By Dieter Baron, vice president, Broadcast Technical, HSE24
HSE24 (HOME SHOPPING EUROPE) has specialised in teleshopping since 1995. We produce and play out programming 24/7 from our facilities in Ismaning, not far from Munich. In Germany, roughly 36 million viewers watch HSE24, and another four million across Austria and Switzerland tune in — and we estimate that more than 10% of all German citizens over 18 have, at some point, shopped on HSE24. Over the years, we have grown our unique home shopping broadcast offering to include five channels. Our main channel, HSE24, is now complemented by two special-interest channels, TREND and EXTRA, providing a diverse shopping experience with something for everyone. We have also developed an online shop and a mobile
shopping application to give our customers greater convenience and even more variety when shopping. The customers decide how they want to shop. In June 2011 we launched a
fourth channel, HSE24 Italy, and the international growth strategy continued through the entry in to the Russian market and the investment in the Russian shopping channel Shopping Live in February 2012. The quality of our services is a high priority, and this is true with respect not only to the shopping experience, for which we’ve won several awards, but also to broadcasts on our HSE24 channels. Thus, when the server systems we had relied on for production and playout reached the end of their useful lives, we began evaluating new systems to find the best fit. While we considered the most recent solution from our existing vendor, as well as a number of competing solutions,
we were most impressed with the products offered by Harmonic. Working closely with systems
integrator Netorium, which is based nearby in Wiesbaden, we transitioned our multiple
home shopping networks onto a Harmonic production storage and playout platform. We chose to work with Harmonic storage and server solutions because we needed a stable playout environment and more robust central storage for our post production activities. The Harmonic systems also offered ease of use, scalable capacity, and the additional I/O channels we needed, along with the high redundancy and availability critical for 24-hour broadcast operations such as ours. A Harmonic Spectrum media
Harmonic Omneon server in the rack at HSE24
server system now provides continuous playout for our four broadcast channels, and an Omneon MediaGrid storage system serves as post production storage for recorded on-air content and supports an edit-in-place workflow in post production. The Harmonic server system operates in conjunction with Aveco automation, which allows our engineering staff to
control the server from anywhere on the network. Providing a single virtualised view of content across these systems, the Omneon Media Application Server (MAS) asset management system reduces the complexity of media management and, in turn, our broadcast workflow. The Harmonic platform has, in fact, allowed us to create an efficient edit workflow that reduces the time and cost required to turn around programming quickly. Within our operations, the MediaGrid system serves as central storage for media including 19 hours and more of content from two channels daily. The MediaGrid system also supports editing with Final Cut Pro systems. The Spectrum and MediaGrid systems have proved to be easy to use and manage, and local support from Netorium has been a great help in enabling us to implement the systems most effectively.