IP Everywhere
Part 2: Focus on Houses of Worship

ST 2110 was initially viewed as a broadcast-only type infrastructure that a house of worship wouldn’t have the expertise to implement. That view has proven to be incorrect.

The panel pointed out that broadcasters and churches have a shared interest when it comes to video production: producing the best possible show with a flexible system that has the most potential for growth. According to our experts, houses of worship are a well-proven use case for ST 2110, and implementations across the industry continue to grow at a rapid pace.

The entry point for ST 2110 was rather high a few years ago. But today, switches and gateways are available at a much lower cost — and will only continue to drop, while capacities will continue to increase.

Our experts discussed the fact that with IP workflows, less physical product is needed to accomplish the same things, and infrastructure is future-proofed for continuous expansion that would simply be cost-prohibitive in an SDI world. And for houses of worship on a budget, the ability to use existing cable infrastructure instead of creating a new one from scratch lowers costs dramatically.

It isn’t necessary for a house of worship to go all in on IP right away. They can start with a smaller ST 2110 infrastructure that handles certain aspects of their operations and then easily upgrade the system to a full IP deployment over time.

The panelists agreed that this flexible, hybrid approach is ideal for smaller churches, as it allows them to start realizing the benefits of ST 2110 without a costly rip and replace. And when it comes to expansion, the sky’s the limit — they can just keep adding switches to accommodate their changing needs.

The ST 2110 standard has been central to widespread IP adoption. It enables smooth integration with a variety of equipment. It incorporates audio without the need for de-embedding or re-embedding. And it allows for seamless communication at peak performance levels in terms of resolution, frequency, and other parameters — both now and in the future.

From a routing perspective, ST 2110 makes operations much simpler. For example, you can easily subscribe to a specific source and manage controls through NMOS, avoiding the previous complexity of having to add outboard servers to connect routers to switchers. In the opinion of our experts, this simplicity and efficiency in interoperability is something SDI simply can’t achieve.