Major French broadcaster France 3 has made the transition to a server-based infrastructure for its new state-of-the-art national master control room with four Grass Valley PVS 1000 Profile XP Media Platform standard-definition (SD) servers from Thomson. As part of a multi-million Euro deal, the equipment will be installed at the network’s national facility in Paris and immediately help it streamline the handling of programme and commercial material.
Once the new playout system is installed by Thomson, the France 3 master control room will be able to access files stored on the Profile servers from anywhere inside the facility via a high-speed Fibre Channel network, allowing greater than real-time transfer speeds and the capability to play a clip on-air while it is being digitised onto the network. Two PVS 1000 servers will be used for ingest and system monitoring while two will distribute programmes directly to air.