Axon launches SMART DVB suite
December 5, 2014
Axon Digital Design, a supplier of broadcast network infrastructure products and solutions, has announced the release of SMART DVB, a complete suite of tools to monitor, report and analyze live MPEG-2 and DVB transport streams. Powerful and versatile, the SMART DVB suite enables owners and operators to ensure health, conformity and quality across the digital distribution chain and to drive performance at the highest level.
To maintain quality of service for viewers – and meet commercial and legal obligations – it is critical for broadcasters and network operators to monitor transport streams and to communicate and resolve issues easily within acceptable time frames. Failure to do so could result in contractual penalties, loss of advertising revenue, overloaded service resources, poor Quality of Experience and ultimately subscriber churn.
SMART DVB addresses these challenges by providing comprehensive insight into operational integrity and MPEG-2 DVB stream availability through monitoring, displaying, analyzing and recording stream content, parameters, standards compliance and service configurations. An open and scalable system, it can be deployed at multiple levels – from single probes for local service, large and complex channel lineups to distributed or centralized networks with multiple probes, data aggregation, clients and web server applications.
Beyond monitoring, SMART DVB devices can also be used to derive more information about content transmitted in order to boost operational performance.
“For today’s media operations, keeping the competitive edge relies on their ability to maximize efficiency and access the right information at the right time. To date, most monitoring platforms have failed to deliver those efficiencies or provide a truly holistic picture for all stakeholders” explains Jan Eveleens CEO Axon. “With SMART DVB, we have developed the industry’s most powerful and versatile solution to provide a complete view of the digital broadcast distribution chain. SMART DVB significantly simplifies and reduces the cost and time to monitor increasingly complex transport streams at the NOC, and provides deep-level analysis to enable 2nd line technicians and business stakeholders to make faster, smarter decisions – refining the data analyzed to enrich value added services, customer experience, media monitoring and indexing functions.”
The SMART DVB suite has been designed by Axon’s development team to meet the practical needs of NOC distribution and engineering; improving and simplifying communication of direct service issues and delivering long term trend analysis and troubleshooting. An integrated platform, it combines Axon’s pioneering modular software with COTS server hardware, all managed through a universal windows-based interface for ease-of-use and rapid deployment.
Feature highlights include:
· Comprehensive Multiviewer, easily reconfigured with simple drag-and-drop editor;
· Snapshot-based signaling check including frozen video, audio silence and data freeze detection;
· Content verification & Loudness measurement;
· Conditional Access;
· “Copy your service” capability: select and replicate an existing service in the stream and define its own alarm template and thresholds with the alarm severity of the original service;
· Service Streaming, allowing local or remote operators to stream as service to configurable IP destinations;
· Data repurposing to add value to the service offering.
With support for open standards and tight integration with Axon’s solutions portfolio, customers can easily and cost-effectively deploy SMART DVB into existing operations and scale systems without being forced to purchase additional licences. Leading organizations such as Arqiva, M7, ASTRA, NPO/BVN are already successfully using the platform to monitor and analyse the quality of their DVB operations.
Eveleens continues, “SMART DVB represents Axon’s continued commitment to deliver pioneering technology that empowers our clients, driving new levels of performance, efficiency and functionality.”