David Ross, chairman and owner of Ross Video, gave an alternative opinion in the LinkedIN professional community about IP, the hottest trend in the media industry in recent and future years. David denies the popular belief that IP is a must-have for any and every project, cites strong arguments and reminds manufacturers of their responsibility to customers.
project pic
“I AM BY NO MEANS AN ‘ANTI-IP’ AGENT, BUT I AM AGAINST SOME MANUFACTURERS AND SUPPLIERS WHO EASILY PLAY WITH THE TRUTH WHEN SELLING GOODS.”
David Ross, CEO of Ross Video:
“Is IP (SMPTE-2110) really suitable for every project? Before anyone says that I am somehow opposed to IP, remember that a huge number of my products already support 2110, that I bought Coveloz two years ago and hired about thirty video and audio IP engineers, and that I have spent millions and millions of dollars developing IP products. In addition, we pay AIMS membership fees, are part of the IP “community” and attend all key meetings in this regard.
After all of the above. The other day I visited a client who has five bank branches equipped with SDI HD systems, and he is planning to equip a sixth. They have a large Evertz EQX router and a lot of space. And I was the FIRST vendor or system integrator to offer to build a sixth SDI-based hardware room identical to the first five.
The “experts” recommended that the client NEED IP for the sixth hardware room and insisted that ALL live streaming products that did not have native 2110 support should be REJECTED in future tenders.
Why?
1. The number of tenderers is immediately reduced.
2. The cost and complexity of the project increase dramatically.
3. A lot of unnecessary SDI-IP “glue”
4. ASB number 6 will be sharply and unexpectedly different from ASBs 1-5
We, the manufacturers, are responsible to our customers. We don’t just sell the most expensive equipment we can.
I am in no way an “anti-IP” agent, but I am opposed to some manufacturers and suppliers who easily play with the truth when selling goods.
You might argue that an SDI router is much more expensive than an IP router. This is true of large matrices. For smaller systems, SDI is much more advantageous. For example, the Ross Ultrix FR5 offers native support for 144×144 UHD video, 3000×3000 audio with disambiguation, audio processing and re-embedding, with clean, quiet AV switching on every output, frame sync on every input, and 100 fully synchronized pipelines in five rek-units less than a foot deep. This level of integration is not possible in IP today, because “stupid” routers without any concept of video cannot perform video processing by definition. All of this is true for SDI equipment in general today.
If you want to build for the future and can afford it financially in the present, then IP is a great solution. But for small- and medium-sized systems, there is no need to create the illusion of building cheaper systems today. We don’t tell our customers that UHD is cheaper than HD, so why do we say that IP is suitable for “systems of any scale”? You need to provide the customer with all the facts so that they can make their own choice.”
A discussion on David’s post sparked 91 comments and is still ongoing. Someone called his opinion “bold,” to which David replied:
“How did we, as an industry, get to the point where it’s considered brave to say that some customers are more likely to use a technology other than IP? And this is despite the fact that 90% of equipment is purchased in SDI. There is a naked king wandering around somewhere. ”
What do you think?
Translated by Natalia Karpova, marketing manager at VisionHOUSE
