Broadcast Asia: Grass Valley showcasing GV STRATUS Playout

GV STRATUS Playout combines the efficiency and flexibility of cloud computing with the performance and reliability of an on-site solid-state playout server – all on a single card. This cloud-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) technology enables facilities to regionalise channel content and begin playout in minutes.

“This ingenious approach to playout is unprecedented, and we believe it is the future of rapid deployment playout in our industry,” said Stephen Wong, senior vice president, Asia Pacific, Grass Valley. “GV STRATUS Playout simplifies playout control enabling new revenue generating business models while lowering operational costs.”

GV STRATUS Playout works with Grass Valley’s Densité SSP-3801 solid-state playout card, which enables broadcasters to leverage the immense flexibility of the cloud-enabled playout control system with the security of housing all media content on-site. Using high-grade media storage, the module is easily configured and installed. The card sits at the edge of any network where it provides frame-accurate playback and displays still and animated logos and high-quality pre-rendered graphics.

Wong added that “because GV STRATUS Playout is a solid-state, stand-alone card, there are no moving parts to wear out. This not only makes it very attractive in terms of long-term performance, it is also highly resilient to network outages. The card stores 24 hours of playlists and will continue with uninterrupted playout, automatically update itself once network connectivity is restored.”

GV STRATUS Playout makes use of Microsoft’s Azure cloud “platform-as-a-service,” which is hosted in Microsoft Data Centres, and is vastly superior in terms of performance, resilience and scalability to anything that could be economically viable within a broadcast facility. All GV STRATUS Playout metadata is stored within the local Microsoft Data Centre and automatically synchronised to a geo-redundant data centre.