Comparing Broadcaster and ZEC

introduction zixi broadcaster and zixi edge compute (zec) provide some similar funtionality, but there are also some significant differences which mean that they serve different purposes and should occupy different places in your workflow the tables below explains the key differences and appropriate uses for each basic feature differences feature broadcaster zec primary role core media gateway for large scale routing and processing lightweight edge contribution and routing stream processing transcoding, remuxing, multiplexing, pid mapping no transcoding or advanced conditioning ad signaling scte 35 insertion, esam/pois integration limited or none protocol support any to any conversion (zixi, rtp, rist, srt, hls, etc ) zixi protocol, basic rtp/srt ott packaging hls, ll dash, cmaf adaptive bitrate packaging not supported scale and redundancy high density routing, active/active failover single node edge deployment analytics and monitoring tr 101 290 analyzer, scte 35 reporting, agentz telemetry basic health monitoring workflow automation event switching, scheduling, time shifted delivery limited automation details of zec limitations (that broadcaster does not have) feature area limitations hardware / location can’t scale to data center or cloud level workloads not suitable for multi tenant routing or global distribution networking and transport can’t perform complex stream routing between multiple endpoints or regions doesn’t support advanced smpte 2022 7 hitless redundancy across data centers stream processing / conditioning can’t perform heavy stream conditioning such as transcoding pid mapping scte 35 insertion remuxing multiplexing scale and throughput can’t handle hundreds or thousands of concurrent streams therefore limited throughput failover and redundancy can’t participate in complex global hardware redundancy & orchestration protocol handling can’t perform any to any protocol translation beyond zixi to/from a small set (e g , rtmp, srt, udp) deployment and management not designed to operate as a standalone routing node — requires a broadcaster or zen master to manage topology analytics and control reports basic link and health metrics but doesn’t provide deep insight, analytics, or multi hop visibility interoperability can’t integrate with multiple partner networks, cdn targets, or conditional access workflows licensing / operations doesn’t include broadcaster level control features or automation (event switching, scheduling, esam/esni) where and when to use zec and broadcaster aspect zec broadcaster primary deployment location at the network edge / on premises near the source or local network central node (on premises, cloud, or hybrid) for large scale processing and distribution primary role ingest/contribute or receive/distribute video streams; interface local protocols; optimize transport to/from central ingest streams (from edge or elsewhere), perform transcoding/packaging/recording/transmuxing, output to many formats and destinations protocol focus convert local protocols (hls/rtmp/rtsp etc) and then use optimized zixi protocol to connect upward; or use zixi protocol to receive and then output local protocol broad protocol support (14+ protocols) for ingest & egress, format conversion, multiple bitrates, etc processing / transformation some local manipulation (e g , bonding/link fail over, encryption / decryption, time shift) but more focused on transport/edge full processing transcoding, transmuxing, packaging, recording, time shifting, large scale distribution cost/egress optimization when using zec you can reduce transport/egress costs (e g , 50% reduction claim) because of efficient zixi protocol at edge less about “edge cost” and more about handling many outputs, large scale, reliability, resiliency scalability and central features edge scale multiple zec nodes in various locations, each handling local contributions / distributions central scale clusters, load balancing, many destinations, global distribution typical use case local site or remote contribution e g , remote camera, ob van, remote facility using zec to send feeds to central also local distribution point receiving feeds and distributing locally broadcaster workflows receiving many input feeds, normalizing, transcoding and sending to cdns, ott, global endpoints; managing large event distribution