Grass Valley K2 Central TX Supports 100-Mbps Playout on 20 Channels

Grass Valley has introduced the Grass Valley K2 Central TX shared-storage system with support of 100-Mbps playout on each of up to 20 channels at what the company says is a competitive price. The goal, says Mike Cronk, SVP, strategic marketing, Grass Valley, is to make it easy to migrate from legacy play-to-air storage and server systems, offering streamlined content delivery from camera to playout.

“Grass Valley is excited to introduce into the market the first broadcast server system with 6-TB–drive technology,” says Cronk. “Combined with our K2 Summit 3G client, the new Grass Valley K2 Central TX delivers outstanding performance for multichannel-server applications.”

K2 Central TX’s 6-TB–drive technology combined with K2 Summit 3G means that broadcasters can enjoy greater storage capacity with support for all major automation and third-party storage providers, ensuring a seamless switchover from legacy products. And, with its client direct-connect model, which eliminates the need for external switches and database management, K2 Central TX lowers the overall complexity of the integration, meaning that a new multichannel server with shared storage can be installed quickly and efficiently.

Integration of 10 GbE high-speed network connectivity and higher FTP throughput enables K2 Central TX to simplify delivery of content into shared storage. The variety of codecs supported by K2 servers allows back-to-back playback of clips in a variety of formats without the need for transcoding, further speeding the process of content delivery and use in various destinations. In addition, K2 Central TX works with multiple editing clients — including Grass Valley Edius, Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, and Avid Media Composer, supported through two 10 GigE connections to deliver services via FTP and CIFS.

The new storage system comes with several layers of redundancy. RAID-1 data redundancy ensures that disk failure will not result in dropped frames or loss of content. Client disconnection affects only channels associated with that client until the connection is re-established, and power supplies are hot-swappable, which means that a power-supply failure will not disrupt system operation.

Comparing other storage systems on the market, users will find Grass Valley’s K2 Central TX to be cost-efficient and scalable, offering a wider breadth of codec support but without requiring additional connectivity or networking devices.

NAB 2015 attendees will have an opportunity to view K2 Central TX at the Grass Valley booth, SL206.