The Seagate(R) Barracuda(R) ES Series has been selected as the hard
drive of choice for the Omneon MediaDeck(TM) media servers and
MediaGrid(TM) active storage systems that will enable NBC's
coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to be held August 8-24. The media
servers and storage systems will allow NBC to produce an unprecedented
3,600 hours of coverage during the Beijing Olympic Games -- a three-fold
increase over the coverage during the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
Picture this: A gymnast leaps onto the balance beam. By the time
she makes a dismount, NBC's broadcast footage has already been
stored on the Seagate Barracuda ES hard drive in Omneon's Beijing
MediaGrid active storage system, traveled 6,350 miles to the New York
MediaGrid active storage system, processed, and quickly transmitted as
compelling coverage on television and http://www.nbcolympics.com/.
The innovative workflow begins in China with 20 MediaDeck servers,
powered by the Barracuda ES hard drives, which are used to digitize and
ingest HD feeds. Each MediaDeck server contains both high-resolution and
low-resolution codecs to simultaneously create both full-resolution IMX
or XDCAM HD files and low-resolution proxy files of all recordings. The
resulting files are actively transferred, while still being recorded, to
the MediaGrid active storage system. Then, using Omneon's ProCast
CDN(TM) content distribution system, the proxies are transferred
thousands of miles from the MediaGrid active storage system in Beijing
to a second MediaGrid storage system in New York, again powered by
Seagate Barracuda ES hard drives, where producers can browse, view, and
edit the files.
"NBC needs to capture every second of every competition at
multiple venues in China, quickly turning them into dynamic programming
for television and Internet broadcasting -- nothing can fall through the
cracks," said Bill Schilling, marketing director at Seagate.
"We welcomed the opportunity to work with Omneon to support NBC for
its Olympics coverage. Omneon is the market leader for developing
storage solutions for broadcast video, which is becoming more prevalent
via the Web, especially for hugely popular sporting events like the
Olympics."
"Because the workflow must be seamless and the nature of the
programming is so significant, we decided to use Seagate's
enterprise hard drives, which are the best fit for our needs in terms of
reliability, best-in-class design and unrivaled performance," said
Geoff Stedman, SVP products and markets at Omneon.
Broadcast coverage of the Beijing Olympics will begin on August 8
along with coverage via the web at http://www.nbcolympics.com
About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and
marketing of hard disc drives and storage solutions, providing products
for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile
Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's
business model leverages technology leadership and world-class
manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its
global customers, with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in
all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to
providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to
meet the world's growing demand for information storage.
For more information, visit http://www.seagate.com or call
831/439-2499.
About NBC Olympics
NBC, "America's Olympic Network," owns the exclusive
U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games, television's most powerful
property, through 2012, which includes Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in
2010 and London in 2012. From August 8-24, 2008 NBC Universal will
present an unprecedented 3,600 hours of coverage, highlighted by NBC in
primetime with live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball. In August
2004, 203 million viewers watched as the networks of NBC Universal --
NBC(R), MSNBC(R), CNBC(R), USA(R), Bravo(R), Telemundo(R), and
NBC's HD affiliates -- offered a then record 1,210 hours of Olympic
coverage from Athens. For additional information, go to
http://nbcolympics.com/, a year-round destination for fans of Olympic
sports, featuring news, Beijing previews, athlete features, expert
blogs, photos, Olympic video from the NBC archives and social tools
enabling users to build communities around their favorite sports, post
comments and blogs.
About Omneon
Omneon, Inc. is a leading provider of scalable 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(TM) media
server system. 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 55 countries on six continents.
Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered
trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC in the United States and/or other
countries. Barracuda ES is either a trademark or registered trademark of
Seagate Technology LLC in the United States and/or other countries. All
other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their
respective owners. When referring to hard drive capacity, one gigabyte,
or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one
trillion bytes. Your computer's operating system may use a
different standard of measurement and report a lower capacity. In
addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other
functions, and thus will not be available for data storage. Seagate
reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or
specifications.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Worldwide
Videotex Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Copyright 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights
reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.