Skai TV Deploys 96TB Omneon Storage System

SKAI Television of Athens, Greece, has selected a 96-TB MediaGrid active storage system from Omneon, Inc. to archive daily news content and enable news producers at their desktops to bring archived clips into a Sony SONAPS news production system with drag-and-drop simplicity and speed. The MediaGrid system joins an Omneon Spectrum server already in place for commercial playout as a key element of SKAI’s efficient, tapeless workflow.

SKAI TV, re-launched under PTS Publishing Group in 2006, was the first non-subscription television station to use a completely digital and tapeless workflow and broadcast SD in 16:9 format, earning itself a reputation as one of the most technologically sophisticated broadcast news operations in the world. It is also the first broadcaster outside Japan to deploy the SONAPS system, and as a result annually draws teams of international engineers to view its Athens facility.

Before SKAI implemented the MediaGrid solution, the broadcaster stored news programming on XDCAM cartridges, making clip retrieval a time- and resource-intensive manual process. Now, under direction of Blue Order asset management, high-resolution broadcast content from each 24-hour news cycle is automatically archived to the Omneon MediaGrid after the final news bulletin of the night. Select rushes are also archived. The MediaGrid system will store about six months of programming, which is readily available for re-use. Acting as a high-performance, high-availability mixed media archive, the MediaGrid system also stores about 3 TB of content from SKAI Radio, which is the most popular news radio station in Greece.

"My colleagues and I have proven experience with Omneon equipment, its reliability, flexibility, and robustness," said Nick Millas, technical director of SKAI Television. "Because we expect our operation to grow, we were also interested in the MediaGrid system’s easy scalability. The installation itself was incredibly fast and efficient. It was up and running in less than two days."

The Omneon MediaGrid not only offers high-performance shared storage, it is the first storage system to play an active part in broadcast workflow by performing processing functions on content stored within it. Because it uses multiple intelligent, independent, and interconnected storage servers to combine grid storage and grid computing, the Omneon MediaGrid makes it easier and faster for users and applications throughout a workflow to retrieve digital media.