Omneon today announced that Canal Overseas, which provides 24/7 satellite distribution of France’s Canal+ programming to 500,000 subscribers in Africa, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific, has based its new HD playout system on the company’s Spectrum™ HD media servers. Like all Spectrum servers, the Spectrum HD provides flexibility, scalability, and reliability, and in addition features the capability to embed World System Teletext (WST) data in the VANC (vertical ancillary) portion of the HD-SDI signal when programming is ingested, which was of particular importance to Canal Overseas.

“We selected the Spectrum system after a rigorous tender process because it was the only server that met all our requirements,” said Gino Ma Paw Youn, Canal Overseas technical broadcast director. “Besides offering the flexibility to incorporate WST, we also required absolute reliability for 24/7 operation at the highest QOS level, multichannel operation, scalability, and seamless integration into our existing workflow.”

At Canal Overseas, the two 10 TB Spectrum servers offer eight channels of ingest along with 20 channels of dual-output (HD and downconverted SD) for preview and playout. They are part of a facility makeover from SD to HD that also relies on DBOS automation from SGT, and on Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive™ middleware integrated with a Sun Microsystems® StorageTek™ library for content storage management. The system was installed in late 2007, and went on the air in January.

Canal+ is the largest French pay-television group. Besides broadcasting, Canal+ programming from its facility in St. Cloud, near Paris, Canal Overseas produces some of its own programming for the international market.

“At Canal Overseas, the Omneon Spectrum system was the key to enabling an existing workflow to be both streamlined and upgraded from SD to HD,” said Geoff Stedman, Omneon vice president of worldwide marketing. “The fact that the Spectrum system enables a broadcaster to use the VANC signal is especially important to a large international broadcaster like Canal Overseas looking for efficient playout of subtitled programming.”

Spectrum video servers use modular design and industry standard connectivity to create a highly configurable and reliable system. Multiple units can be linked to scale storage capacity and bandwidth, and new components can be added easily, usually without taking the system offline.

About Omneon
Omneon is a leading provider of flexible media server and active storage systems that optimize workflow productivity and on-air reliability for the production, distribution, and management of digital media. Omneon is a pioneer in the use of advanced IT technologies and open systems for broadcast applications, producing a modular and expandable video server architecture in the Omneon Spectrum. The company's MediaGrid active storage system delivers centralized content storage that is scalable in capacity, bandwidth, and media-processing power. The company has an extensive global presence with customers in 45 countries on six continents. Omneon is on the Web at www.Omneon.com.

About Canal Overseas
Canal Overseas is a fully owned subsidiary of CANAL+ Group, part of Vivendi Group Canal Overseas is in charge of international development for CANAL+ Group and is also in charge of French overseas departments and territories. Canal Overseas brings premium channels as well as bouquets of thematic channels and services through direct-to-home satellite to more than 700.000 homes. Canal Overseas is presently the leading provider of French-speaking pay-television services in French overseas territories — Caribbean, Indian Ocean, South Pacific, and in sub-Saharan Africa. The company’s know-how in terms of broadcasting, adaptation of television offering to local tastes, optimization of marketing schemes, and partnerships with local shareholders is rather unique in the industry and has proved successful in all its ventures.

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