MTV/Brazil Makes Digital Upgrade With Profile XP Media Platform, Grass Valley Modulars

NEVADA CITY, Calif., May 22, 2000 — When Valter Pascotto saw U2's 1998 concert in Sao Paolo, Brazil, it wasn't just the music that stayed with him—it was the slow-motion images of Bono and The Edge replayed off the Grass Valley Group's Profile^® video servers. The experience stayed with him, so much so that the director of operations and engineering at MTV/Brazil has just purchased a Profile XP Media Platform, as well as Grass Valley™ 8900 Series modular products, to help MTV/Brazil's facility go digital.

"The performance of the Profile video server made a big impression," said Pascotto. "And the Profile XP Media Platform is the obvious choice for today's changing production environment. Its extremely flexible, open architecture and support of multiple standards—such as HD, SD, and IP—will give MTV the opportunity to change our programming during the day which should result in increased advertising revenue, in addition to cutting our operating costs."

MTV/Brazil will use the Profile XP Media Platform and 8900 Series modular products to assist in its conversion to digital playout of short-form programming. The Profile XP Media Platform will replace Ampex CART machines to defray operational costs and limit maintenance problems while the 8900 Series modulars and an Ethernet card will be used for NTSC-to-digital conversion.

Widely regarded as the cornerstone of the digital transition, the Profile digital video platform is also the industry's most open, supporting MPEG, DVCPRO, HD, MPEG Transport Streams (MTS) for applications such as the Internet, and SDTI. It also supports a variety of common networking technologies and topologies, such as Fibre Channel, Ethernet, LAN, and WAN. The line includes the recently introduced Profile XP Media Platform, a portal for rapid access, management, and distribution of video, audio, and data assets that maintains the broadcast-quality video and audio for which the Profile line is known.

Modular products help process and distribute audio and video signals within and among facilities. Typical modular functions include signal distribution, frame synchronization, and format conversion (e.g., analog to digital). The Grass Valley 8900 Series, with its plug-and-play design, leverages these developments to provide an openness and interchangeability that easily accommodates a variety of standards, formats, and functions within a core signal-management infrastructure. More than 25 modules are now available for the 8900 Series frame, covering a full range of timing, distribution, and format-conversion capabilities. The modules are also compatible with the Grass Valley 2000 Wideband Series frame via an adaptor card, providing a smooth, cost-effective upgrade path from analog to standard-definition (SD) to high-definition (HD) signal processing, and eliminating the boundaries associated with analog-only or SD-only platforms.

The Grass Valley Group knows more about high-quality video than anybody else—especially as video goes digital. Interactive television. Digital cinema. Data-enhanced broadcasting. Internet. It's a world of Digicasting™—of Media Without Bounds™. Whether online or on the air, the Emmy^® award-winning Grass Valley Group, a privately held digital media leader, has the hardware, software, and new media technologies necessary to get content wherever it needs to go.

For the latest Grass Valley Group product information, see www.grassvalleygroup.com.

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