Newington, VA – Aug. 14, 2007 – Communications Engineering, Inc. (CEI) announced today that two of its systems integration projects are recipients of Broadcast Engineering magazine’s 2006 Excellence Awards, marking the fifth and sixth CEI projects that have been recognized by the annual program in the past five years.
VOOM HD Networks was named the 2006 winner of the New Studio Technology – HD Award and Rainbow Network Communications received a Runner-Up Award for New Studio Technology – Network. CEI handled the design, planning, integration and support for both systems, which are subsidiaries of Rainbow Media in Bethpage, NY.
VOOM HD offers 15 channels of HD programming including sports, movies, fashion, music and art. These are distributed around the world through satellite and cable operators. The VOOM HD facility includes several storage area network systems for ingest and playback; media asset network servers for editing, transcoding and on-air distribution; and clusters of HD master control suites for efficiently handling particular groups of channels. Each cluster can produce or integrate live events. The sophisticated system allows content to be sent and received much faster than before. CEI handled all of the project planning and design, documentation, equipment procurement services and installation.
Rainbow Network Communications is one of the leading suppliers of SD and HD program origination and distribution services to the multimedia industry. It manages a wide range of live and pre-recorded programming, which is distributed across the US and around the world. CEI worked with Rainbow to develop systems that could seamlessly deal with virtually every variety of video and audio format and combination. CEI designed, built and installed a new generation of Live Video (LV) multi-channel master control rooms at the facility, along with an adaptable test and monitoring system that transparently adjusts to deal with each signal format based on triggering information tied to the source of each signal.
“It’s very gratifying that two of our projects were recognized by Broadcast Engineering in the same year, but these two are especially meaningful because we have such a long, successful history with Rainbow,” said Lawrence Brody, president and CEO of CEI. “Rainbow has been a key partner of ours for more than 10 years, and we are very proud of the work we have accomplished with them.”
Previous CEI projects that were chosen for Broadcast Engineering Excellence Awards are: WMHT, 2005 winner, New Studio Technology – Station; Discovery Communications, 2004 winner, New Studio Technology – Network; PBS Ingest Suite, 2003 winner, Network Automation; and WHRO-TV, 2002 winner, New Studios Excellence Award.
Background:
CEI, located in Newington, VA, is a leading, award-winning broadcast systems integrator. The company has helped to define the leading edge of systems engineering and implementation for the communications industry since the mid1980’s.
