Harris Corporation D-Series Playout Automation Supports Expansion of Australian 24-Hour Sports Channel — ONE HD

July 21, 2009

Source: Harris Broadcast

Harris Corporation recently completed an expansion of an existing Harris D-Series playout automation system at Macquarie Southern Cross Media’s (MSCM) transmission facility in Canberra.

The expanded automation system supported the launch of the ONE HD channel to Network Ten-affiliated stations on the Australian eastern seaboard. The 24-hour, high-definition sports channel, which began broadcasting on MSCM’s regional stations on July 2, forms part of a larger expansion at Southern Cross, which includes both standard-definition and high-definition channels for the primary markets.

D-Series automation was first installed at Southern Cross more than seven years ago to handle the playout of 20 channels and has been continually expanded as the business has grown. With this latest project, the D-Series system now controls more than 80 channels and a raft of HD devices from digital servers to routers and branding products and includes an interface to third-party asset management systems. To ease the transition and avoid interruption to service, the expansion of the D-Series software at the Southern Cross facility was implemented while its channels remained on air.

“We chose Harris D-Series of all the automation solutions we evaluated because it offered a reliable solution that could withstand the rigors of fast turnaround transmission, while at the same time providing a scalable system that could meet the demands of our business as it grew,” said Raoul Prideaux, director of Engineering & Technology, Southern Cross. “Another key business driver for going the Harris route was the availability and reliability of its local support. The company has an ever-present support team on the ground in Sydney, which was able to significantly contribute to our expansion plans and stress test the system as we continued to add more channels.”

"Our automation products are renowned worldwide for their reliability, flexibility and scalability, and the installation at Southern Cross is further evidence of this,” said Tim Thorsteinson, president of Harris Broadcast Communications. “At Southern Cross, D-Series automation supports mission-critical functions and provides seamless interoperability with third-party products to enable a fully integrated, streamlined transmission solution.”

D-Series provides comprehensive, real-time ingest and playout automation capabilities for enterprise-level, multichannel operations. The system manages a wide variety of playout devices to efficiently automate the delivery of content to multiple platforms and maximise operator productivity.

With D-Series playout automation, broadcasters are able to command a single architecture that optimises efficiency, simplifies facility reconfiguration and can grow to manage more than 1,000 channels.

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