Legacy Systems Intergration

Recent large events found about half the trucks used SMPTE 2110 and the others remained SDI (baseband). NEP’s EN3 truck was designed as a “native IP core.” Thus moving significantly toward 2110. NEP UK’s new OB vehicles (Venus, Ceres) are built to be SMPTE 2110 compliant, but they still include gateways for baseband/SDI compatibility.

To get an understanding of what does what: The 2110 Responsibility Map

For sports/entertainment, newer trucks are often built “all IP except the tailboards and legacy endpoints.” This means only the very edges (camera feeds, client SDI ports) remain baseband.

Some producers point out that even in trucks claimed as “IP,” SDI-IP gateways are still used for compatibility, so hybrid systems persist.

Rough Estimates Given those examples, a rough “industry average” for a newly built large production truck might look like:

2110/IP vs. Baseband/SDI/Hybrid by Domain

Domain	% 2110 / IP	% Baseband / SDI / Hybrid
Video & audio routing (internally)	70–90%	10–30% (for legacy or compatibility)
Input / output at client interfaces / tailboards	~50–80% (as IP gear becomes available)	~20–50% (still SDI for clients)
Control, tally, intercom, monitoring	Mostly IP	—

Ethernet Some legacy control lines may still exist So you might see 80% of core switching and signal flow in 2110/IP, but some baseband ports still in service especially at client edges, monitor walls, and older gear.

Why It’s Never 100% (Yet)?

• Legacy systems: Many clients, cameras, and monitors still use SDI; trucks maintain SDI ports via gateways.
• Equipment maturity: Some broadcast devices (high frame-rate cameras, very low latency encoders) are slower to adopt 2110.
• Risk mitigation: A hybrid fallback layer (SDI + IP) provides insurance. Operational inertia: Crews, workflows, and control systems are used to SDI in many cases, requiring transitional support.
• Standards gaps: Some parts of the ST 2110 family (e.g. for metadata or certain control features) are still evolving in vendor implementations.

In previous baseband facility designs and buildouts the first two system done were often audio and video routing, and sync signal distribution. How does that equate to 2110 today?

1. Video and Audio Routing
• Massive SDI or AES routers (Evertz, NVISION, Grass Valley, etc.).
• Crosspoint matrices physically connected every source to every destination.
• Deterministic timing — signals arrived at precise intervals because of fixed cable lengths and genlocked sources.
2. Sync Distribution
• House sync generator: black burst or tri-level sync.
• Coax or twisted-pair distribution amps fanning that reference to every camera, switcher, VTR, and frame sync.
• The goal: all devices’ internal clocks lined up so no device needed to re-time.

So — routing was physical, and sync was electrical.

Video/Audio Routing = IP Flow Management

• Each camera or playout device sends elementary streams:
  2110-20 (video), 2110-30 (audio), and 2110-40 (ancillary data).
• Each stream is a multicast flow with its own RTP timestamp.
• The routing “crosspoint” is now a subscription in software.
  → Think of NMOS IS-05 as the “virtual crosspoint” system.
• Latency and switching speed are governed by the network fabric and PTP alignment, not a physical crosspoint array.

In other words, the “router” is now your core Ethernet switch and SDN controller.

Sync Distribution = PTP Timing Plane

• The house sync generator’s role is taken by a PTP Grandmaster clock (often GPS-disciplined).
• Instead of voltage pulses, synchronization is conveyed via PTP Sync and Follow_Up messages over Ethernet.
• Switches act as Transparent or Boundary Clocks to maintain timing accuracy through the network.
• Endpoints (cameras, mixers, multiviewers) lock to this PTP timebase, aligning their RTP timestamps to the system epoch.

This ensures every frame and sample aligns globally, just as genlock once did locally.

New Layer: Control & Orchestration

• A third layer exists now that didn’t before — the control plane.
• Discovery (NMOS IS-04) replaces patch lists and labeling.
• Connection Management (NMOS IS-05) replaces SDI crosspoint matrices.
• Resource Management (IS-06, IS-08, etc.) coordinates streams, bandwidth, and devices.

So in IP, routing and sync aren’t just electrical—they’re network services managed by software.

In Practical Terms
If you were building a new 2110 plant today:

1. Deploy your network fabric (core and edge switches, QoS, multicast setup).
2. Establish PTP timing (Grandmaster, backup, boundary configuration). → These two steps directly correspond to your old “router + sync distribution” phase.
   After that, you layer:
• Device registration (NMOS IS-04)
• Flow connection (NMOS IS-05)
• Stream management, multiviewers, and monitoring.

UPDATED
3/24/26
V260324-1.0