With their new Harris Broadcast HD/SD Interconnection/I-Light IP multicast network, Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations (IPBS) have taken a quantum leap in their ability to share HDTV and radio shows with each other in real-time.
Together, IPBS stations—including WTIU-TV/FM Bloomington, WFYI-TV/FM Indianapolis, WIPB-TV/WBST-FM Muncie, WNIN-TV/FM Evansville, WFWA-TV/WBOI-FM Fort Wayne, and WNIT-TV/WVPE-FM South Bend/Elkhart, and Lakeshore Public TV and FM, Merrillville—serve nearly the entire state of Indiana.
Prior to the July/August 2013 installation of the high-bandwidth IP video wide area network (WAN)—comprised of Harris Broadcast Selenio, Intraplex, and Magellan systems—IPBS stations used an FTP server to upload and download programs in non-real-time. They also Fed-Ex’d IPBS shows to the PBS satellite service in Nebraska, which blasted them back to the Indiana stations. Live shows needed to be uplinked to Nebraska, and then sent back to Indiana. Due to the expense and technical challenges, live content had been very limited.
“All of that’s changing for the better,” said Roger Rhodes, Executive Director of Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “With this Harris Broadcast solution, our creative storytelling and real-time HD contribution capabilities have vastly expanded because it’s no longer an impossibly expensive, cumbersome proposition.”
While each IPBS station is independently owned and operated, they share live governmental, public affairs programming of interest to Indiana viewers such as: the Indiana State of the State address, State of the Judiciary address, the State of Higher Education address, Supreme Court oral arguments, and political candidate debates. Weekly programs and specials also emanate from IPBS stations for use throughout the state.
An exclusive IPBS offering that stands to benefit is The Indiana Channel—a program stream produced by IPBS members for statewide IPBS distribution—which showcases the state’s tourism, arts, heritage, history, public affairs, and other Indiana-centric subjects.
Additionally, by using Intraplex IP audio codecs, IPBS NPR stations can share broadcast-quality audio streams with each other—including news reports and features, and live programming from the statehouse and station locations—to expand the statewide radio news network. The Magellan Network Management System ensures that high-quality video and audio is always flowing smoothly and efficiently over the IPBS WAN—a critical requirement for live broadcasting.