Television Monitoring and Quality Control

Hyperion represents a new generation of television monitoring and quality control. Its sophisticated capabilities enable far more efficient and cost effective content monitoring than has ever been available to the broadcast industry.

To manage the increasing complexity of their operating environment, broadcasters now rely on automated systems for ingest, playout and scheduling. These systems enable broadcasters to do more with less while operating their plant at greater efficiency.

• True assessment of the value of the signal, not just presence, ideal for unmanned and lowmanning operations
• Reporting of all detected alarms via RollMap Infrastructure Management System or via SNMP to other vendor control and automation
• Integrates with all major Video display wall processors to streamline alarm reporting in playout facilities

ASI Transport Stream Monitoring

The IQASI82 monitors two ASI streams simultaneously for errors automatically switching from main and backup inputs depending on error criteria.

Alarm management flexibility is provided by user defined criticality of alarms from TS Loss to PID monitoring and basic ETSI TR 101290 alarms. External GPI I/O, RS232 and Relay ports can also control functionality, allowing upstream triggering and or automated control via a third party system.

IQASI82 can be used in conjunction with RollCall Network managmnet system for advanced alarm monitoring and control.

Hyperion highly configurable subjective and suspicious alarm setting supports modern day multi-channel service providers.

Modern broadcast operations will often see a single broadcast service provider transmitting multiple channels from a single centralized location. Channels may vary because regional variations, whether they are standard or high-definition – even which language the sound track is broadcast in – but the underlying requirement is for top level quality control (QC) across each and every channel throughout its passage through the media facility.

QC is a critical business process since on the one hand it enables media organizations to make more money from their output, while at the same time it insures against possible financial losses connected with failures to on-air operations.

Whilst several vendors offer monitoring systems, many struggle to operate within modern broadcast environments. Some can be confused by every day scenarios such as moving captions and graphics when in fact the main video stream has frozen.

Configurable and Subjective Alarm Setting
What broadcasters need is a solution that enable them to configure entirely subjective alarms whenever the screen starts to display certain characteristics.

A leader in this field over many decades, Snell has evolved its Hyperion monitoring solution that is tailor-made for modern multi-channel broadcasters. Part of Snell’s Centra monitoring and control family, Hyperion represents a new generation of television monitoring and quality control.

Its sophisticated capabilities enable far more efficient and cost effective content monitoring than has ever been available to the broadcast industry.

To manage the increasing complexity of their operating environment, broadcasters now rely on automated systems for ingest, playout and scheduling. These systems enable broadcasters to do more with less while operating their plant at greater efficiency.

Hyperion can be configured so that it monitors different zones of the screen depending on the user’s requirements. It can monitor up to 16 channels of embedded audio (always a challenge for operators during manual QC operations).

Video “Thumbnails” and Metadata Tracking Ensure Schedule Integrity
Also included with Hyperion are tools to enable remote monitoring over IP and content identification from source to output. These tools work in conjunction with automation and scheduling systems to enable signals to be tracked and verified automatically by inserting and reading back SMPTE UMID and program ID metadata.

Metadata tracking ensures that the content being broadcast is exactly what the programming schedule says it should be and can report back the total number of frames of each individual piece of content transmitted both locally and from remote locations such as head ends.

As an additional visual safeguard for remote content identification, delivery of video thumbnail images support the video, audio and metadata alarm information to provide a secondary level of confidence that content is correct at both internal and remote locations through the use of inexpensive IP network bandwidth.

Multiple Reporting Options
In the event of any problems, Hyperion can notify operators of trouble through a wide choice of alerts. It can operate through the Snell RollMap Infrastructure Management System and it can also integrate with a variety of Snell and  third party multi-viewer systems. Also provided as standard is a full SNMP control and monitoring interface for third party integration of Hyperion enabled products.

With Snell’s Hyperion, users have the confidence that all their channels are playing out exactly as they want. Furthermore, the operator does not even need to be on-site to gain that reassurance. He/she can even dial in to the system from home and access Hyperion’s intuitive GUI over a simple IP connection.

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