BBC Arabic TV launches with Omneon Spectrum servers for tapeless workflow

News — By Samer Marzouq on June 3, 2008 at 5:44 am

Omneon announced that BBC World Service has selected Omneon Spectrum media servers to provide ingest and playout for its new news-based Arabic TV service, which will reach viewers in 22 countries across the Middle East.

The free BBC Arabic satellite and cable television channel, with studio facilities in the U.K., launched in March with 12 hour service that will expand to 24 hours in the summer.

At the center of a tapeless workflow at BBC Arabic TV, one Spectrum system ingests 13 channels while the second Spectrum system delivers the main service to air, making full use of its 10 output channels across a redundant pair of playout servers under IBIS ServerPlay control, interfacing with DaletPlus News Suite, an AP ENPS newsroom system, and Vizrt graphics.

Deployment of the Spectrum servers enables the new broadcaster to take advantage of the systems’ rock solid reliability to ensure broadcast continuity, an open architecture that enables tight integration with other
best-of-breed systems for optimal workflow efficiency, and modular design to allow easy addition of capacity and features without disruption.

‘People all over the world trust the BBC to provide reliable information, so we are particularly pleased that they have trusted us to provide such an important part of this new system,’ said Geoff Stedman, senior vice president of marketing and products at Omneon.

BBC World Service has placed an order for two additional Spectrum systems to be deployed for ingest and playout for the forthcoming BBC Persia TV channel, which will launch later this year.

The BBC first began broadcasting radio news to the Arab world 70 years ago and now operates a multimedia news service for the Middle East and North Africa with a measured audience of more than 14 million on radio and online.

The industry’s most scalable, reliable, and cost-effective video server, the Omneon Spectrum system sets the standard for media production, playout, and archive applications.