Viewers want to watch their favourite shows when they want, free from the constraints of TV programming schedules. And they want it to look good. Network operators are addressing these needs with more and more high-value services, such as HD channels, video-on-demand and time shifting.

Delivering these services requires an in-depth view into your network and highly accurate metadata for use in your electronic programme guide (EPG), video on demand (VoD) catalogue or combined solution for time-shifted television.

SPECTRIS provides you with a dedicated and integrated approach to both system and metadata monitoring and verification. It makes it easy for you to safeguard the operational state of television broadcast and video-on-demand systems by monitoring the health (events, errors) and operational state of network components including QAMs and video servers, and the status of eventIS applications such as ENTRIS/CASIS, STAGIS, PRODIS and TRAXIS. It also monitors all the metadata processed by the system, ensuring that the information used to drive your EPG and VoD is accurate and consistent.

Whether your network delivers linear or on-demand services, or a combination of the two, SPECTRIS is the ideal watchdog for ensuring operational confidence. It is also the perfect solution for service management, supporting corrective maintenance through redundancy switching and recourse management, as well as initiating transport stream recording and generating reports and alarms.

Key features

• User-friendly and direct access to real-time system status
• Different views onto system state and data
• Web based application allows for maximum location independence
• Modular design allowing functionality to be scaled to fit needs
• Reports to Operation Support Systems (OSS) on impact of failure
• Reports network/resource capacity based on trend analysis
• Field probes for validating stream path of linear/VoD services deep in the network

Key benefits

• educes support calls by warning Network Operations Centre early
• Reduces number of field staff call outs and fix times by accurately identifying the source of the fault
• Improves communication to call centre staff by integrating into overall management system (e.g. NetCool or any other SNMP based network management tool)

A clear view of your system
Probe applications installed on the monitored remote subsystems, gather metrics and data and send them to the central SPECTRIS monitoring server. By using a regular internet web browser in any location, operators can check details about the system via several different views:

• Event Log view – a summary of events generated on all monitored subsystems. Powerful filtering tools help you find system event messages quickly.
• Operational State – a summary of the system’s health. Choose either a high-level topological view or drill down to individual element metrics to troubleshoot your system.
• Schedule view – a calendar view of schedule data processed by the system. Detect gaps and other anomalies, and determine when and on which service they will occur.
• Table PSI/SI view – select and inspect any table in any transport stream or service in your network. Select descriptors and verify the content per descriptor.
• Geographical view – allows for effective monitoring of distributed linear/VoD services to quickly identify the affected service area and isolate the fault.

Comprehensive versatility
Among the extensive functionality offered by SPECTRIS you will find the following:

• MPEG-PSI and DVB-SI table verification
• Snap-shot functionality
• Template checking
• Schedule gap detection
• Automatically scans incoming streams
• Check table integrity, repletion rates and version numbers

Logging

• Generates alarms as message, trigger, SNMP trap or e-mail
• Generates a comprehensive event log
• Generates views on historical metric data

Configurations

• Supports single and multiple program transport stream for PSI/SI verification
• Supports IP (GbE) and DVB/ASI input formats for PSI/SI verification
• Triggers recording devices (e.g. eventIS CAPTIS) based on configurable conditions
• Supports a variety of video server and edgeQAM equipment
• Supports a variety of network topologies for monitoring VoD resource allocation and status

Reporting

• Automatically generates report per alarm level
• Trend analysis on network/resource capacity
• Reports resource availability to TRAXIS and/or external resource management systems