As part of a major investment and upgrade project, India's state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan will install a total of 37 Geevs Servers from Gee Broadcast at its facilities across India. The broadcaster has also implemented a Dalet Media Library system to digitalize the national media archives.
The Geevs SDE1 model being supplied to Doordarshan will provide VTR replacement, and also includes scheduled Playout facilities and multichannel operation capability. Each server supports simultaneous ingest and up to two channel playout is. Internal storage included with each Geevs provides RAID 5 protected storage for over 20 hours' worth of material. The servers will be installed at 16 different locations country-wide.
Geevs was selected after a Global Tender and evaluation process and are being supplied via Mhatre Electronics Pvt. Ltd, Gee Broadcast's local partner for this tender. The company will also provide local support and services following the installation.
Working with local integrator HCL Infosystems Ltd, Dalet Digital Media Systems has installed a media asset management platform that facilitates the migration of existing tape-based content as well as newly created content into a centralized digital repository.
Doordarshan's archives include thousands of hours of programmes, covering India's cultural, historical and religious events, current affairs as well as government and political commentary. Most of this archival existed only in tape-based versions, making it difficult to search and share.
The search and browse engine in Dalet Media Library enables archived material to be easily accessed both locally by workstations connected to the network and remotely via any PC with a web connection.
"The Doordarshan project is one of the first media asset management initiatives in India's public broadcast market," said Anurag Kumar, Deputy General Manager for HCL Infosystems. "This first phase constitutes the heart of the enterprise system. It provides the core, fundamental workflow in which media - existing, present and future - will be stored in a central database and readily available in just about any format by any authorized user regardless of location."
The new Doordarshan digital workflow incorporates NetApp NAS technology for ingest and production online storage, and IBM tape library for nearline storage, controlled by Front Porch Diva HSM. Dalet Media Library manages all the media operations such as conversions of media into proxies for fast online viewing, transfers between different storage units, indexing of the video content. Dalet also provides tools for search, retrieval, storyboarding, exchange and integration to ensure content distribution.
