Tektronix has upgraded its Sentry family of digital content monitors with features designed to help comply with new Closed Captioning regulations, better identify audio issues – including overly loud commercials, and ensure the quality of OTT and TV Everywhere services.
The new capabilities for the Sentry Portfolio include:
- The capturing of “thumbnail” images when audio issues occur, which allows service providers to visually confirm the relative location of the audio issues. For example, users can see whether errors occurred during programming or ads, helping in the diagnosis of the underlying issue.
- Support for Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) – also known as Enhanced AC-3 (E-AC-3) – which further enhances Sentry’s audio loudness monitoring capabilities.
- The ability to audit closed captioning to determine if service providers are in compliance with new FCC guidelines, which include being able to determine if closed captioning is actually present on all channels.
- Doubling of the number streams monitored.
Along with the ability to monitor multiscreen programming packaged in HLS, Sentry now includes Adobe’s HDS adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming protocol, which enables VSPs to ensure their TV Everywhere / OTT programming assets are properly stored, that they are ready for immediate delivery when requested and the correct fragments for the available bandwidth are delivered.