Pebble Beach Celebrates Major Contract

A provider of automation solutions to the broadcast market, has announced that it has secured a significant contract to supply its new Marina enterprise level automation system to German national public television broadcaster ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen).
The system, headed by Pebble Beach, will control six high definition channels from ZDF's playout centre in Mainz.
The contract will be the first installation for Marina, which was first exhibited publicly by Pebble Beach Systems at IBC 2009.
ZDF's programme to renew and centralise the transmission structure across six of its channels coincides with the start of regular HD transmissions on Astra, scheduled for this year.
The transmission centre will control the ZDF Main Channel, ZDF Info, ZDF Neo and ZDF theatre channels, each of which has a high degree of live content, as well as the 3Sat channel. ZDF have specified that the migration to the new technology should take place during normal operations, with the first control room scheduled for completion in time for ZDF's HDTV launch and the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February.
Prime contractor for the project at ZDF's Mainz-Lerchenberg headquarters is major German system integrator Studio Hamburg MCI. Director Ralf Schimmel commented: "We’ve worked with Pebble Beach on previous projects, and our experience with the company has overwhelmingly been a positive one."
Marina will be used by ZDF for playout where the system will control Harris Nexio video servers, Evertz transmission mixers and routers, subtitlers, keyers, VPS, graphics and many other devices used by ZDF in their transmission chains.
The system will also integrate with the Blue Order Content Management System (CMS) and ZDF’s own in-house traffic system to provide a workflow that minimizes the need for operator intervention.
ZDF's specification document encompasses an exacting range of required features, including a guarantee of seamless transition between the main and backup systems without visible interruption, and for non-specialist personnel to be capable of running the system.
Pebble Beach Systems’ Managing Director Peter Hajittofi added: "We’re proud to be associated with one of Europe’s largest broadcasters at a key point in its history, and delighted that we were chosen for this project."
Marina is a highly scalable automation system designed to meet the evolving needs of today’s broadcaster.
With multiple redundancy options, full Unicode compliance, a highly agile playlist engine and an architecture that enables fewer operators to control more channels, Marina is set to enhance the efficiency of playout operations worldwide over the next decade.
(BMcN/BMcC)