Omneon Video Networks today announced that Deutsche Welle, a leading provider of German television and radio programming to Europe and North America, has installed a second Omneon Spectrum™ media server system to provide a shared control and storage environment for recording, editing, and playout of content in three of the network’s studios. The new media server system complements an earlier Omneon Spectrum™ installation, completed in April 2002, that supports playout of Deutsche Welle’s DW-TV and German TV channels.

“The main reasons we were attracted to the Omneon Spectrum™ media server system were its excellent scalability and very open platform, both of which allow us to grow as our needs demand,” said Gerald Kampe, system administrator at Deutsche Welle. “Along with a very good user interface and integrated support system, the Omneon server has supplied us with much greater capacity than we’ve ever had, with less reliance on tape-based operations and greater opportunity for future expansion.”

Scheduled to go live in August, the new server system from Omneon will replace the Betacarts previously used for playout from Deutsche Welle studios with 1.3 TB of disk-based storage operating under the control of Pebble Beach Systems Neptune automation. Acting as a common server for the three studios, the server system accepts material from two Betacarts or via file transfers from an AVID Unity™ MediaNet or the other Omneon Spectrum™ media server system already in use at Deutsche Welle.

The Omneon Spectrum™ media server system installed previously at Deutsche Welle supports playout of two channels of Deutsche Welle’s DW-TV, a 24-hour service that features live news, features, documentaries, and other programming. DW-TV broadcasts German and English on one channel plus two hours a day in Spanish on another. In addition, the server system supports German TV, a pay TV channel that provides content from Germany’s ARD and ZDF broadcast networks, as well as the German-language content of DW-TV, to North American cable and satellite subscribers.

Delivering exceptionally cost-effective and flexible performance, the Omneon Spectrum™ media server provides a reliable and scalable infrastructure for broadcast playout and storage applications. Omneon’s server system is built on an open architecture that allows it to support a broad variety of third-party applications for control and transmission, media management, archiving, and collaborative production. As a result, stored media can be shared among many users and applications.

The scalable, distributed architecture of the modular Omneon Spectrum™ server system also offers users maximum flexibility in scaling system components and capacity in small or large increments as desired. The system is available in a broad range of configurations to meet the specific needs of each installation.

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.

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