FREMONT, CALIF.— Digital Nirvana announced that Discovery Communications selected its Monitor IQ broadcast monitoring system. The system will be used to provide 24/7 confidence monitoring for 45 live channels for Discovery North America’s broadcast operations. Discovery is upgrading to the latest version of Monitor IQ. For a large cable network like Discovery, Monitor IQ’s asynchronous serial interface is a key functionality. With an ASI, Monitor IQ can ingest and store MPEG-2 streams from ATSC/QAM and HD-SDI feeds. Its IP recording feature enables one server to monitor multiple channels — without need for a separate set top box for each channel.
“ASI functionality means less hardware for across the North America services and provides greater data metrics with regards to DPI and CALM logging,” said Tim Mazzacua, director of TOC Operations for Discovery Communications, Inc. “By reducing the total equipment footprint, we can free up valuable rack space. Additionally, the Digital Nirvana system gives us a much better idea of what our customers are actually seeing.”
Arco Groenenberg, director of sales and marketing for Broadcast Products, Digital Nirvana, said Monitor IQ provides benefits to large, subscriber-based networks: “Networks run the risk of losing subscribers if there are frequent signal losses. Often the provider doesn’t know there’s a signal loss until a customer reports the problem. Monitor IQ lets operators keep track of their channel feeds and react to any signal loss or impairment before customers call.
