Home Box Office said it now employs 26 channels that contain content, which includes HD. One of its recent investments to support its overall high-def infrastructure includes a large cache of Grass Valley HD cameras, servers and routers from Thomson.
The servers and routers will be installed in HBO’s primary play-out facility in Hauppauge, N.Y., while the Grass Valley cameras will be used for the premium cable network’s digital production studios in New York City, according to HBO.
For original HD content production, HBO will use five Grass Valley LDK 8000 WorldCam multiformat HD cameras. An existing Grass Valley Concerto Series router at the production facility will be expanded with new modules for HD signal conversion.
Also, HBO has ordered 30 K2 HD media servers, to include:
- Eight 4-channel servers for network operations
- Twelve 2-channel time delay servers for multiple time zones
- Two 4-channel ingest servers
- Two 40-channel breakaway servers (for late-breaking and live events)
- Two 2-channel on-demand servers
- Four 4-channel recovery servers
HBO has also begun migrating from Grass Valley’s Profile XP Media Platform servers to its next-gen K2 media server system. The installations are set to be completed by the end of 2007.
Check the Aug. 22 issue of TV Technology for more details.
