Canal Overseas Goes HD With Omneon

French broadcast services provider Canal Overseas has invested in Omneon's Spectrum HD media server as part of a transition to an all HD workflow.

Canal Overseas opted for the two 10 Terabyte Spectrum servers due to their support for World Standard Teletext (WST) data. The new equipment provides the organisation with eight channels of ingest along with 20 channels of dual-output HD and downconverted SD for preview and playout.

The investment is part of a facility makeover from SD to HD and includes DBOS automation from SGT, and Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive middleware integrated with a Sun Microsystems StorageTek library for content storage management. The system was installed in late 2007, and went on the air in January

Canal Overseas provides 24/7 satellite distribution of France's Canal+ programming to 500,000 subscribers in Africa, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.