The What: VITEC has announced its new MGW ChannelLink IP distribution gateway. Designed for broadcast, corporate, and government, the appliance acts as a central hub where IP channels from the field can be received and reliably retransmitted live over any IP network. It can receive a large number of input streams and translate them into a multicast or unicast MPEG Transport Stream over UDP (UDP TS) or an SRT-protected stream.
The What Else: As latency is key to any IP streaming application, MGW ChannelLink achieves the lowest processing time for IP-based channels. When used in conjunction with VITEC’s MGW Ace Encoder and Decoder in its ultra-low-latency HEVC profile, the gateway provides optimized end-to-end latency without compromising video quality. The solution enables remote production and contribution over the internet and avoids the use of expensive fiber or satellite transmission infrastructure, leading to reduced OPEX.
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MGW ChannelLink is fully interoperable with third-party encoders and decoders. In addition, the compression-standard-agnostic gateway is compatible with MPEG-2, H.264, and HEVC codecs, any resolution and frame rate (SD, HD, 4K, and more), and is engineered to evolve and support future transport protocols. Tailored to streamline IP video contribution, backhaul, and distribution, users benefit from the solution’s straightforward interface. They can manage all incoming channels from around the world and view information and statistics, such as quality of the network link and packet loss. The gateway also provides users with a centralized location for aggregating content and monitoring incoming streams. Designed to facilitate the setup for operators, a large number of channel sources (encoders) spread around the globe can be set to target a single IP address associated with the MGW ChannelLink. Additionally, the user-friendly interface is designed to simplify channel source-to-destination routing.
“More and more video feeds are sent live over various IP transmission links, making it complex for organizations to efficiently and reliably manage them,” said Richard Bernard, senior product manager, VITEC. “Our new MGW ChannelLink allows organizations to deliver IP content anywhere, anytime, with the ease of legacy baseband video matrices. It is designed to ensure support of more transport protocols in the future, allowing any organization to stay abreast of technology as it evolves.”
The Bottom Line: VITEC’s MGW ChannelLink is well suited for stream management, routing, rebroadcasting, or IPTV stream reflection over WAN or the internet. For broadcasters, it simplifies content delivery of live channels from news agencies as well as from sports or entertainment venues. Designed to meet stringent security criteria, it is also suited for secure government and military full-motion video applications.
