Cordillera Communications to save money, time and rack space with Versio

Cordillera Communications television station KVOA-DT, serving the Tuscon, Arizona market, will launch and operate a second over-the-air channel using the Harris Broadcast Versio™ integrated channel playout solution. Installation is scheduled for late April.

Versio represents Harris Broadcast’s unique spin on channel-in-a-box, offering flexible software-based configurations that allow customers to use on-board graphics, master control and server capabilities with their choice of internal or external automation and media control. Cordillera Communications Vice President of Engineering and Operations Andrew Suk stresses the importance of this flexibility for choosing Versio — in addition to its compact, all-in-one design.

“In the past, nobody had a comprehensive solution that was truly channel-in-a-box; it was a series of boxes. Versio is the first channel-in-a-box solution I have seen where everything is truly there, while giving us the flexibility to connect existing systems,” said Suk. “It’s nice to have the convenience of launching an additional channel by just sliding in a frame. And overall Versio saves us more dollars compared to our previous secondary channel launches.”

Suk emphasizes that the on-board graphics capability will produce cost-savings against using standalone systems to create squeezebacks, zooms and other graphical elements. KVOA will connect Versio to its existing Harris Broadcast ADC™ automated content management and distribution system, simplifying automated primary and secondary channel distribution to regional cable systems. The station will also use a mix of on-board server capabilities and external Harris Broadcast NEXIO® servers and storage systems.

“Versio makes it very simple to marry all these systems to the existing storage area network, tying everything together very neatly,” said Suk. “It is absolutely an important benefit.”

The Versio installation follows a series of recent Harris Broadcast Selenio™ media convergence platform installations at KVOA and across other Cordillera television stations, as the company transitions to a more efficient over-the-air signal encoding solution. Suk notes that several Cordillera stations using Selenio are now encoding two HD channels over-the-air, enhancing signal quality and vastly improving bandwidth efficiency.

“We’ll easily support KVOA’s new secondary over-the-air channel with Selenio,” he said. “The improvement in quality with Selenio is just phenomenal.”

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About Harris Broadcast
Harris Broadcast is an industry leader in delivering the most advanced, content-rich media experiences available for a wide spectrum of radio, television and private media networks around the globe. With more than 25 leading brands including Versio™, Selenio™ and Maxiva™, the company enables media organizations to tap into one of the broadest, integrated product and solution portfolios in the industry. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the company is widely recognized for its product quality and reliability, engineering excellence and customer service, and has earned nearly 100 technological firsts and more than 50 awards for technical innovation. For more information, please visit harrisbroadcast.com.