IBC 2017: Digigram building advanced broadcast solutions on cutting edge tech

In 2017, after 32 years of sustained history in the radio broadcast arena, Digigram will gain new momentum through a major change to its management board. Committed to moving closer to customers and making technology become invisible to the user, the company is gearing up to create new market-oriented end to end solutions. Historically providing technical solutions, Digigram intends to bring a new vision to the industry. The company will bring to the market advanced solutions that allow broadcasters, radio automation editors, and even journalists to vastly improve their way of working.

Digigram is making its IQOYA audio-over-IP (AoIP) technology accessible as middleware to ecosystem partners for creation of their own live streaming, processing, and encoding systems.

Offered as AoIP software, IQOYA *VIP can be hosted on a PC or in the cloud. The engine provides high performance encoding, transcoding, streaming, and routing functions for Windows applications. It offers strong added value through IP streaming to radio automation editors, as well as programme routing and transcoding for radio stations. Broadcasters and content delivery networks (CDNs) will see a major evolution in their business models using IQOYA *VIP, allowing them to design “radio-as-a-service” solutions.

IQOYA *VIP combines Digigram’s acclaimed IQOYA IP audio streaming and encoding engine, built on the company’s advanced FluidIP technology, and virtual multichannel audio devices. This solution allows development partners and system integrators to provide their own value-added applications with confidence that their offerings are built on proven AoIP streaming technology.

Refined and optimised over more than 3,000 IQOYA installations for broadcast and telecom operations worldwide, Digigram’s IQOYA *VIP engine features native high performance MPEG-TS, Shoutcast/ICEcast, and ACIP dual streaming formats with time diversity, including MPEG, AAC, OPUS, and apt-X encoding/decoding. Because the software is packaged in a high level module and now controlled through a web services API and GUIs, IQOYA *VIP is also easy for customers to deploy in a variety of use cases ranging from a simple streamer to a complex, multiformat transcoding farm for head end distribution.
Digigram’s new cloud technologies meet increasing market demand for simplified access and serve as high level solutions that address complete outside broadcasting workflows, thereby eliminating the need for specialized hardware systems or expensive capital expenditure.

IQOYA *Cloud, the codec-management infrastructure from Digigram, is now available in software-as-a-service (SaaS) mode. The award-winning IQOYA * Cloud is affordable for small and medium size broadcasters, who need only to pay a monthly recurring fee instead of investing in significant capital expenditures. The service gives broadcasters access to a robust broadcast SIP infrastructure for their outside broadcasting, as well as allowing centralised codec management anywhere from any authorised device. It enables interoperability, worldwide discovery, and secure access to a broad array of IP audio codecs from different manufacturers. With this centralised, cloud-enabled tool, control room operators can monitor current codec status, accept and initiate IQOYA calls, and take action in the event of network faults to ensure the continuity of high quality outside broadcasts.

blu by digigram is a virtual talkshow service that facilitates real time, end to end management of content contribution from journalists, expert voice talent, and remote presenters. Designed for the professional broadcast environment, blu by digigram makes it simple and easy for studios to establish several simultaneous, high quality bidirectional communications links via the blu virtual mixing workspace with any remote contributor who has a web browser, traditional SIP codec, or even telephone as a backup.

This broadcast-focused service unites a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) application with a professional audio interface in the studio to improve the user experience dramatically. With this unique “no-fuss, no-hassle” pay-as-you-go model for managing and processing contributed content from an array of sources, broadcasters can dedicate more time and resources to creating the compelling, timely, and relevant programming that drives their success.

At IBC2017, Digigram will introduce Audioway Bridge. Serving as a gateway between legacy and IP audio equipment in the studio, or in multiple studios connected by a managed network, Audioway Bridge allows users to input MADI, AES67, RAVENNA, Dante/AES67, or AES/EBU and route audio to output in any one of these formats.

By facilitating use of familiar legacy audio equipment alongside newer IP-based systems in both on-air broadcasting and production, Audioway Bridge reduces the cost and complexity of migrating to IP. Occupying just one rack unit, the all-in-one gateway not only bridges audio-over-IP (AoIP) streams and legacy signals, but also ensures clock synchronisation and generation between the two systems.