PlayBox Neo, a global leader in media management and playout solutions, announces the completion of a major system upgrade at the headquarters of award-winning broadcast service provider STN, Slovenia. Adding to its high-tech infrastructure, STN first began using PlayBox playout servers in 2009 and has continued to invest in PlayBox solutions. All units have been recently upgraded to the latest-generation Neo-20 software plus extended 24/7 support. The project was negotiated and completed by PlayBox Neo distribution partner PBT Adria.
“STN has always believed in technology investment that allows scalability and flexibility,” says Mitja Lovšin, CEO at STN Teleport. “This latest upgrade to Neo-20 software is not only a more efficient user interface but will allow easy expansion for our clients who wish to progress to 4K-UHD services. PlayBox Neo provides reliability in its playout solutions, ensuring uninterrupted broadcasting by incorporating features such as redundant playout servers, failover mechanisms, and automatic error handling. It can integrate with other broadcast systems such as traffic and scheduling, content management and external devices, facilitating smooth workflow and interoperability.”
“Intuitive user interfaces have been a core element of PlayBox broadcast automation systems right back to our first Channel-in-a-Box system in 1999,” adds PBT Adria’s General Manager Vladimir Stanic. “Every channel includes its own Capture Suite ingest, TitleBox Neo-20 graphics and text manipulation, and AirBox Neo-20 playout modules, allowing operators to manage their channels from any IP-connected location. They gain full and effective control of file ingest and scheduling, graphics creation, resolution scaling, frame-rate conversion, aspect ratio conversion, multiple audio and subtitle streams, and content validation. Each system feeds directly to multi-viewers and transmission encoders.”
PlayBox Neo’s recently introduced Media Gateway also forms part of the project. Media Gateway extends the company’s long-established ethos of maximizing broadcast playout efficiency by allowing the channel management process to handle as much as possible within a unified and operator-friendly graphic interface. Based on the PlayBox Neo Suite platform, it is designed to maximize productivity by simplifying the daily tasks of content delivery and distribution. Media Gateway enables the whole process of playout routing and decoding to be handled in software. That translates to a substantial saving in the cost of buying, accommodating, powering, and maintaining auxiliary processing hardware.
The basis of each PlayBox Neo Channel-in-a-Box system is AirBox Neo-20, a scalable playout/streaming engine available in 1U single channel and 3U multi-channel versions. AirBox Neo-20 allows media files of various kinds to be combined into a single transmission playlist. Playlists can be scheduled weeks in advance for automated delivery. Files can be trimmed, edited, or repositioned at any time before being aired without losing the freedom to transmit live. Gaps and time overlaps are automatically corrected to ensure continuous operation even when events with conflicting times are present. Special protection is provided to ensure uninterrupted operation where content files or even entire schedules are missing or misplaced. The latest features include extended live input capabilities and a browser-based multi-viewer with lost-signal and frozen-signal alarms.
