Harris Corporation announced that its new Platinum line of advanced, multi-format routing switchers for large routing applications is rapidly gaining momentum across the industry, as demonstrated by the recent influx of orders from broadcast customers worldwide. Set to make its U.S. debut at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention April 24-27 in Las Vegas, Platinum provides high-quality signal routing up to 256x256 in 15RU and 512x512 in 28RU and supports a mix of any signal—video and audio, from analog to HD—all in the same frame.
Recent purchasers of the Platinum router include Hearst-Argyle-owned NBC television affiliate WGAL-TV in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; ABC News London; ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion GmbH, one of Germany's largest private television companies; and ESPN STAR Sports, Asia's number one sports broadcaster.
"Reliability is paramount in large routing applications, and that is one of the key reasons we chose the Platinum router," said Robert Good, director of engineering at WGAL-TV. "Platinum offers high reliability across the board—including redundant crosspoints—and its advanced architecture allows capabilities to be added without affecting our on-air signals. In addition, its flexible control capabilities, ability to support HD-SDI and SD-SDI with the same modules and cost-effective, built-in, expansion potential make this an ideal solution for our demanding, 24/7 operation."
ESPN STAR Sports chose Platinum to replace its existing production router. Platinum will provide interconnectivity between all ESPN STAR Sports technical facilities including studios, incoming feeds, edit, voice over, and transmission routers.
"As the router is at the core of our operation and, therefore, highly critical to our business, we spent considerable time studying a number of routers suited to this purpose," said Andy Rylance, director of engineering at ESPN STAR Sports. "We looked at resilience, HD compatibility, expandability, local support, and at the flexibility provided by control panels and control software. The Platinum router satisfied our needs in all these areas, in particular with the protection provided by the control system and the multiple PSUs."
Built for maximum reliability in even the most harsh, 24/7 operating environment, Platinum is ideal for network, local broadcaster, mobile production, cable, telco, military, government and corporate applications—any environment that requires routing of a large number of signals. Platinum routers offer redundancy that extends from power and control all the way to complete signal paths. Redundant, load-sharing power supplies and fans, along with front-loading, hot-swappable modules, ensure that a customer's system remains online even during upgrades. For further reliability, Platinum routers scale in increments of eight inputs or outputs, thereby limiting the number of signals affected by any one module, while also enabling cost-effective scaling as customers increase the number of signals.
The Platinum router's distributed control system is unique in the industry in that it requires no separate, centralized controller. Each Platinum frame features redundant control modules that store configuration information related to that frame in non-volatile memory and contain all the information that frame needs to operate within a system. Platinum is supported by the Leitch Command Control System (CCS) and SNMP, as well as an extensive line of control panels and applications, including the new NUCLEUS user-configurable, real-time control panel.
"We are pleased with the tremendous industry-wide response Platinum has received before it has even made its official U.S. debut," said Tim Thorsteinson, president of Harris Broadcast Communications Division's Leitch Business Unit. "Platinum addresses all the issues that are critical in today's complex, large routing applications, such as control, reliability and serviceability. But it's the router's innovative, future-proof architecture—designed to incorporate feature additions currently unavailable in any traditional core router on the market today—that is really making the industry take notice."
