Article Overview

New Range of Channel-in-a-Box Solutions from Snell

New Turnkey Solutions Simplify Playout, Provide Maximum Flexibility and Versatility for Smaller-Scale Operations

At the 2011 NAB Show, Snell will introduce a new family of turnkey channel-in-a-box playout solutions based on its industry-leading Morpheus automation technology and Integrated Content Engine (ICE). Tailored to television news, sports, and multi-language playout, the channel-in-a-box solutions will enable regional media and broadcast companies to bring new channels to air more quickly and at a significantly lower cost.

"In today's cost-driven environment, customers are increasingly looking for affordable playout solutions that will easily integrate into their existing workflows. Solutions must reduce the cost and complexity of playout, while maintaining performance and reliability in critical operations. Our channel-in-a-box packages are tailor-made for smaller-scale operations and applications where versatility, flexibility, and overall cost are critical business factors," said Jamie Gatto, automation product manager at Snell. "ICE combines Snell's broadcast know-how with the best of IT technology to deliver a unique software-based multi-function system that supports a wide range of programming and channel types, and provides the resilience for highly dynamic environments such as live news."

Snell's channel-in-a-box solution for news provides clean and accurate transitions between live feeds and the content played back from ICE. Reaction time is important in live, breaking news, and ICE's built-in functionality for rapid response frees production staff to focus on the creative aspects of making compelling news programs. Because ICE is file-agnostic and supports almost any industry compression standard, a single playlist can contain multiple video, audio, and graphics formats. Thus, operators can save time and simplify operations by avoiding unnecessary file transfers, transcoding, format conversion, and file rewrapping.

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For sports television, Snell's channel-in-a-box solution enables broadcasters to maximize revenues from programs, controlling playout to ensure the optimum number of commercial insertions while still making sure that viewers catch all the action. ICE facilitates HD/SD simulcasts so that broadcasters can satisfy all programming demands throughout the transition from SD to HD operations. Multiple inputs into ICE allow external advanced graphics to be "mixed" with live signals from remote sites while inserting specialized graphics, such as scoreboard tickers and RSS feeds, and final routing to the desired destination.

The Snell channel-in-a-box solution for multi-language playout integrates a number of advanced audio features for sophisticated broadcast operations, such as the ability to broadcast multiple language versions — a facility normally associated with higher-cost systems. ICE supports audio track-tagging strategies from various manufacturers to facilitate the broadcast of different languages on each HD/SDI audio pair. These pairs can then be rearranged for playing out to different audiences without the need to rewrap the file. In addition, audio-overs provide the flexibility for users to associate up to four different languages per channel of video playout.

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About Snell

Snell is a leading innovator in digital media technology and provides broadcasters and global media companies with a comprehensive range of solutions to create, better manage, and streamline the distribution of content for today's multi-screen world. Snell provides the tools necessary to transition seamlessly and cost-effectively to HDTV, stereoscopic 3D, and 3Gbps operations. Headquartered in the U.K., Snell serves more than 2,000 broadcasters, post facilities, and global media companies in more than 100 countries through its worldwide team of sales and support personnel.

Snell

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