Voices of Video

When Video Leaves the Studio: Building Low-Power, High-Density Systems That Scale

NETINT Technologies Season 3 Episode 40

What if live video could be small, cool, and endlessly reliable, whether you’re in an OB van, an operating room, or a rail yard? We take you from the edge to the cloud and back again, showing how compact encoders and long-life servers turn constrained spaces and tight power budgets into stable streams that scale.

We start with the hardware philosophy: low-power, high-density edge devices built for contribution and return feeds, paired with modular servers designed to run for up to a decade. You’ll hear how SDI, NDI, SDVoE, and SMPTE ST 2110 fit together, why PCIe expansion and high-port network I/O matter, and how a “highway platform” plus partner software delivers complete solutions without locking you into a single stack. From 1U to 4U systems and storage nodes, the focus stays on resilience, interoperability, and lifecycle support.

From there, Thomas Lien, Video Product Manager at Advantech, walks through real-world deployments that push video far beyond the studio:

  • Broadcast news teams embedding ultra-compact, ~10-watt hardware encoders inside OB vehicles for real-time contribution
  • Live sports workflows combining returns, replay, and switching on dense, compact appliances tuned with third-party software
  • Medical streaming, where endoscopic feeds are processed outside the operating room for AI-assisted analysis and post-procedure review
  • Rail inspection systems streaming multi-camera feeds live, tagging detected faults with GPS coordinates so crews can respond immediately

Across every example, the priorities repeat: open standards, dense I/O, low power consumption, and infrastructure designed for long-term deployment with extended lifecycle and RMA support.

If you’re designing live video systems for broadcast, healthcare, or industrial environments, this episode offers a clear takeaway: keep the edge small, make the core dense, and build hardware that’s meant to last.

Links & references

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Voices of Video:

Voices of video. Voices of video. The voices of video. Voices of video.

Thomas Lien, Video Product Manager (Advantech):

Okay, good morning. I'm Thomas Liam from the Advantech. HFF Advantech is quite famous on different video industry, but also different uh in uh crowd or other service industry. So I'm going to introduce part of the Ventec offering to different industries and what the Ventec offering to the video industry. So let's see the uh first slide of the video solution. So you can see here actually uh the Venteg we provide the video solution to broadcasting, which do the video streaming output and also to the video uh studio and for the and also the video storage. And we also leverage the video streaming technology to medical application. So that's why you can see here advantage we have a different product right here. We have a streaming box, we have the appliance system, we have a PCI car which can do the SD2110, which you can offer a high-density SDI interface. We also have uh appliance uh uh system which can offer uh video return and the playback system. So this is the Highway uh play form for Adventure, and we also work with the partner to offer the NDI, SDVOE, AK, or different uh video codec here. So H Advent, we provide a Highway platform to our customer, and we work with partner to provide a total solution to our customer and make their product can meet our customer and customer requirements. And not only the video product we offer Advantage, we also create a different kind of uh video of not video server, sorry, different servers, which is a long longevity. So each of the advantage servers is not only three, four, five years lifecycle. Actually, we can extend to 10 years. It means if you work with Advantage, actually Advantage provides you the longevity support. So this box, as long as it's still installed to your customer side, we will make sure it's gonna RMA forunte every service that helps your customer uh trust your service. Then you can see here, you might interesting why it's not only one type of our server. We have a one U, we have a two U, we have a four U, we have a storage server, we have a switch, and we also have a different edge device. So why? So you can imagine that Advantage actually we create this product and we do the customization to your to our customer. It means if you have any demand, any interesting idea, welcome to contact Adventager because we will work with you to create a perfect product to your customer. So that's actually the service we do. We create a basic product, then uh talk to our customer, then follow the requirement, then we build a different kind of product. So for example, it's not a this product is not sitting in the house. H it can support all the applications. We also follow our customer to provide NEPS, this is for telecom applications. So you can imagine that H we work with our customer tightly to provide this service. Then we back to the media infrastructure here. So you can see that's separate to uh video edge and video cloud service. So in the video edge side, you can see here we support uh our appliance system to this uh uh video stream output. So in this uh field side, you can image that how is limitation? Space is limitation, so you can go to our booth and look into our product. It's very tiny, very small, and the power consumption is also low. This is because we understand our customers they don't have much power and they need a low power but can stream in the or can do the video streaming stably. Uh so that's why we make a small product. Then we have a different type. We have all UN box, which is based on different solutions, and then we also create this bus. If you have your own video streaming application, you would like to go with a different video car, it's no problem. Uh talk to us, then we will use this bus. Connect to the NAIN TY module and then connect to your video car. Then you can do the live streaming through this bus. So this is the edge device we provide to our customer. Then let's move to the cloud or video studio here. You can see here, we have a different kind of video server, video appliance to our customer. It means we offer a different solution to our customer. For example, this one is for the playback system, and these two can be video switch, uh, can be the louter or storage server here. So this is the other product we offer to our customer. So you can see here the vehicle provides overall product from edge to the cloud, or from cloud to the edge. So this is the product we offer to our customer. Then I would like to show you some use cases we we did. So because we are from, now we are, I'm from Taiwan, so most of the use cases are from our Taiwan uh TV station. So the first one is the uh TV station uh news case. So adventure actually we provide this video apply system with our third-party software and installed to the OBN. So this is to this pride, uh, this product actually is to the real-time uh video encoding. Then we install to this one. This is a small bus because it's very tiny and the power control is low, and it's it's embedded with the how encoding. So you can see why this bus can be installed to uh this OBN. Then the second one is the uh baseball live show here, and uh we offer our uh system and the uh video card. Then again, we work with the third party, so you can imagine that. Advantage actually we provide a highway service, then we always will work with our partner and provide a total solution to our customers. So the vintage, we response for the hardware reliability, then our custom our third party they help our customer to make sure the video application they want is stable and working smoothly. So this is the product, this is the working model. We work with our customer and uh provide the final product to our uh end customer. And uh just like I mentioned in the previous slide, actually advantage, we are not only doing the video streaming to broadcasting, broadcaster. We are also doing leveraging this technology to different applications. I know this uh picture is not good, so you can ignore this one and you can imagine that uh actually we put our video car to this box, then we work with our customer, then they do the medical surgery video recording. It's not only recall because the AI empowers the analysis. So actually, when the surgery finishes, it also can do the analyze to understand what's wrong with this uh processing. Is there any better thing or it can do the real-time monitoring when it's the when the doctor does the surgery? So this is another application. You can imagine this bus, actually is not in the uh operation room, it's outside of operation. So how we provide the video streaming technology connect to the surgery uh to the endoscope and the streaming to this bus in the other room and do the real-time analyze. So this is another application we do. Then this is a very interesting uh application to me as long as it is a POC. So you cannot imagine that. Actually, live stream is not only to do the TV show, it can also connect to the this trend and uh this chain actually is connected like uh eight camera, four on the top of this car and the other four on the bottom of this uh chain. So when this uh uh this chain uh uh walk uh goes through to the railway, it's inspection the wire here to check if there are any uh on SP on uh any garbage on this wire, then it's also uh check the railway is straight or not. Is any wrong? Is something wrong? When the it's doing a live streaming from this chain to the uh uh chain station. So when it's detecting any one thing during the live streaming, the system uh will uh connect a GPS signal to the worker, the worker will come here to follow the GPS data to come here and then to fix that one. So this is the application advantage I want to show you. Live streaming is not only for the TV show, not only for the entertainment. Actually, it can help our healthy and uh to the other industry. So this is why advantage is quite interesting to NAIN solutions because the Name Solution actually what we learn from NAIN is that it's a low power consumption, it can do the higher channel density in this small box. It only takes like a 10 watt uh power consumption. So you can image that. If you can either like four or you give it this IP uh signal to this one, it can do the medical video processing, it can do the live event uh streaming and also do the uh with the uh uh news cases. So this is very interesting. Uh advantage, this is why Adventure is interesting to provide this box and hope we can get more connection with name solution and deliver the this product to our customers. Then, because advantage, we hope one day we can more provide more product to the uh cloud service, uh video cloud service provider. So you can see here at the venture we have our own uh uh video uh not video server, we have our own server which has a different uh Utah 2 interface here. So we have eight or we have the 12 uh Utah 2 support in our server. So you can imagine that if you have a many video streaming you want to handle, so please consider the vintage solution because we are not only connected to 10, we can connect to 12. And you want to if you want to have a uh many video 12, yes, yes, it's a 12. Then if you want to have a more negative solution by through the vintage product, look here. So we have also two U product which can calculate 16 uh TYU product here, and uh this bus also can support three plus additional PCL. So you can imagine like a thousand live streaming can be handled by this single box. So this is the solution, this is the hard way that the vintage can provide. And uh this is the product we hope we can deliver to the customer who want to leave it on the name solution, no whether it's the Utah 2 T1U, no whether it's a PCI car like a T1A or two T2A uh and or the T1N uh module. So this is what the Vantager uh offered to our worldwide customers, and we hope if you consider the name as your video codec solution, we also consider the vintage as your hardware before solution.

Voices of Video:

Thank you.com.