CEI has been a steady supplier of engineering, implementation and maintenance services to Discovery Communications for many years. Recently CEI completed the provision of turnkey project services in connection with the design and construction of the new Discovery Creative & Technology Center (DCTC) located in Silver Spring MD., Winner of a 2005 “Broadcast Engineering Magazine Excellence Award.”
The DCTC project consisted of the relocation of Discovery’s 24-hour production operation facility across town to a 54,000 sq. ft. office space that was renovated to house production operations. This project utilized both new and existing equipment and was successfully performed with minimal downtime to client production operations.
This new facility allowed Discovery to expand their in-house production capacities and capabilities. A key feature was the design directive to configure the non linear suites in a uniform manner thus enabling both greater creative and scheduling flexibility.
Unique to this plant was the requirement to fluently support both NTSC and PAL signals along with a sizeable addition of HD equipment and signal rates. Custom auto-sensing reference switching and a dedicated reference router were used to accommodate the reference needs for these signal rates and formats. This allowed every HD resource select between multiple Tri-Level reference rates. Significant elements of this project included:
- 2 Avid DS HD Non Linear Suites Featuring:
- Selectable Stereo or 5.1 Mix and Monitoring System Optimized for work in Dolby – E
- Multi-Standard Reference Switching for Supported Rates
- 42 Avid Adrenaline, XL, and Symphony based SD Non Linear Suites Featuring:
- Automatic Reference Switching for all SD Non Linear Suites.
- Routable Equipment Core based VTR’s and support In-Suite Devices.
- All Digital Signal Path for Audio and Video
- Advanced Audio Mixer Using Extensive Preset Based Setup.
- CPU and Disk Storage Remotely Located in Equipment Cores.
- 3 Audio Production Suites Each Featuring:
- Selectable Stereo or 5.1 Mixing and Monitoring System
- Optimized for work in Dolby – E
- Dedicated Producer Area
- Dedicated full size Announce Booths
- 6 QC Suites (2 HD Suites with 5.1 Monitoring)
- 2 Linear Edit Suites
- 2 Graphics Suites
- 930 sq. ft. Television Studio
- 22 Rack Multi-Standard and Multi-Format Duplication Area
- 146 Combined Racks in the Split Equipment Cores
- Large Digital Video, Four Channel AES, Analog Video, Analog Audio, Timecode, and Data Router
Another recent Discovery Communications project included the design and installation of the in-house MATV system for their new World Headquarters Building. This facility features 116 television channels, twelve of which are 8VSB, that are distributed throughout the building complex to over 3000 drop locations. This included the installation of four 3.8 meter TVRO antennas with appropriate L-band distribution for network and program monitoring.
