GlobeCast’s Los Angeles facilityLOS ANGELES—As a leading global provider of content management and worldwide transmission services for professional broadcast delivery, broadcasters around the world rely on GlobeCast to provide top-notch management and transport of nearly 10 million hours of video and other rich media yearly.
The global nature of content delivery makes standards conversion a key process in our transmission of media to direct-to-home satellite platforms, cable, IPTV, mobile and broadband headends, and other networks.
MOVE TO NEWER TECHNOLOGY
High-volume format and standards conversion is a big part of our operation and for the past decade, we have relied on Snell’s Kudos Plus CVR 450 analog converters to meet our broadcast clients’ needs. However, staying ahead of the technological curve meant recently overhauling our encoding systems and upgrading from analog to digital, with an upgrade to our conversion systems as well.
We wanted a cost-effective high-density solution that would be easy to use, and the four-channel, Snell 1RU KudosPro LC4000 motion-adaptive standards converter proved the best fit for our requirements. Given the track record of our existing Snell systems and the appealing feature set, price, and design of the LC4000, this was an easy choice.
Snell came to our facilities and demonstrated the LC4000 for our engineers and operators, who responded very positively. The unit features two easy-to-use display options, allowing operators to use the front panel or a Web interface for configuration and control. The LC4000 simplifies navigation of conversion choices and settings, and our engineers especially appreciate the fact that it’s truly an “anything in, anything out” box.The LC4000 supports SD/HD/3G linear standards conversion, as well as up-, down-, cross-conversion with automatic and manual aspect ratio conversion. Other capabilities include proc amp settings, gamma adjustment, noise reduction, and adjustment of audio delay. These, and other dynamic features, allow us to fix any incoming video, for linear channel transmission applications or ad hoc services. Even with a minimal amount of training, our operators can use these features very effectively.
We now enjoy remote control of the systems, as well as extensive conversion and conditioning options. The LC4000’s functionality helps us process content more efficiently and their high density and compact footprint also saves space and power consumption.
GlobeCast prides itself on maintaining state-of-the-art facilities, and to that end we purchased and installed 12 Snell LC4000 standards converters, which support 40 simultaneous conversions within our global content delivery chain.
The process of putting the Snell systems online was straightforward and uneventful. We were able to incorporate them into our infrastructure almost immediately, and setup was simple. Even so, engineers from Snell’s Burbank office were on site to ensure that everything operated properly.
With the installation of our new LC4000 systems, we can offer an entirely new generation of conversion technology in the Americas, and one we know that enables faster, more flexible processing of high-value content for worldwide distribution.
Andrew Kim oversees baseband and compression system operation for Globe- Cast Americas in Los Angeles. He may be contacted atandrew.kim@globecast.com.
For additional information, contact Snell at 818-556-2616 or visitwww.snellgroup.com.
