Czech National TV buys 17 VCubes

Czech National TV has recently bought 17 of Merging Technology’s VCube hard disk video player/recorders for its post-production department.
The machines, supplied by Merging’s SI Dealer Interlab, are all connected using a 1Gb Ethernet network to a central multi-terabyte central storage via two RAID servers.
The whole audio post production facility currently uses 12 Fairlights and has a Dolby equipped dubbing theatre with custom built ADRs for dubbing which use the VCubes for synching pictures. Czech TV currently broadcasts on two terrestrial channels and several satellite channels.
David Stein, sales manager of Interlab said: “This sale came about in the end because Merging are listening to customers and are prepared to work towards providing the right solution.”
As a result of a year of testing and working closely with Czech TV by Interlab and Merging Technologies, the VCubes have been customised to the particular requirements of the national TV station. The main requirement was that they are easily operated by staff which often change almost daily and had features which would stand those changes – the VCubes needed to be ‘idiot proof’ with simple controls easily adapted to a variety of tasks.
Czech TV engineer Peukert Otakar said: "Everything is running fine, our engineering staff were surprised at how quickly end users got used to the VCube, VTRs are forgotten for ever and a return back to them would probably not be accepted. Version 1.2 was installed as an experiment on two of the suites and looks like it is doing well, including BWF supporting files bigger than 2GB.
VCube now plays back the 4 to 6 tracks of audio with very good streaming at a continuous and constant data rate. Bravo Merging!"
(CD)