The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Our industry has finally embraced IP. We have designed, built and implemented connected solutions of all sizes, from small flight packs to large facility projects. We have successfully leveraged many opportunities of end-to-end network systems, adding a host of benefits over the past two, remotely managed years. And we’ve all been through a lot of pain on this rocky road to discovery and registration, stream routing, status and parameter control. As an innovative industry that has faced multiple disruptions in technology over the past few decades, and has successfully adapted, we are in an excellent position to channel our experiences, learn from them, and turn them into actionable approaches. With NMOS, we launched a whole bundle of specifications to keep a clear line of sight amidst the storm of technical change, and to keep pace with innovation. This has not only brought us a lot of attention, but also recognition for forging a community out of a motley crew of competitors and customers pursuing the higher goal of mitigating rising incompatibilities in heterogeneous production systems. Today, after more than five years of intensive groundwork, extensive tests and unprecedented cooperation, we approach every new project with a well-stocked quiver of arrows. Yet, we repeatedly have to ask ourselves why some of them did not hit home and others did not fly at all. The paper presents an interim conclusion as to why a good idea doesn’t always eliminate all the bad things from the broadcast world, and why we will have to live with ugly solutions for some time to come, because they simply work.