Pebble: What does interoperability mean to you?

Posted on Apr 2, 2023 by FEED Staff

Sponsored editorial

Looking for ways to diversify your hybrid cloud playout and facilitate IP transition? Meet Pebble, your expert partner for helping you take control of your connectivity

Interoperability is ‘the ability of different systems, devices or applications to connect and communicate in a coordinated way, without effort from the end user’¹.

The more your systems enable any devices and applications to seamlessly interact with each other, the greater your claim can be to provide a totally interoperable solution.

It’s important to understand that the term differs from a basic concept of applications being interconnected, instead deriving from the idea they are communicating meaningfully and intelligently, exchanging information independently between applications and/or devices.

The standard approach

Pebble is a pioneering voice in an industry-wide regulatory debate. It participates in the NMOS Steering Committee and chairs the NMOS Modelling activity, ensuring interoperability of any installed IP devices. Following these open standards will then support the industry to transition away from using proprietary protocols and instead adopt an interoperable approach. Collectively, we need to be responsible for easing the pain of using multiple devices for various workflows.

Why IP?

There are many reasons for maintaining a hybrid IP/SDI environment, especially when trying to achieve interoperability. It acts as a zero-baggage approach, keeping your options decisively open when potential re-evaluations crop up down the line. Growth plans can change, but the beauty of IP is that you’re left with an innate ability to increase channels, broaden system or network sizes, add services and upgrade to new resolutions and solutions.

Choosing a control system is the most important piece to that IP facility puzzle. It dictates what devices you can work with, and the workflows that will sit on top of that control system.

Having recently won the M&E Best in Market 2022 award for Pebble Control Free, Pebble boasts over 22 years of experience in playout automation. Its origins are in controlling VTRs, cart machines and routers. And now its latest solutions are designed to control networked devices and create flexible workflows for virtualised playout. Pebble technology is used by an international customer base having brought thousands of channels to air – reliably.

With Pebble Control Free, you can make 15 simultaneous input and output connections. You can also have up to 50 active inputs and outputs from multiple devices, running on one host with one software panel.

For those with legacy devices, Pebble Control Free has a Legacy Router Emulation feature – a virtual router that sits on top of all the inputs, outputs and containers. This allows you to map resources into sources and destinations, just as you would in a normal router.

Pebble Control has been designed with an empowered mission: to solve challenges caused by the uncertainty that comes with IP assignment. It does so in a way that’s independent, cost-effective and – most importantly – retains interoperability.

First published in the spring 2023 issue of FEED magazine.

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