Delivering over IP does not mean delivering at lower quality. It is the question that comes up most, and it is worth settling first, because very different things can travel over an IP link.
MPEG-TS over IP — this is BROADCAST
This is what modern head-ends ask for, and what integrators install when they remove the SDI and replace it with IP. It is not a workaround or a reduced version: it is the broadcast signal travelling over a network instead of over coax.
AURA generates a complete transport stream:
- Multicast or unicast, choosing which network card it leaves by (which matters if the machine has several)
- H.264 or MPEG-2, for older decoders too
- Configurable video bitrate and constant transport bitrate (CBR) — what a modulator or an IRD requires
- Full DVB identification: service, originating network, provider and channel name
- EPG inside the transport stream
- SCTE-35 ad break markers
That feeds a DTT modulator, an IRD, a cable head-end or an IPTV server.
RTMP and SRT — this is REACH
A different purpose. Here the recipient is a viewer on a phone, not the head-end.
RTMP for YouTube, Facebook or your own server. SRT to carry the signal over ordinary internet without breaking up: it recovers packets lost along the way. If you deliver to a broadcast centre across the internet, SRT is the right one — that is professional contribution.
Bitrates are usually lower because the destination is a platform that will re-encode anyway.
NDI — inside the building
To take the signal to another machine on site: a switcher, a monitor, a graphics station. It uses a lot of network and is not meant for the internet.
All at once
The outputs are not exclusive. The same channel can be going out over SDI to the head-end, over MPEG-TS to an IPTV server, over RTMP to YouTube and over NDI to the studio, simultaneously.
Automatic reconnection
If the stream drops, AURA retries by itself with increasing back-off: after 5 seconds, 15, 30, a minute, then every five minutes.