Reduces Hosting Costs, Rapidly Scales Up and Down for both Thematic and Reactive Live Channels and Supports On-premise, Cloud or Hybrid Deployments Using Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP)

MONTREAL, CANADA – September 12, 2023 – Grass Valley®, the leading innovator of solutions for live production, will be demonstrating its full-featured, cloud-first playout solution, Playout X, at stand 9-A01 at IBC2023, September 15-18, 2023, at the RAI Exhibition and Conference Center in Amsterdam.

Playout X is a complete broadcast-grade solution that in addition to clip based and live event handling, also includes dynamic insertion of rich graphics and subtitles, 32 programmable stereo audio channels (64 mono). Playout X provides unparalleled live stream format support, including SDI, ST2110, NDI, SRT, RIST, in addition to multiformat timeline including back-to-back interlaced, progressive, SD, HD and UHD in any format. It also supports Free Ad-supported Streaming Television, or FAST, signaling with comprehensive SCTE-104 and SCTE35 support, allowing the triggering of downstream layers of advertising, which allows for the monetization of free OTT streaming services.

According to Steve Hassan, Senior Director, Playout at Grass Valley, “We have re-architected the playout services hosted by AMPP to provide industry leading application density, and reduced end-to-end latency compared with other solutions in the marketplace. This combined with the latest support for Linux operating systems in AMPP, provides Playout X customers reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) through reduced hosting costs without any compromise to functionality.

Built with a cloud-centric microservices architecture on Grass Valley’s AMPP Ecosystem, Playout X allows media and entertainment companies to deploy new channels in minutes, such as for live special event coverage, and collapse them again when the event is over, with Software as a Service (SaaS) pricing to ensure you only pay for what you use. Edge compute architectures offered by AMPP provide further flexibility allowing customers to deploy across both on-premises COTs servers in a traditional master control environment and in the cloud on the platform provider of the customer’s choosing.

Through its microservices architecture, Playout X offers new levels of resilience, with support for 1+1, N+1 and N+M models for automatic failover and self-healing, across single or multi-site/platform deployment models.

“One of the key value-adds that Grass Valley brings to playout,” says Ian Fletcher, CTO at Grass Valley, “is our focus on live events. That is the ability of Playout X to do live production switching for complex use cases, such as with different feeds for different markets, without giving up any of the functionality and flexibility of traditional live production hardware.”

With over 100 native applications and over alliance partners integrated into AMPPs open ecosystem, Playout X can additionally control other services across the customers tenancy, including audio mixers, software-based production switchers, and graphics engines from RT Software, VizRT, Singular.Live, and more.

Playout X can be operated from any location with an internet connection through a set of standard HTML5 user interfaces, or custom UIs can be created. For media and entertainment companies that need to move rapidly to deliver one or more new channels with the quality, features and flexibility they have come to expect from traditional broadcast hardware, Playout X is the answer. Come see it in action at IBC2023 on stand 9-A01.

####

About Grass Valley

Grass Valley is the leading media technology provider for the media and entertainment industry. Trusted by the world’s top media brands, Grass Valley is empowering content producers to deliver great live experiences through best-in-class hardware and software solutions that improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Supporting customers across the globe, Grass Valley is at the forefront of groundbreaking live media innovation and continues to create the future of live media production.

Headquartered in Montreal, Grass Valley has been engaged in the media technology business for over 60 years. For more information about Grass Valley, go to grassvalley.com.