Techtel and Spectra Logic expand FOX SPORTS’ archive system at new facility

Sydney, Australia – FOX SPORTS has added to its existing Spectra Logic archive by purchasing a second T950 tape archive system which has been installed at their Artarmon facility. The country’s leading sports broadcaster had been using their initial T950 Spectra Logic tape archive for 5 years prior to the new addition. The latest 6-frame T950 tape library was supplied and installed by local distributor Techtel as a part of FOX SPORTS’ expansion plans, ensuring total security of their archive content as their operations continue to expand.

The Spectra T950 library is designed and built to meet the stringent content storage requirements of the media and entertainment industry for data integrity, data security and high reliability. It reduces staff involvement significantly, affordably scales in throughput and capacity, and supports multiple generations of current and future tape formats. The T950 library deployed at FOX SPORTS was originally deployed as LTO-5 but with the option to replace drives and upgrade to LTO-6. This upgrade was successfully undertaken late in 2013 and the sportscaster now enjoys the added benefits of LTO-6 including the first Spectra Certified Barrium Ferrite (BaFE) LTO-6 media, capable of storing more than 2.5TB native per tape and supporting data transfer speeds of up to 160MB/ps.

“The archival data of any broadcaster is invaluable so it is important to be heading into the future with a solution that is secure, reliable, and can expand above and beyond storage requirements for years to come,” commented Mal Chandler, Head of Sales at Techtel. “In relation to the Spectra and LTO-based data assets, Techtel provided assistance throughout the relocation project of FOX SPORTS who are now well into their second year of operation in the new facility.”

Spectra Logic will be exhibiting at NAB 2014 on booth SL11816, 7-10 April. See their latest storage solution; the Spectra BlackPearl™ Deep Storage Appliance. BlackPearl delivers the most scalable and cost-effective long-term storage on the market, and meets the present and future demands of extreme data growth and long-term retention. BlackPearl enables users to deploy a tier of deep storage that is not only the lowest cost storage available but also easy to manage and scalable to Exabytes of data and beyond.

Harmonic to feature innovative, flexible broadcast and multiscreen solutions at 2014 NAB Show

Highlights Include a Groundbreaking Technology Demonstration With Potential to Redefine the Broadcast Video Delivery Ecosystem

At booth SU1210 at the 2014 NAB Show, Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT), the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, will demonstrate a series of solutions that optimize the production and delivery of high-value video services in the broadcast, pay-TV and new media environments. Building on its position as the No. 1 provider of pay-TV encoders, broadcast playout servers, IPTV headends, and multiscreen transcoding solutions, Harmonic will unveil innovative new solutions and feature sets that enable further efficiencies in the preparation and delivery of high-quality video content to any viewing device.

“During the 2014 NAB Show, the products and solutions demonstrated at our booth will highlight the operational efficiencies, cost savings, and amazing video quality that operators can achieve by leveraging an integrated solution from Harmonic,” said Peter Alexander, chief marketing officer at Harmonic. “In addition to the acclaimed products that have made Harmonic a leading solutions provider to video service providers, we will feature an innovative new solution with the power to change the nature of video delivery as we know it.”

Highlights at the Harmonic booth will include:

Encoding and Stream Processing

Harmonic will unveil and demonstrate a groundbreaking software technology that has the potential to redefine the broadcast video delivery ecosystem. The company also will feature a unique, live 4K Ultra HD 2160p60 demonstration.

The market-leading ATSC 3.0-ready Electra™ universal multifunction, multiformat encoding platform, which features the industry’s highest density audio encoding capabilities, will be on display, as will a powerful primary distribution solution built on the Harmonic DMS™ video distribution management system and a new ProView™ IRD (integrated receiver-decoder).

Harmonic also will show its advanced multiscreen ad insertion solution, which leverages the ProMedia® family and ProStream® with ACE® broadcast and multiscreen transcoder and integrates with advertising ecosystem partners to enable the monetization of multiscreen services. By facilitating commercial insertion along with program substitution and blackout on the client side, the Harmonic solution gives operators a straightforward and cost-effective way to generate a return on their multiscreen investment.

Storage and Playout

Harmonic will feature enhancements to the market-leading Spectrum™ media server product line, including the Spectrum ChannelPort™ integrated channel playout system, which augment ingest, storage, and playout broadcast workflows. ChannelPort’s impressive performance includes high-density playout of four SD/HD channels per RU, dual DVE capabilities, and compatibility with the industry’s leading automation systems. In a demonstration of its high-performance storage solutions, Harmonic also will showcase collaborative editing and 4K editing on the Harmonic MediaGrid shared storage system.

In addition to the demonstrations and Ultra HD theater presentations at the Harmonic booth, Thierry Fautier, vice president of solutions marketing at Harmonic, will present his paper, “Ultra HD in 2014: A Real World Analysis,” at the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference, April 9, from 10:30 to 11 a.m. in room S228 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.