Content area
Full text
A New Facility Supports The Company's Sophisticated Requirements
Burbank, CA-based TVN Entertainment Corporation is a provider of pay-per-view movies and events to both cable and C-Band directto-home customers. With 64 streams of video being uplinked around the clock, monitoring is no simple task. Now, with the help of a newly rebuilt, futuristic-styled facility and a full complement of monitoring and production equipment, the company seems well-equipped to handle its demanding digital operations both now and into the future.
TVN's monitor room is circular in design, with two semicircular work benches that feature an impressive collection of state-of-the-art equipment. "It looks like the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise," boasted Tom Shelburne, project director for converting TVN to a digital environment.
The room is equipped with several Tektronix oscilloscopes that serve as digital monitoring devices. Thus, not only can operators monitor outbound feeds, but they also supervise downlinks off the satellite with two 40-Channel serial digital NVOD SeaChange file servers, a 256 x 256 Grass Valley Group 7000 Router, a Telect 70 MHz IF router, Ross Video switcher, Nvision router, Tekniche conversion equipment, two GVG 7000 SDI 128 x 32 uplink and downlink routers, and 200 Digitran DTE 7150 IRD digital receiver cards. On the wall are six ElectroHome 4052 flat screen monitors on which 64 live feeds are displayed.
The highly complex monitor room was originally designed to handle 200 streams of video, so Shelburne was looking at installing 200 monitors. But at the 1999 NAB he spotted the Avitech VCC...