Channel 4 Television has chosen Pharos Communications Mediator media management system to enable the UK broadcaster to migrate from its videotape-based library to a file-based content archiving and access system.
The new installation, dubbed the Media Access Project, is beginning this month and will be complete by June 2007. When complete, the project will facilitate ingest of all incoming programs and clips at full 50Mb/s I-frame-only MPEG-2 transmission resolution to a 36TB Isilon server storage cluster as well as at browse-quality. Content on the Isilon cluster will be transferred to Pinnacle servers for playout.
The Isilon server storage cluster will be interfaced to a near-online Sony Petasite data archive using LTO3 800GB data tape cartridges. The Petasite will have a 1PB capacity, making it one of the largest data tape system ever installed in Europe.
Pharos Mediator automatically tracks content flow from initial acquisition to playout and post-transmission storage.
For more information, visit: www.pharos-comms.com.
