GUIDES

The broadcast stack, explained before it is sold.

Three guides, one layer each: the machinery that runs a channel, the business model most new channels launch on, and the cue standard that decides whether the ad money is automated. A fourth walks a new channel from empty to on air, and three more are for the buying decision: the questions to put to any provider, how playout software is sold, and whether you want it managed or self-serve. Every guide stands alone and names its terms, so a vendor pitch, ours included, can be read with the jargon already decoded.

Start anywhere

Three layers of the same channel, and the first day on it.

A linear channel is machinery running a schedule, a business model paying for it, and signalling underneath that connects the two to the ad market. Each guide takes one layer; the quick start takes the first day; the last three take the buying decision.

The machinery

What is cloud playout?

The four jobs a playout system does, how the cloud version differs from a rack of hardware and from OBS, what drives the cost, and the five questions worth asking any vendor before signing.

Read the playout guide
The business

What is a FAST channel?

Free Ad-supported Streaming Television, unpacked: the four properties that make a channel FAST, where the channels live, how the money actually works, and what the model is routinely confused with.

Read the FAST guide
First day

Quick start: your first broadcast

The five things a new channel needs before it is on air: files in the library, a playlist, a live input for shows, a name on screen, and the link viewers watch at. Each step with the console screen it happens on.

Read the quick start
The plumbing

What is SCTE-35?

The standard that writes ad breaks into the stream itself. What a cue carries, how it travels from playout to an ad server, splice_insert against time_signal, and why distributors ask for it by name.

Read the SCTE-35 guide
The buyer

How to choose a FAST channel provider

Seven questions for any company that offers to build, run or distribute your channel: who serves the manifest, what you pay and when it stops, what leaves with you, which SCTE-35 they emit, and who watches at 3am.

Read the provider guide
The software

TV playout software: installed, playout server, or cloud

What playout software does, the three ways it is sold, what a playout server is and whether a streaming channel still needs one, a seven-point checklist, and what each shape costs.

Read the software guide
The service

Managed playout vs self-serve

What a managed playout service includes, what self-serve leaves with you, the middle where the machine does the watching, and the five questions that settle which one you need.

Read the services guide
Past the definitions

When the question turns commercial

Once the vocabulary is settled, the useful questions have numbers in them. What a TV channel costs walks the whole budget, ours and the metered alternatives, costed for a channel that never goes off air. The vendor comparisons run each competitor's published rates against a 24/7 channel. And the product pages carry the specifics the guides deliberately leave out: cloud playout, FAST and linear TV, and SCTE-35 ad insertion as this platform actually ships them.

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