. Networked AV.  Networked Video. IPTV on the LAN. Even HDMI over Ethernet. All pretty much the same thing expressed in different ways.

Every vendor tries to coin ‘their’ phrase – a slightly different take on a current technology trend or ‘buzz-term’ that’s riding high in the industry. It’s easy to be taken in by the hype, publicity and industry noise with this stuff, but whatever anyone wants to call it, distributing AV signals over an IT network is where things have been going for a long time, whether you like it or not. So sorting out the ‘FUD’ (fear, uncertainty, doubt) factor, or even worse that FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling, is crucial so you can then focus on what’s actually important in all this hyperbole. So maybe this will perhaps simplify things..

 

This is Nothing New

Many of the challenges faced in today’s AV world – not only by AV integrators but also IT managers – have been seen in the past many times with similar technologies, in particular, VoIP. Distribution of real-time voice over the IT network was as much a challenge then as distributing video over the IT network is now. And having been involved – for better or for worse – with both technologies from their outset (having deployed AVoIP systems for many years now, and VoIP for….well let’s just say decades) I can safely say that the IT network is more than capable of handling real-time, on demand traffic – even high-bandwidth traffic – problem free, if properly designed.

 

So…What’s Important?

Well, it’s getting the basics right

Like most things you design and build, first you need to get the foundations right. The infrastructure needs to be robust and dependable. And with an AVoIP system that’s no different. The AVoIP’s infrastructure is of course the IT network. Regardless of what application is using the AVoIP solution, whether IPTV on the LAN, meeting room video conference systems, or simply digital signage,  the devices you use, and what carries the signals across the system, needs to reliable. Whether it’s a video compressed solution or not, whether it’s a 1GB or 10Gb network, or whether it’s a one switch system or a network of interlinked switches deployed across a campus, the requirement for a solid network is a pre-requisite.

Which is good news. Because Ethernet networks have been around for, well, nearly half a century now as a best guess, and they’re not going anywhere soon, so I think we can safely say they’ve stood the test of time.

 The AVoIP devices are, of course, just network devices. Designed to work on an IP network. So, they adhere (or at least the ones from reputable manufacturers should) to the requirements of the IP network, just the same as any other network device. Because remember, we’re talking about standards here. Ethernet and IP. Something that’s a bit more alien to the traditional the AV industry manufacturers, who still peddle proprietary matrix switch systems and push isolated technologies such as HDBaseT.

Having network-compliant AV devices means they then can be managed, accessed and controlled via the network making the network administrator’s life much easier. Even if it’s a separate network built specifically for AV, the mechanisms used and conditions required remain the same. Multicast technology and IGMP for distributing video and audio streams optimally, or things like telnet or JSON or AJAX or HTTP or SSH for communication, or SNMP for monitoring, or AES encryption of the video streams, all this is needed for adherence of the company’s network and security policies.

 

Are features important?

So what do you need your AV system to do? Distribute video and audio signals around the place? Well yes, that for one. What about USB communications? Or IR? Or RS232? Well, leveraging the inherent capability of the IP network, you can use multicast to send anything, anywhere…and everywhere. It doesn’t matter from which source to which display, whatever the signal is, IP doesn’t really care what the content is – the AVoIP devices such as IPTV Headends turn those signals into IP packets and the network switches take care of the rest, shipping those packets across to it’s destination(s) regardless. No physically, special or different cabling, or connectors or routing or anything else – same device, same infrastructure.

This is all part-and-parcel of a fully equipped AV over IP system. Again, it’s just utilizing the IP network’s ability to send any type of data or image type, anywhere. If your AVoIP is missing even one of these features, then you’re being short-changed.

 

What about Latency?

Well….what about it? How important is it to your AV application? Is true, real-time AV transmission with almost no discernible difference (at least to the naked eye) between source and display important to the application?

If we take the medical industry as an example, or command-and-control center applications, latency is (or the lack of it) is of major importance. There are AV over IP systems are able to offer this capability using solutions that are able to ship the video, audio, USB and whatever else you need in an uncompressed format across with minimum (almost zero) latency – regardless of video resolution.

Less delay-sensitive applications such as meeting room solutions or perhaps IPTV distribution could get away with a lightly compressed technology such as JPEG2000. Even less sensitive to latency applications such as digital signage can use heavier compressed technologies which use less bandwidth like H.264. Bottom line is, whatever your AV application needs, there is an AVoIP solution to satisfy it.

 

 At a basic level, all networks work the same way to distribute AV

Of course there are many other considerations to take into account when designing in an AVoIP system, but getting the basics right first is a critical factor in achieving a successful and problem free installation.

There will be some variations in how different networks are implemented and operate – some installations will have a 10Gb network to service an uncompressed video solution, others a 1Gb to cater for their compressed video option. Some AVoIP systems may be installed on a dedicated switch or network, others may be sharing the core customer network. Fundamentally however how the network functions in terms of distributing video from one end to the other remains pretty much the same, as it’s, as we said, standards based.

So the dependability of the network is a major consideration, and contrary what to many AVoIP vendors might be telling you (in that that networks are complex and intricate things and need specialist intervention to set up and run – so you can be more dependent on them) they are, in comparison to proprietary matrix switches, easy to configure, with only a few parameters required.

And that’s an important distinction. It’s about configuration with AVoIP – not complex programming like proprietary systems.

Get the basics right and there’s no reason why you cannot have a robust, dependable and functional, long term AV system that works over IP.