Playout

In broadcasting, playout is a term for the transmission of radio or TV channels from the broadcaster into broadcast networks that delivers the content to the audience. Those networks can consist of terrestrial transmitters for analogue or digital radio and TV, cable networks or satellites (either for direct reception, DTH, or intended for cable television headends).

The playout happens in master control in a playout area, which can be either situated in the central apparatus room or in purposely built playout centres, which can be owned by a broadcaster or run by an independent specialist company that has been contracted to handle the playout for a number of channels from different broadcasters.

Some of the larger playout centres in Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States handle well in excess of 50 radio and TV "feeds". Feeds would often consist of several different versions of a core service, often different language versions or with separately scheduled content, such as local opt outs for news or promotions.

Centralcasting is multi-channel playout that generally uses a broadcast automation systems with broadcast programming applications. These systems generally work in a similar way, controlling video servers, video tape recorder (VTR) devices, Flexicarts, audio mixing consoles, vision mixers and video routers, and other devices using a serial communications (RS-232 or RS-422). This provides deterministic control, enabling frame accurate playback, Instant replay or video switching. Many systems consist of a front end operator interface on a separate platform to the controllers – e.g. a Windows GUI will present a friendly easy to use method of editing a playlist, but actually control would be done on a platform with a "real time" operating system such that any large scale playlist amendments do not cause any delays to device control.

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Wikipedia