Danish TV 2/BORNHOLM Adds Sony Optical Disc Archiving

The regional broadcaster TV 2/Bornholm, part of the Danish TV 2 network, was established in 1990 and since then has used an archiving system that has run out of storage space.

TV 2/Bornholm produces a 24-hour channel as well as a variety of regional programs, which form part of the national programming. The station also has an active website with an increasing amount of streaming content.

“For some time now, we have been short of archiving space, and as we are now producing content in HD, the problem has become critical as we have chosen not to add HD tape units,” says Carsten Ager, technical manager , TV 2/Bornholm.

SONAPS from 2012
In 2012, TV 2 Bornholm chose to upgrade its production platform to a Sony SONAPS solution, which is also used by several other TV 2 regional stations. Therefore, it made sense to look at the archiving solutions available on the market. TV 2 Østjylland (TV 2 OJ) extended its SONAPS solution with ODA, which is a robot with the option for rack-based archiving.

“We have chosen to use the same solution, but in a slightly larger version with a stand-alone robot which means we can subsequently move it to an adjacent building away from the editorial office – for security reasons“, he explains.

The capacity is 200TB, the equivalent of five years’ production. Extra space can be added if necessary. At some point in the future, the plan is to transfer the content from the old archiving system to ODA.

“We expect a seamless transition from the old archiving system to ODA. The workflow and user interface are the same, so the employee just needs to ‘tick off’ the new archiving system“, concludes Ager.

TV 2 Østjylland among the first to use Sony’s SONAPS and ODA
TV 2 Østjylland, the regional TV station in Denmark’s second-largest city of Aarhus, chose Sony SONAPS as its production platform early on, and in the spring of 2015 upgraded to the most recent version and integrated the solution with Sony’s Optical Disc Archive – ODA.

After the installation of the optical disc system at TV 2 OJ, head of news Lars Mandal announced: “We compete with a lot of other media for the attention of people in this region. We will win this competition by being the most up to date and supplying moving images. Content is King, but ‘Technology is Queen.‘“