TNS expands with Pharos Mediator

Technicolor Network Services UK, part of the Services division of Thomson, has invested in Pharos Communications workflow management and control systems for its new multi-channel playout facility at Chiswick Park, London.
The new facility went on air in August, with immediate capacity for eight 1+1 resilient channels and capacity for upward of a further thirty channels. The suite supports both SD and HD playout and is designed with scale and cost-efficiency in mind.
Pharos Mediator now plays a central role in the facility, providing workflow management which integrates asset tracking, rules management, reporting and status. The system delivered includes Pharos Pilot which enables all master control room functions to be performed via touch screens with an intuitive graphic user interface.
Alec Stichbury, Vice President of Technology at Technicolor Network Services UK, said: "We chose Pharos on the basis of their proven achievements, flexibility and speed of delivery. They are a very dynamic team; they listen and they deliver. The Pharos media asset management system handles delivery from the ingest video server into the playout server and enables us to use highly cost-efficient IT-standard hard-disk-drives for online archiving. It provides us with the tools we need to ingest digital content from different sources, generate MPEG4 proxy browse copies and ISOtag the audio with relevant language descriptors. The new installation has enabled us to reduce our costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market for delivering additional languages and channels to our clients existing inventory of assets, compared with pulling tape stocks from a library and managing time consuming re-edits and ingest.
"The Pharos Pilot control system allows our Operational and Engineering staff to monitor any channel and, if necessary, bypass every step of the transmission chain to isolate a fault in any of the playout hardware. The system also allows us to accommodate temporary equipment if needed for a specific project. We certainly wouldn't go back to the traditional panel-per-product approach: far too many buttons, and far too complicated! Pharos Pilot is easy to drive both for the operators and engineers. Our staff have really flown with this system."
Technicolor Network Services (TNS), part of Thomsons Services division, provides clients with broadcast playout services by offering an online digital content distribution network that supports multiple origination platforms including cable, broadcast and direct-to-home. In addition, TNS addresses the Out of Home advertising marketplace with cinema advertising and other out of home ad placement for major advertisers.
(GB)