16/04/07 - FBBT Demo Matador™ Version 2 at NAB 2007
NAB, Las Vegas – 16th April 2007: FBBT, developer of Matador, the world's first operational support system (OSS) for broadcasters, cable and satellite operators, has unveiled Matador 2™, which offers a host of significant advancements over Matador, launched last year at NAB. As the only OSS tailor-made for the broadcast sector, Matador 2 stands alone. It provides dynamic monitoring of quality and costs enterprise-wide via its monitoring of the entire broadcast chain in real time, functions that are familiar to those who have operated in the telecommunications sector.
Rick Bolin, CEO, FBBT, explains, “We took the fundamental principal behind the use of OSS in the telecoms sector, examined the broadcast space in immense detail and developed a product that provides massive real-world benefits as the broadcast industry continues to move forward into networked environments. Matador 2 provides a host of advances over its forerunner that we are very excited about.”
The introduction of Matador 2™ provides a wide range of improved functionality and performance enhancements to allow users of the system greater access to more operational power. New functionality provides significantly enhanced tools. The new multi-document interface enables users to open any number of panes simultaneously therefore providing the ability to look at several broadcast paths together, or look at a historical view at the same time as the current path, making life far easier for operators. Alarm management has also been improved: understanding recurrent alarm conditions so that trends can be identified and rectified is now possible as this new version provides a searchable history of previous alarm situations. In addition to the previously available fault-finding and fixing this provides a comprehensive performance suite.
The functionality of the cable database has been extended and now it has its own menu. There are very few cable databases for the broadcast industry and none that combine the search and retrieve functions available here.
As well as functionality improvements, Matador 2 benefits from real world performance enhancements. Its updated communications layer, while invisible to the end user, allows the OSS to scale more easily across multiple, geographically diverse sites. With a significantly reduced footprint, the communications protocol now allows greater scalability per server, less traffic bandwidth and reduced latency for end users and device connection agents.
“Remote monitoring of facilities over vast areas grows in importance. Larger station groups in the American market and geo-political instability in the many parts of the world drive the need to manage recourses from a distance. FBBT is monitoring the BBC facility in Northern Ireland from Las Vegas to proved irrefutable verification of our remote monitoring capability.” adds Bolin.
By using a more flexible path layout regime, infrastructures that use multiple broadcast paths can more readily benefit from Matador's capabilities, for example playout centres, presentation suites and multiplexing facilities.
Additionally, by re-writing the user configuration part of the access layer Matador 2 can now be integrated in as little as 50 per cent of the time of the previous version, saving broadcasters and SIs not only time but money too.
“Matador was a genuine breakthrough at NAB 2006 for the broadcast industry introducing a level of dynamic monitoring – and therefore performance and cost control – previously only dreamed about in the broadcast industry. Matador 2 provides a host of advancements that allow easier and deeper access to the power of the only OSS designed purely for this industry,” concludes Rick Bolin, CEO.
###
