22 April 2008
With its Video Production Management System VPMS, Cologne based systems and consulting company S4M Solutions for Media was short-listed for this years Innovationspreis.
The award is carried out yearly since 2004 and was initiated by the Initiative Mittelstand a network designed to promote the interests of German medium-sized businesses.
The Initiative Mittelstand awards highly innovative products and solutions with a special interest to medium-sized businesses. With VPMS, S4M was successful in the category Branchensoftware (software focused on special branches of the economy).
VPMS was designed to suit the needs of professionals in broadcast video management as well as video management in other industries. It is employed by both private and public service broadcasters in Germany and Europe and supports the management of digital Video assets from acquisition through versatile production schemes to playout, distribution and archiving.
In 2008, the Innovationspreis established a new record with altogether 1600 entries. VPMS convinced a top-class jury of professors, industry experts and scientists of its high degree of innovation, its efficiency and special interest to medium-sized companies. As a result, S4M can use the signet Innovationsprodukt 2008 (innovation product 2008).
22 April 2008
HILVERSUM Rik Rensen has been appointed editor-in-chief at Radio Netherlands Worldwide as of 1 August 2008. As such he will hold editorial responsibility for editorial teams in all ten languages. He will join deputy editors-in-chief Wim Jansen and Ardi Bouwers to head the Dutch international service. Mr Rensen succeeds Joop Daalmeijer, who left Radio Netherlands to become managing director of the national Dutch public broadcaster NPS in January.
General director Jan Hoek elaborates on the appointment, We were looking for an editor-in-chief with stature, who had more than earned his spurs in both regular and cross-media journalism. Rik Rensen fitted the bill particularly well. Especially as he has international experience as a correspondent in Italy and has worked for foreign media companies.
Rik Rensen, I see the new function as a dream job in a modern media organisation, which is doing particularly well. An organisation that matters and can be proud of itself.
Mr Rensen (52) has worked as editor-in-chief for television; for current affairs programme NOVA (2002-2008) and the commercial news programme RTL Nieuws (1989-1999). He has also held many jobs at commercial broadcasting stations like RTL Nederland as interactive managing director (2000-2002) and at SBS as interim managing director of Cross Media (2006-2008). Before Mr Rensen became editor-in-chief for RTL Nieuws, he worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad and was correspondent in Italy for four years. During this time he was also a correspondent for Radio Netherlands. At present, Mr Rensen supervises research at the Technical University in Delft.
22 April 2008
Central London MCR and playout center being completely refurbished.
Content management and delivery company GlobeCast is updating and enlarging its playout center and MCR in London to increase the capacity of services offered and to provide multi-platform solutions on a worldwide scale.
GlobeCast launched its existing playout system in the summer of 2007. The response from the companys broadcast customers was overwhelmingly positive, increasing demand and leading to this significant investment which will see its London infrastructure double in capacity.
The new multimedia center will be IPTV and Mobile TV capable, and will provide improvements in graphics and flexibility. GlobeCast can offer clients customized packages which will allow them to combine tapeless digital technology with more traditional formats.
The state-of-the-art system will be completed by June, when existing customers such as Arsenal TV and the Poker Channel will be upgraded.
In addition, the upgraded Media Management suite will create an improved, dedicated, purpose-built space to streamline workflows, which allows additional channels to be added more easily and quickly.
This upgrade, together with its growing experience and reputation in this field, demonstrates GlobeCasts commitment to playout services, providing international customers with turnkey packages from traditional linear playout to new multimedia
services, web, IPTV and transcoding.
GlobeCasts office in the heart of London is one of 18 international locations providing worldwide delivery of permanent channels, coverage of news and sporting events and a range of value-added services.
GlobeCast also offers Media Management solutions from its facility in Sunrise, Florida which it shares with HBO Latin America.
22 April 2008
EuroNews begins broadcast via MHz Worldview to over 15 million households in the USA.
EuroNews and MHz Networks announced today that the European news channel airs two news blocks in English on the broadcasters national channel MHz Worldview beginning April 1. The 30-minute newscasts are featured at 8:30 AM and again at 2 PM EST each weekday.
The EuroNews programmes on MHz Worldview are available throughout the US to over 15 million households via broadcast, cable, telecoms operators and satellite.
As an independent, non-commercial TV channel based in the USA, MHz Worldview provides its globally-minded viewers with the best international programmes on one channel, in English or with English subtitles. MHz Worldview is featured via broadcast and/or cable affiliates throughout the nation in Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Utah state, Richmond, VA; Flint, MI; Charleston, IL; Charlottesville, VA; St. Paul, MN; Stanford, CA. and nationwide to viewers via DirecTV and WorldTV satellite.
EuroNews is the leading news channel in Europe covering world news from a European perspective. EuroNews is broadcast simultaneously in seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. Arabic will become EuroNews’ eighth fully-fledged language, and the service will be launched by the channel’s newsroom in 2008.
Philippe Cayla, Chairman and CEO of EuroNews said: “In the USA, EuroNews is already broadcast 24/7 to 2.3 million homes via cable and satellite. With MHz Worldview, 15 million households are now able to discover the channel twice a day; this is a huge opportunity for EuroNews’ development in the US.”
22 April 2008
Hot on the heels of signing KBCS in Washington state, WRN, the international London-headquartered TV and radio transmission company has partnered with WHRV 89.5 FM, a public radio station in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, to re-broadcast its 24 hour news and current affairs channel overnight.
WHRV 89.5FM is part of WHRO, a regional media company that promotes education, culture and citizenship to the citizens of Hampton Roads, Virginia through two television stations, two public service radio stations and four digital radio stations.
Marina Lois, Product Development & Distribution Manager at WRN, says “It’s always a pleasure to team up with stations that promote world views. WHRV is a leading speech radio station in Virginia and WRN is very happy to be able to provide its listeners with news and current affairs programming from its North American network.”
WHRV will now have access to programming from reputable international broadcasters like KBS (Korea), RCI (Canada), RNWI (Netherlands), Channel Africa, Radio Romania, Radio Poland and many others.
WHRV has already had a great listener response to its new programming.
Heather Mazzoni, Programme Director at the station, says “WRN brings our listeners world wide news and public affairs, something that was missing from our market. We have the largest concentration of military personnel in the United States so there’s a keen interest in world wide coverage in the Hampton Roads market.
WRN has over 75 radio stations around the world that take programming from one of its nine news and current affairs networks broadcasting in English, French, German, Russian or Arabic.
22 April 2008
Integration of Pharos Mediator and COPAN System’s Enterprise MAID boosts performance, savings and energy efficiency
Pharos announces a revolutionary new development in storage for broadcast content management with the integration of COPAN Systems’ energy-efficient MAID technology. The combination of Pharos Mediator and COPAN Systems’ Enterprise MAID will deliver integrated disk-based archiving with the threefold advantages of higher access speed, greater reliability and lower power consumption compared with existing datatape-based robotic archive systems.
“The operational benefits of disk-based archiving have become apparent in recent years thanks to increasing storage capacity and access speeds combined with ever greater affordability,” comments Pharos Director of Marketing, Russell Grute. “A disk-based alternative to data tape, like COPAN, may be a better solution for managing persistent data and where multiple versions of large files need to be stored for longer. This is typical in media workflows for broadcasters and service providers who are storing multiple versions of programme titles for compliance and promos, for example. HD will increase storage requirements and the new delivery platforms such as VOD and mobile mean even more data will have to be stored.”
“Using COPAN’s MAID platform, Pharos can now offer disk-based storage as an alternative to robotically-accessed datatape for near-line archiving” adds Pharos Technical Director Spencer Rodd. “Tape cassettes and cartridges are subject to mechanical wear and tear, oxide contamination, tape tangling and snapping, head clogging and guide clogging. They are reasonably safe for infrequent-access archives such as low-stress data-backups in banking but not for broadcasting where the number of reads may be high. Tape management can be complicated and costly. If a cassette or cartridge goes astray, there is no easy way of finding it again. COPAN’s MAID performs automatic checks on drives when they are not being used. If a problem is found with a specific drive, an alternative is assigned in its place and the defective unit flagged for replacement. This self-rebuilding makes the system extremely reliable. Each COPAN drawer can accommodate 14 x 1 terabyte drives. Eight drawers can be housed in a 4 U high 1 metre deep rack-mounting chassis to give a total of 112 terabytes.”
“COPAN Systems is excited to team with Pharos to bring higher performance, and greater operational efficiency to broadcasters’ back up and archive operations,” said Mark Ward, CEO of COPAN Systems. “By implementing Pharos Mediator, a fast online server, with COPAN’s Enterprise MAID solution, broadcasters can also meet the energy-efficiency targets they will be faced with in coming years. The COPAN MAID platform is fundamentally different from transactional storage arrays in that it uses ultra-dense disk configurations enhanced by MAID technology. COPAN powers down disks that have no outstanding IO requests. This reduces power consumption by 80% and lengthens the product life considerably. Our Enterprise MAID delivers the capacity, density and power metrics of a traditional tape silo whilst delivering the performance, data integrity and ease of access of disk arrays.”
COPAN Systems is the leading provider of Enterprise-class MAID storage solutions that deliver the industry’s most cost-effective solutions for the protection and management of persistent data. Purpose built for data rich organisations, its Enterprise MAID architecture dramatically reduces power, cooling and floor space costs in the data centre. Expanding to over 8 petabyte (depending on data de-duplication) within a single chassis, COPAN Systems delivers unmatched density and scalability for large enterprise environments, including healthcare, financial, government, media and service-provider industries. The company is privately held with investments by Austin Ventures, Globespan Capital, Pequot Ventures, Credit Suisse, Gold Hill Capital, Presidio STX, Battery Ventures and NTT Leasing Capital (USA).
Pharos delivers better workflow management to broadcasters and service providers in television, radio, IPTV and telecommunications. Pharos workflow offers greater efficiency for library management, ingest, quality control, storage management, archival, transcoding, post production and playout. Pharos solutions offer a next-generation platform to better manage multiformat content and enable rapid expansion in playout, presentation and publishing. Pharos software architecture, integration and support services enable disparate broadcast and IT processes to be unified across the enterprise.
