The Continued Evolution of Software Encoders for ATSC

Part 2: Software Encoders Reach Maturity and Dominate The Marketplace

Software encoders quickly proved to be invaluable. This was especially true as the explosion in the diginet sub-channel business came about.

The first generation of ATSC 1.0 hardware encoders could support an HD and little more than one SD sub-channel. The second generation improved to about 1HD and 3SD. Software encoders could easily support much greater density within the limited 19.39Mb/s ATSC 1.0 bandwidth thus enabling sub-channels to flourish. Even multiple HDs became practical.

Improved density was just the beginning. Software encoders proved to be far more cost-effective. Channels could be added simply by purchasing more license keys. Virtualization enabled a single enterprise-level COTS server to perform multiple encodes plus multiple statmuxes. Duopolies could operate more than one ATSC station on the same platform. The entire system could be optimized on a primary server and easily cloned on a secondary unit for redundancy. Picture quality improvements could be made progressively with each new firmware release.

Licensing models were only limited by the creativity of the vendor. If you needed to support MPEG-2 today, add in a few AVC streams along the way for cable or other applications and be future-proofed for HEVC in the ATSC 3.0 future, the right vendor could offer you “all of the above.” You simply size your CPU platform accordingly for the payload of encodes and statmuxes.

The inexorable hardware product lifecycle hamster wheel was broken. Licensing models with IT mobility could ensure that your investment never went end-of-life. As IT platforms evolved, you simply port licenses over to a new and better platform for more CPU power. Again, this was dependent on the terms and flexibility of your vendor, but many things were now possible.

?And then another new trend emerged. Channel release features began popping up which set the stage for the latest evolution in software encoders. With all this relatively inexpensive CPU power, savvy vendors began incorporating important and essential “Master Control type” functions that have offered many benefits.

Stay tuned for Part 3...

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!