Pacific Television Center (PacTV), a Los Angeles-based, global transmission and production company, has purchased an NVISION 8576 router from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, for its new state-of-the-art London facility with IP and 4K capabilities. The new router is a central component of the operation and will manage all of the global connectivity into and out of the London facility.
This latest investment means PacTV will now have Grass Valley routers in five of its managed locations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Singapore and now London, offering round-the-clock support and services such as fiber connectivity and satellite coordination. The company installed its first Grass Valley router in 2002 and has been relying on the technology ever since.
“Reliability is critical, and we know from experience in our other locations that Grass Valley routers have a long life span,” said Nick Castaneda, VP of development of PacTV. “By using Grass Valley equipment at our facilities, colleagues can now manage each other’s routers using similar, intuitive user interfaces and controls. For our customers, this means that we can minimize disruptions and provide reliable transmission services under the most demanding circumstances.”
With the new router, PacTV operators are able to quickly have source/destination status for high-demand resources, helping make quick decisions for customers. Furthermore, programming can now be done with ease, and main components of the system can be monitored through the tabbed system in NV9000-SE Utilities.
As PacTV looks to the future, the new router ensures an IP delivery method via Ethernet or fiber link as video transport becomes more integrated toward IP delivery. PacTV will increasingly need to take the current video formats of HD-SDI and ASI and apply them in IP multicast or unicast applications. The Grass Valley router will provide an intermediate device to route these into various networks and take them away when the service is complete.
The NVISION 8576 router is part of the NVISION 8500 hybrid router series, designed for production and playout applications from trucks to the largest engine rooms. It offers the convenience of integrated audio processing, SMPTE 2022 IP routing and simplified cable management.
