Pharos Reports High Interest In Mediator At NAB

A leading communications company, Pharos, has reported a high level of interest in its Mediator desktop content management system among broadcasters and service providers attending the NAB 2008 Convention.
Held in Las Vegas, the show attracted over 105,000 registrants, including a record 28,310 from outside the USA.

Russell Grute, Director of Marketing at Pharos, said: "The transition to more efficient content management is accelerating for broadcasters and service providers.
"Mediator manages content for linear and non-linear distribution, handling programmes for multi-language, HD, SD, IPTV, VoD and mobile side by side, which is now becoming a standard requirement.
"Our latest-generation Mediator integrates a wider range of post-production and graphics capabilities to provide a more efficient workflow for channel management and promotions creation.
"Apple Final Cut Pro and editing solutions from Quantel and Avid can be combined using Mediator workflow, transcoding and transfer management.
"Mediator browse is used for shot selection from anywhere in the system including library, online and archive.
"This can be passed directly to post-production for editing, enabling more promotions to be assembled within existing post-production infrastructures. Additional content can be delivered more efficiently for the expanding range of new services."
Pharos also announced at NAB a revolutionary new development in storage for broadcast content management with the integration of COPAN Systems' energy-efficient MAID technology.
The combination of Pharos Mediator and COPAN Systems' Enterprise MAID will deliver integrated disk-based archiving with the threefold advantages of higher access speed, greater reliability and lower power consumption compared with existing datatape-based robotic archive systems.

Mr Grute said: "The operational benefits of disk-based archiving have become apparent in recent years thanks to increasing storage capacity and access speeds combined with ever greater affordability.
"A disk-based alternative to data tape may prove a better solution for managing persistent data and where multiple versions of large files need to be stored for longer. Many broadcasters and service providers need to store multiple versions of programme titles for compliance and promos, for example.
"HD will increase storage requirements and the new delivery platforms such as VoD and mobile mean even more data will have to be stored."


Pharos delivers workflow management to broadcasters and service providers in television, radio, IPTV and telecommunications.
For 10 years Pharos has continually developed the unique Mediator, Playtime and Pilot desktop broadcast management solutions.
Pharos workflow offers greater efficiency for library management, ingest, quality control, storage management, archival, transcoding, post-production and playout.

(KMcA)