One of Volicon‘s Largest Installations to Date Enhances Compliance and Quality of Service at 56 U.S. Stations
BURLINGTON, Mass. -- April 14, 2008 -- Volicon, the leading provider of media monitoring, recording, archiving, and streaming solutions, today announced ION Media Networks‘ implementation of Volicon Observer® video monitoring systems at each of the network‘s 56 television stations located throughout the United States. Representing one of the largest deployments of Volicon‘s award-winning Observer to a single entity, the Observer systems enable ION Media to maintain across-the-board quality of service (QoS) standards, compliance logging, and ad verification, while providing centralized video monitoring and review capabilities to its management.
The Observer offers a standardized, completely digital capture and monitoring solution to ION Media Networks, which previously relied on a variety of disparate monitoring systems as well as VHS tape-based processes to record and archive aired content. Within each ION station, the Observer provides around-the-clock monitoring and recording of aired broadcasts on two separate digital SDI channels with 30- to 60-day archiving of the video for later review and reference. In addition, ION Media Networks has installed a central Observer monitoring server at its headquarters in St. Petersburg, Fla., which enables company executives to monitor and review content by city and by channel.
With the Observer‘s easy-to-use Web-based interface, ION personnel can access the content from any desktop to troubleshoot and correct transmission errors, demonstrate compliance with regulations such as closed captioning, and provide proof to advertisers that commercial content was aired as contracted.
“The Observer is an essential player in our overall strategy to transition to a digital, file-based infrastructure for broadcasting operations, and we believe it will be an ideal solution for standardizing on a single monitoring platform across all of our stations,” said Shea Clark, director of engineering support and services at ION Media Networks. “The system‘s ability to provide centralized monitoring for a large number of remote stations, its advanced alarming and notification capabilities, and its ubiquitous desktop access were all large selling points.”
“ION Media Networks is a prime example of the momentum that‘s building in the marketplace for the Observer as a monitoring solution for large, geographically disperse media organizations,” said Julius Perl, vice president of marketing at Volicon. “ION‘s strategy to enable centralized headquarters monitoring as well as autonomous capabilities within the local stations provides the best of all worlds and is a great showcase of the Observer‘s capabilities.”
More information about Observer and other Volicon products is available at www.volicon.com.
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About ION Media Networks
ION Media Networks, Inc. owns and operates the nation's largest broadcast television station group and ION Television, which reaches more than 94 million U.S. television households via its nationwide broadcast television, cable, and satellite distribution systems and features popular TV series and movies from the award-winning libraries of RHI Entertainment, CBS Television, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures Television, Twentieth Television, and Warner Bros., among others. Using its digital multicasting capability, the company has launched several digital TV brands, including qubo, a channel for children focusing on literacy and values, and ION Life, a channel dedicated to active living and personal growth. It also has launched Open Mobile Ventures Corporation (OMVION), a business unit focused on the research and development of portable, mobile, and out-of-home transmission technology using the over-the-air digital television spectrum. For more information, visit www.ionmedia.tv.
About Volicon
Volicon develops and markets turnkey digital video archiving and streaming solutions, including the award-winning Observer® multichannel video monitoring and logging system, for the television broadcast and telecommunications industries, cable programmers, cable MSOs, and corporate and government markets. Volicon‘s proprietary video processing system, comprised of a video encoder and streaming engine, gives a large number of users simultaneous access to multiple channels of video content over a network. More information is available at www.volicon.com.
