Drew @ Broadcast Blueprint

Broadcasting has depended on Windows for much longer than it should have. Kudos to @fullymodulated.com for shedding light on the issue!

Photo of a small arc-shaped cut on the author’s right pinky finger

I put the thread adapter in a Yellowtec CamStud backwards and picked up a new battle scar trying to get it out so I could flip it around. Those threads are sharp!

#BroadcastEngineering

Not super at liberty to give specifics at this point, but it is a hybrid + multicloud approach.

Smart broadcasters should know what parts of their operation to run on-prem *where appropriate*. People freak out about latency, but there are points in the chain where that just doesn't matter.

Sometime next year, we should talk about cloud-based automation... I'm piloting it at one of my stations (and it did NOT go down yesterday).

Perhaps I should only use a PipeWire installation on servers where I don’t plan on using physical audio devices and just interact with ALSA directly otherwise. I say this because PipeWire has native support for AES67, which is easily configured using the API or statically.

Update: I ended up writing a bespoke ALSA card profile and udev rules which succeeded at exposing the sinks I needed, but the volume controls for the card’s hardware mixer are still a puzzle to be solved in PipeWire.

I’ve been trying (and failing) to get PipeWire+WirePlumber to play nice with an AudioScience ASI6114. The vendor-provided ALSA driver exposes subdevices for each of the 12 play streams, but the ALSA monitor in WirePlumber only creates a node for subdevice 0. 🫠

I mean you could still really hurt someone with an RE20 even though microphones don’t weigh 30 pounds anymore 🤷🏻‍♂️

⬆️That guy knows what he’s talking about (and replied from the wrong account) 😂

two men in suits and ties are waving their hands in front of a window with peacock written on the bottom right corner Alt: Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute and Steve Carell as Michael Scott from the US television series “The Office” performing the “raise the roof” gesture

Time to put my IT experience to good use for broadcasters

If you don't see a "boot menu" or "choose boot device" prompt, you can usually plug "<computer model> boot menu" into your favorite search engine to find it (mine would be "latitude 7430 boot menu" for example).

There's a detailed guide at linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/in...

Once that's done, make sure your testing computer is powered off, then plug in the USB stick and turn it on. Depending on the model of the computer you're installing it on, there will be a certain key you press on the keyboard as the computer is starting that will let you tell it to boot from USB.

Download the ISO image file from linuxmint.com and if you're currently using Windows, you can use a tool called Etcher (etcher.balena.io) to create the installer media on the USB stick.

If you're just starting out, I would recommend finding a secondhand older machine (preferably manufactured after 2014) to try it on first! Linux Mint is a good distribution for people new to *nix. You'll also need a blank 8 GB USB thumb drive (or one you don't mind erasing).

🧵5/4 bonus: Better yet, designing your workflows around interoperable standards-based tools with broad cross-platform support (like configuration UIs accessible from a web browser or AoIP systems with full AES67 compliance) go a long way toward keeping you from being at the mercy of one vendor.

🧵4/4: Budget-conscious broadcasters can start adopting Linux-based systems, and many tools already support it. You can also tell vendors that Linux support will go a long way in earning or keeping your business - it's their job to meet your needs, after all! Don't let them convince you otherwise.

🧵 3/4: I know FOSS is still a four-letter word in a lot of enterprises, but just because you don't have to pay for a license to use something like the Linux kernel doesn't mean you can't get enterprise support contracts for some distributions. You're saving money regardless.

🧵 2/4: No more applications and utilities running on Windows client editions that are airgapped or otherwise not joined to a domain. You're stuck paying for either Windows Server, Software Assurance, or both, and you better pray these applications play nice with Windows Server or LTSC. Some don't.

Microsoft removes even more Microsoft account workarounds from Windows 11 build Microsoft has locked down well-documented workarounds in recent test builds.

🧵 1/4: Microsoft is still dead set on requiring Windows client editions to be linked to a Microsoft account or joined to a domain. This has major implications for broadcast engineering and technology:

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

YouTube video by Broadcast Blueprint Broadcasting is Technology Now (and where I've been!)

New BCBP video: I’ve been busy, but in that time I’ve realized broadcast engineering is at a crossroads between the traditional and modern. Going forward, I’m focusing on directing traffic at this intersection of kilowatts and megabits.

youtu.be/hzgcnIvA9VU

YouTube video by Practical Engineering The Bizarre Bases of Antenna Towers

It finally happened - Grady at Practical Engineering made a video about transmitter towers!

youtu.be/3nDdLiXS5wk

Sign welcoming attendees to the 2025 Midwest Broadcast and Multimedia Technology Conference in Columbus, Ohio

NAB Show is nice, but there’s a vibe in regional broadcast conferences you just can’t get anywhere else!

SBE will always remember. See: https://sbe.org/remembering-colleagues-lost-on-9-11-2001-2

#BroadcastEngineering
#BroadcastTech
#Broadcasting
#RadioTech
#TVTech

Broadcast technology has always believed in and embraced interoperability. In that spirit, I’ve just migrated this account to an ATProto PDS *not* operated by Bluesky PBC. How exciting!

Cable TV channels, since they do not broadcast freely over the air, fall outside the jurisdiction of any licensing authority. The cable systems carrying these channels are subject to regulatory oversight, but not nearly as much as traditional broadcast outlets.

While it is true that the broadcast networks each own a handful of over-the-air television stations (which do require licenses) called “owned-and-operated” or “O&O” stations, the vast majority of stations carrying a network’s programming are independently owned and hold an affiliation agreement.

Just so I’ve said it:

Broadcast networks in the United States (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) do not require licenses of their own to operate. Network programming is delivered primarily via satellite downlink and IP transport.

If you are an IT-oriented #BroadcastEngineering professional but have never touched Linux, it’s worth learning… and I’ll tell you a secret:

The later generations of those hardware devices I mentioned? They’re probably already running on Linux.

Monitor on a cart behind a 19-inch equipment cabinet displaying a screen from the Debian 13 installation procedure

The first Debian 13 hosts are going up in the lab. As more broadcast vendors begin delivering software rather than specialized hardware, the reliability of the Linux kernel and other Unix-like systems can help make working with these new software offerings more like their hardware counterparts.

Contrary to popular belief, traditional/over-the-air #broadcasting is not stuck in the past. We just know and appreciate where we came from.