HBO has placed a $5 million order for Grass Valley HD cameras, servers and routers to help distribute its 26 channels in HD.
The Grass Valley cameras will be used in HBO’s digital production studios in New York City, and the servers and routers will be installed in HBO’s main playout facility in Hauppauge, NY.
As part of a new upgrade to its facilities, HBO has ordered 30 K2 HD media servers, including eight, four-channel servers for its network playout operations; 12, two-channel time delay servers (for multiple time zone support); two, four-channel ingest servers; two, 40-channel breakaway servers (for late- breaking and live events); two, two-channel on-demand servers; and four, four-channel recovery servers.
To help produce original content for the new HD channels, HBO ordered five Grass Valley LDK 8000 WorldCam multiformat HD cameras for its digital production studios in New York City. An existing Grass Valley Concerto Series router at the production facility will be expanded with new modules for HD signal conversion.
HBO is now in the process of migrating from its existing Grass Valley Profile XP Media Platform servers to the latest-generation Grass Valley K2 Media Server and Media Client systems and expects to complete the process by the end of the year.
The Hauppauge facility will also upgrade its signal distribution infrastructure with the installation of a new 512 x 512 Trinix HD routing switcher, populated with a 256 x 256 HD I/O matrix for its core routing. HBO will add two new 128 x 128 Trinix routers for master control activities. A Grass Valley Apex audio router is also being installed to complement the new HD video servers and video routers. These new systems will work in tandem with the facility’s existing Grass Valley Venus routers, which have been in operation for the past 10 years.
For information, visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.