Harmonic Enhances Polaris Playout With Integrated Master Control

SAN JOSE, CALIF.— Harmonic announced its new Polaris Play channel-in-a-box automation software for the company’s Polaris playout management suite. Tightly integrated with Harmonic’s Spectrum media server system, Polaris Play blends automated ingest, media preparation, and playout workflow capabilities that manage up to four fully branded SD or HD channels, each with matched simulcast channels, in a single rack unit.

Polaris Play provides a suite of master control room tools that enable ingest, content preparation, segmentation, preview, and channel playlist control. Scheduled operations can be driven by traffic or by manually created playlists. Polaris Play—coupled with the Spectrum MediaDeck integrated media server and its high-density I/O capabilities, integrated file services, and native codec and file wrapper support—offers streamlined deployment and operation of the playout workflow.

The Polaris suite represents Harmonic’s evolving offering in the emerging Media Orchestration category. Polaris Play can be combined with the recently announced Harmonic Polaris Live manual device control application, enabling the Spectrum ChannelPort integrated channel playout system to fulfill production and master control requirements for many live-to-air workflows. The resulting hybrid environment offers integrated master control room capabilities, allowing users to switch between scheduled playout and manual playout of live events based on the schedule or on an ad hoc basis.

In addition to reducing hardware costs, the iMCR model supports flexible and efficient workflows that users can customize with Polaris Live’s simple touch-screen interface. Polaris Play will be available in the first quarter of 2015.