Public Television Broadcaster WUSF Selects Seachange Digital Media Server System
After 35 years of service to the greater Tampa Bay, Florida community, PBS member station WUSF (Channel 16) has a new home featuring state-of-the-art digital video operations based on SeaChange International, Inc.s (NASDAQ: SEAC) Broadcast MediaCluster digital media server system.
Located on the Tampa campus of the University of South Florida, WUSFs all-digital facility was created to immediately leverage digital technologies across broadcast and production services and to position WUSF for new opportunities such as multichannel broadcasting, DTV and Webcasting to extend its broad ‘Power of Education’ initiative. WUSF airs its programming and promotions in MPEG-2 from a SeaChange Broadcast MediaCluster 830 media server system. Taking advantage of the synergies of digital technologies for todays television operations, WUSF deployed its Broadcast MediaCluster 830 with integrated automation software from Harris and an Ampex digital tape archive supported by Avalons archive manager.
“WUSF is enjoying a dramatic transformation which will rapidly translate to a wider range of services for Tampa. We chose SeaChange because it supports this vision cost-effectively without compromising reliability and scalability,” said Bill Buxton, station manager, WUSF. “Improved video quality and operational savings are the immediate impact of our new architecture. Long term, our Broadcast MediaCluster will dovetail nicely with our plans to multicast additional streams of educational programming and a wider variety of services to the community.”
WUSF-TV, a vital resource of the University of South Florida (USF), provides outstanding educational, cultural and public affairs television programming, productions and community outreach service to its customers. As the public television service of USF, the station has for over 35 years excelled in supplying educational services and programming to the fast-growing region of west central Florida. Expanding the ‘shelf space’ of public television in the community, WUSF-TV offers services beyond broadcast programming.WUSF-TV staff and management have created a variety of learning systems distributed on CD-ROM, DVD and digital broadcast. The station partners with other USF units and off-campus organizations in productions of teleconferencing, distance learning and multi-media courseware projects.
Products in SeaChanges Broadcast MediaCluster family are comprised of ‘server nodes, which leverage SeaChanges patented MediaCluster architecture to scale gracefully in storage and I/O capacity, while providing fault-resilience without costly mirroring of audio and video data. The Broadcast MediaCluster 830 series utilizes eight disk drives (9, 18, 36, 72 or 180GB) per node with up to 28 I/Os in a seven-node Broadcast MediaCluster. Total storage on a seven-node Broadcast MediaCluster 830 approaches 7TB (678 Hours @ 24Mbps) using 180GB disk drives.
About SeaChange International
SeaChange International, Inc. is the world leader in digital video systems. The Company creates powerful server and software systems that manage, store and distribute professional quality digital video. SeaChanges innovative products are based on a scalable, distributed software architecture and standard technology components to continually deliver exponential improvements in digital video cost-performance. As a result, SeaChange enables broadband, broadcast, satellite and new media companies to streamline operations and reduce costs, allowing for expanded services, new applications and increased revenues. SeaChange is headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts and has product development, support and sales offices throughout the world.
