OmniBus provides extensive automation solutions to new Kuwait channel

Al Rai Television, on-air since October 2004, is the first broadcast enterprise undertaken by Al-Rai Media Group, publisher of Kuwait's highest circulation daily newspaper. The deal marked OmniBus' first installation in the country.

The OmniBus solution forms part of the main broadcasting infrastructure contract that was managed, designed, and delivered by Sony Professional Services as the prime contractor and systems integrator. Working closely with Sony, OmniBus supplied technologies including its groundbreaking G3 modular architecture with desktop control, low-resolution browse capabilities for all journalists, and the HeadLine Media Editor with voiceover recording functionality.

Al Rai is using the OmniBus system to coordinate the operation of a wide range of equipment including Leitch video servers and AP's Electronic News Production System (ENPS) via the MOS protocol.

OmniBus also provides browse editing in the transmission area for quality control, compliance editing, and segmentation of non-news material.

"We chose OmniBus because it was the only company who could truly provide an end-to-end solution for our television station," said Hasan Sayed Hasan, technical and operations director for Al Rai TV. "It provides all the playout management, media management, and news integration in one core infrastructure, an achievement that could easily have been split between four or five different technology providers. The integration difficulties this would have created were not an acceptable risk for us."

"This is a landmark installation for OmniBus," said Iain Wood, OmniBus regional sales manager. "Not only is it our first contract in this region, it's also one in which we played a major role alongside the prime contractor, Sony."

With constant support from OmniBus, the automation system was prebuilt, preconfigured, tested, and factory accepted at Sony's facility in the U.K. prior to being deployed to Al Rai's brand new, custom-built facility.

"Journalists are able to browse media, request feeds to be ingested, create captions using templates, and drop them all directly into the script using the MOS protocol," added Wood. "All that information can then be read by the automation system with all the correct elements assembled as the story plays to air.

"OmniBus puts more power into the hands of journalists and provides broadcasters with the performance, reliability, and speed they need. It also gives them the ability to make last-minute changes to news programming combined with the efficient, robust management of vast amounts of media and information."