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VideoDirect
Your Digital Ad
Insertion System
 Key
Benefits
- Microsoft Windows NT Operating
System
- Additional Income from Locally
Generated Advertising
- Cross Channel Promotion of
Premium and Pay-Per-View Services
- Cross Service Promotion of Other
Company Services
- Play and Manage Community Access
Events and Programs
- Dell® Intel Pentium Server
Summary
Microsoft®
Windows NT operating system is the heart of the ETI's VideoDirect
digital video scheduling and ad insertion system. Running on a Dell
industrial server platform, VideoDirect's graphical user interfaces
and Microsoft SQL database management system offers unparalleled
ease of use and flexibility in scheduling. ETI has over 10 years
experience providing software solutions for over 150 cable systems.
Local Insertion of Commercials and
Cross-Channel Promotion
Major cable networks
such as CNN, ESPN and The Weather Channel allow the insertion of two
or three minutes of locally produced material for each hour of
programming. Local insertion provides an additional source of
revenue and can be used to promote services provided by your company
or organization.
ETI's VideoDirect 5000
commercial insertion systems use digital video server technology to
provide reliable instant access to commercial spots and
cross-channel promotional material, 24-hours a day, 7 seven days a
week. Unlike troublesome tape-based systems, VideoDirect operates on
an unattended basis, and any spot stored can be played in broadcast
quality at any time on any channel.
VideoDirect can be
used as a stand-alone system for scheduling and reporting spot
playback. It also interfaces with most standard traffic and billing
systems so that schedules and reports can be easily integrated with
your business. VideoDirect uses the latest technology in conjunction
with our powerful Windows NT-based digital video server. Easy-to-use
encoding stations can be provided to digitize videos in either
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 formats.
 Technical
Description
The system diagram at right shows the
major elements involved in hybrid digital ad insertion. Network
programming containing national ads is received through the
satellite earth station equipment at the headend where the
VideoDirect server is located. At the precise time the locally
inserted commercials are to play, the network transmits a cue-tone
over the satellite. It is converted by the Wegener sub-carrier
demodulator equipment to either DTMF tones or contact closures.
VideoDirect detects these signals, and automatically switches from
the network video to local advertising spots, infomercials, or other
locally originated material. VideoDirect provides a genlock feature
to prevent rolling of the picture on the subscribers TV set when the
switch takes place. When playback of the local material is
completed, VideoDirect automatically switches back to network video.
The VideoDirect server hardware platform is networked based
(Ethernet is standard) to allow for interaction with other
Windows-based workstations and encoding stations located within the
same local area network. Since the VideoDirect server in the headend
is often remotely located from the office systems, the VideoDirect
graphical user interface can be run from other workstations on the
network to allow remote system management.
The
VideoDirect Encoding station is used with customer furnished
VTR's or VCR's, and converts the baseband NTSC video and audio into
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 digital files, usually in an office or studio
environment. Once these files are created, they can be transferred
to the VideoDirect server over the network or by other media such as
tape cartridges.
VideoDirect System Features
VideoDirect offers the following features and benefits:
-
Greatly improved reliability over
tape-based systems
-
Play any spot at any time over any
channel
-
Windows NT® -based
digital video server
-
Management of the system from remote
workstations
-
Video storage capacity of up to 100
hours
-
Built in cue-tone detection and
genlocked video and audio switching
-
Raid-5 data storage technology
-
Redundant disk drives and power
supplies
Additional VideoDirect Information
 ETI's
Traffic and Billing
Software allows you to manage and invoice advertiser and client
accounts.
VideoDirect Scheduling and
Insertion provides a description of the user friendly scheduling
and insertion features along with typical user interface screen
shots.
VideoDirect Reporting and Video
Management provides more information on the detailed reports and
features you will need to manage your cable advertising on a daily
basis.
Server Hardware Platform
provides a description of its high reliable, fault tolerant, Dell
Intel Pentium server platform and Windows NT operating system.
Video Encoding is a description
of ETI's Digital Video Encoding Station (DVES), which provides
conversion of video tapes to MPEG-2 compressed video files. |
