Advanced Disaster Recovery Platform Ready For Launch

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A provider of innovative workflow and media asset management solutions will launch a new disaster recovery (DR) solution for playout environments at the upcoming 2017 NAB Show.


Designed to address the growing risks and consequences faced by today’s broadcasters and media organizations, Masstech‘s DR platform is designed to help customers “protect their revenues, minimize channel downtime and maximize long-term viewer retention if primary playout operations are disrupted,” the tech company says.

snip“The breadth and frequency of threats to media companies’ operational continuity are constantly increasing, while the financial, viewership and brand reputation impact can be much deeper and longer-lasting than ever before,” said Steve Hutchinson, Product Manager at Masstech. “DR solutions must be extremely sophisticated to meet the demands of today’s file-based operations, limited viewer loyalty and hyper-connected media landscape. Our advanced platform addresses these challenges while making fully-synchronized disaster recovery simple, practical and more affordable.”

Masstech’s DR solution provides broadcasters, programmers and MVPDs with a fully-automated content replication and playout platform for their secondary playout site. The package includes the MassStore software for communication and synchronization with the primary playout facility; a reliable, fully-integrated automation and playout system; and terabytes of dedicated, nearline storage to keep multiple days’ worth of content ready for playback.

While rudimentary DR solutions depend on replays of generic, ‘evergreen’ content to keep channels on-air or online, such approaches fail to meet stations’ obligations to their advertisers and content license holders, and such programming will not hold viewers’ attention. In contrast, the Masstech DR system automatically synchronizes the latest program content, advertising spots and playlists from the primary playout facility, continually keeping the backup playout environment as up-to-date as possible.

MassStore’s integrated transcoding engine can optionally reduce the bit rates of media files, enabling programs and ads to be replicated faster and more efficiently even on bandwidth-constrained network links. Evergreen material can be automatically inserted into playlists as a last resort to replace content that wasn’t yet transferred to the alternate site, and for news-producing channels, the solution can automatically play an archive of the most recent news broadcast if an outage occurs during a live newscast.

Always active even when the station’s primary signal is fine, the Masstech DR solution is ready to go to air with no startup time required, minimizing channel downtime. Meanwhile, a centralized management option enables broadcast groups to host an alternate control site for one or multiple stations.


Masstech will exhibit in booth number SU3202 at the 2017 NAB Show, taking place April 24-27 in Las Vegas.