Front Porch Digital Chosen by MTV Networks

Front Porch Digital announced that MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom, has implemented its DIVArchive and DIVAnet solutions for a broadcast content archive management system between its network operations center in Long Island, N. Y., and its backup facility in Nashville, Tenn.

"DIVAnet leverages the core archiving and storage extension functionality of DIVArchive by enabling the intelligent linking of archives between physical facilities," said Dave Polyard, Front Porch Digital senior vice president of sales for North America. "DIVAnet combined with DIVArchive makes it possible for small broadcasters or broadcasters as large as MTV Networks to implement strategies ranging from fully distributed business continuance functionality to content interchange and repurposing. MTV Networks is a new customer for us, and we’ve worked closely with the company to ensure that its broadcast content management system will meet or surpass its expectations."

"It won’t surprise anyone to learn that we at MTV Networks have an enormous archive of programming content — some of it invaluable," said Mike Bivona, MTV Networks vice president of engineering for content creation and distribution technologies. "Our channels span a large audience demographic, and our broadcast archive must support that business model. Due to the magnitude and the constant need to repurpose content, our archive solution must efficiently manage assets in multiple locations while also providing us with flexible content management policies to meet changing programming requirements. We are confident that Front Porch DIVArchive working with DIVAnet will do just that."

Based on a combination of integrated software and hardware components, Front Porch Digital DIVArchive is a uniquely flexible content storage management solution that simplifies the process of preserving, managing, and accessing content for operations of all sizes. At MTV Networks, DIVAnet links, via WAN, independent DIVArchive systems located in New York and Tennessee. For a given clip, DIVAnet transfers not only the standard MPEG wrapper and essence file, but also associated metadata to facilitate later identification and placement. In addition, it surmounts the challenges of long-distance file transfers without the need for human intervention. For example, DIVAnet can identify a network problem that might interfere with content transfers and direct the content to a buffer until the problem has been resolved.

MTV Networks implemented Front Porch Digital’s content storage management system in May of this year.