BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Aug. 14, 2007 -- Volicon, a leading provider of media monitoring, recording, archiving, and streaming solutions, today announced that Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (TSRHC) in Dallas is using the Observer® desktop video monitoring system to scan six local broadcast channels for references to the hospital. With its new Observer system, TSRHC can capture broadcast press coverage and leverage it in informational and promotional presentations to its board of trustees, patient families, community, friends, volunteers and staff.
TSRHC strives to improve the lives of children worldwide through innovative research and teaching programs and provides the highest quality orthopedic treatment to Texas children at no charge to patient families.
"We really depend on private groups and benefit events for support, and we try to get as much positive exposure as possible to encourage continued generosity from fellow Texans," said Roger Bell, director of media services at TSRHC. "Local media often cover stories about our patients and their families and how they've received care through the hospital. We have celebrities coming out to visit the kids as well, and the Observer gives us a very efficient means of finding those stories, whether they consist of a lengthy profile or a quick mention of just a few seconds."
TSRHC is one of the nation's leading pediatric centers for the treatment of orthopedic conditions, certain related neurological disorders, and learning disorders such as dyslexia. The hospital relies on support through gifts from individuals, corporations and foundations. Prior to adopting a six-channel Observer system from Volicon, the hospital used VHS-based recording systems to capture video, and then relied on staff to review taped broadcasts manually. Now staff can use keyword searches at the desktop to locate and pull up recorded content for review.
Bell and his colleagues are finding that along with providing significant time savings, the Observer is allowing them to uncover far more "hits" than they had found with their earlier tape-based monitoring system. Able to get a more accurate record of coverage received by TSRHC, the hospital can demonstrate the efficacy of its public relations programs and estimate the investment that would have been required to get an equivalent amount of air time on television.
Based on a powerful, proprietary streaming video engine and player, the Observer gives a large number of users simultaneous access to multiple channels of live and archived content from their desktops using a Microsoft Internet Explorer Web interface. Users can log their own and competitors' broadcasts, as well as search, retrieve, analyze, and export video clips with metadata, locally or remotely. The system archives instantly accessible content for up to a year via RAID-5 storage hardware. The export functionality of the Observer makes it easy for operators to share assets internally or repurpose them for external distribution via the Web or other platforms. TSRHC plans to use recorded clips on DVDs for its board and as part of recognition packages for donor groups.
More information about the Observer and other Volicon products is available at www.volicon.com.
# # #
About Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children
Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children is one of the nation's leading pediatric centers for the treatment of orthopedic conditions, certain related neurological disorders, and learning disorders such as dyslexia. There is no charge to patient families for treatment at the hospital, and admission is open to Texas children from birth to 18 years of age. For more information, to volunteer or to make a donation, please call (214) 559-5000 or (800) 421-1121 or visit www.tsrhc.org.
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.
