Japan Satellite Television (JSTV) has extended its use of the Morpheus broadcast automation system from Snell to facilitate quick access to program content for its new prime-time broadcasts on JSTV 2. As JSTV expands its broadcast offering onto JSTV 2, the Morpheus system streamlines the management and transfer of content for playout.
Steve Palmer, broadcast operations manager at Trifield, a London-based multimedia solutions company that oversees JSTV technical operations, said that after a successful trial of programming on JSTV 2, it became clear that if the service were to become permanent, they would need to establish a fault-tolerant solution for random access to archive content. The Morpheus system had already proven to be an ideal solution for JSTV 1, and it offered a smart solution for JSTV 2, eliminating the need for complex custom interfaces or expensive middleware to utilize archived program content.
Serving as the primary automation system for both JSTV 1 and JSTV 2 playout, Morpheus gives operators a clear view of system status, including the health of devices under its control and the location and movement of content to be delivered, complete with frame-accurate time data.
Morpheus also manages and transfers content from the moment a playlist is loaded, automatically transferring material from the archive server and purging expired content from the playout server, as required. If a program is missing on the archive server, Morpheus will automatically obtain it from the backup tape system instead — without any operator intervention.
The integration includes Snell's TX 500 series master control switcher, Morpheus HUD (head-up display), PSP (programmable script panel), and IQLOGO1 logo inserter. The solution also incorporates an ExaStore Clustered NAS archive server supplied by Eurotech.
