Grass Valley debuts new K2 media server & media client system

Blending the latest advancements in IT technologies with its deep experience in video and audio processing, management and storage, Thomson has announced the latest addition to its Emmy Award-winning line of storage devices — the Grass Valley brand K2 media server and media client system.
Designed specifically for the sharing and reuse of digital media assets, the open-standards based K2 system delivers the high capacity, throughput, concurrency, and availability that media-driven environment demand — all while maintaining the reliability, redundancy, and scalability for which Grass Valley is known. The result is a system that supports, IT-centric, file-based playout and distribution workflows, simplifies installation and operation, and provides new levels of network control — all at nearly half the cost of other servers.
“Instead of using consumer desktop technologies to cobble together systems that are vulnerable to single points of failure, we’ve blended the latest IT technologies with our unmatched video-engineering expertise to create a system that is highly reliable, straightforward to construct, and that delivers entirely new levels of bandwidth flexibility and network-based control,” said Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business within Thomson.
The K2 system is built around more advanced IT technologies than any other. As a result, it enables a file-based workflow without limitations—providing real-time access to video-automated ingest of files from leading delivery services, remote operation, and a full range of compressed distribution solutions for cost-effective operations among other capabilities.
Among the K2 system’s core technologies is the highly efficient iSCSI (Internet SCSI) networking protocol that delivers high throughput and storage area network (SAN) performance over standard Ethernet connections.
Using Grass Valley’s patent-pending optimization techniques, the K2 system provides deterministic bandwidth and availability for critical applications such as editing and playout.
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