[SatNews] Harmonic has announced that The Weather Channel© has deployed a comprehensive ingest, playout, and transcoding solution from Harmonic to support the network's content acquisition management system.

The network also installed a complement of new Harmonic systems in its master control for short- and long-form program playout. The new broadcast infrastructure at The Weather Channel headquarters in Atlanta enables a much higher degree of automation, as well as better tracking of audio, video, and data—and more effective use of these assets in creating the unique content for which the network is known. These benefits extend beyond production and broadcast operations to providing additional programming and data for other business units, such as WSI, weather.com, and Weather Underground.

The Harmonic solution includes the ProMedia® Carbon file-based transcoder for transcoding with WFS™ file-based workflow engine control; Spectrum MediaDeck™ integrated media servers for ingest; a Harmonic MediaGrid shared storage system; and, for playout, a new Spectrum™ media server system comprising a MediaStore™ 5000 storage array, MediaDirector™ media server controllers, and MediaPort™ real-time video encoder/decoders. These systems are connected to an enterprise service bus (ESB) that establishes interoperability among systems and provides their functionality through scalable services within a service-oriented architecture.

As a result, The Weather Channel has been able to increase efficiency and flexibility for covering multiple simultaneous weather-based news events, as well as the agility that allows it to adapt quickly to changing market demands without interrupting ongoing programming and services. The greater capacity of the new Harmonic Spectrum systems in master control, along with support for the latest codecs, helps The Weather Channel free up storage space while reducing the need for file conversions, which saves time and streamlines the overall flow of content from production to playout.

A two-minute "Industry Spotlight" video about The Weather Channel content acquisition management system is available on the Harmonic website at http://www.harmonicinc.com/content/weather-channel-content-acquisition-and-management-industry-spotlight.

Harmonic will showcase their products and technologies at stand 1.B20 at IBC2014 its comprehensive line of market-leading solutions that optimize the production and delivery of high-value video services.

For further information about Harmonic, please visit their infosite at http://www.harmonicinc.com/.