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Success Stories

BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National Provides 2M TV and Radio Programmes Online, Supported by Infortrend’s RAID Storage

Organization

BoB National is a shared online off-air TV and radio recording service for UK educational use. It is provided as a subscription service by BUFVC

Challenge
  • High speed file access to end-users
  • Fast write speed for capturing broadcast data
  • High scalability for future expansion
Solutions
  • Infortrend EonStor DS RAID systems
  • Cambridge Imaging Systems
  • Imagen Enterprise Video Platform and Orbital Platform

BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National Provides 2M TV and Radio Programmes Online, Supported by Infortrend’s RAID Storage

"Infortrend’s robust and reliable storage systems form a solid bedrock for the BoB project. They were easy to deploy and have been dependable from day one," said Richard Wassall, Technical Project Manager at Cambridge Imaging Systems.

BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National is an innovative, shared online off-air TV and radio recording service provided by the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC), for UK higher and further education institutions. It enables all staff and students in subscribing institutions to choose and record any broadcast programmes from 60+ TV and radio channels. On average, there are over 3,000 user sessions on the BoB platform a day.

The recorded programmes are kept indefinitely and added to a growing media archive (currently at over 2 million programmes), with all content shared by users across all subscribing institutions. To sustain the task of content download, upload, capture, edit and review, Infortrend’s EonStor DS RAID arrays have been chosen as the ideal storage platform. 

High Speed and Scalability

Specialising in providing educational access to television and radio programmes post-transmission, and with more than 60 years of experience, BUFVC understood the importance of BoB’s audio/video platform and storage hosting. For this project, BUFVC defined high speed file access for delivering files to end-users, fast write speeds for capturing broadcast data, and scalability for future expansion as the main requirements for the storage requirements. 

Proven Storage Technology - Infortrend EonStor DS Storage Systems

The secure video platform for BoB is provided by Cambridge Imaging Systems, who have been at the forefront of media asset management for over 20 years. They chose Infortrend's EonStor DS RAID systems for the BoB platform. Having proved itself on other high profile projects led by Cambridge Imaging Systems, EonStor DS was a clear choice.

The Video/Radio Platform Supported by Cambridge Imaging Systems

Imagen is a product of Cambridge Imaging Systems. It is an off the shelf end-to-end, secure video hosting platform for archiving and publishing media via a customisable website. Infortrend’s EonStor DS systems are perfectly aligned with Imagen to deliver a storage infrastructure that can support thousands of users simultaneously accessing data at any given moment. It also allows off-air content to be automatically repurposed for education without major administrative overheads – these are the most important values delivered by Infortrend solutions both for Cambridge Imaging Systems and for the BoB platform.

About BoB (Box of Broadcasts)

BoB National is a shared online off-air TV and radio recording service for UK higher and further education institutions. It enables all staff and students in subscribing institutions to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels. For more information, please click here: http://bobnational.net/

About British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC)

BUFVC is a representative body which promotes the production, study and use of moving image, sound and related media in higher education, further education and research. For more information, please click here: http://bufvc.ac.uk/

About Cambridge Imaging System

Cambridge Imaging Systems have been at the forefront of media management whose platforms were initially developed to deliver mission critical services to the Ministry of Defence. Later, the software systems have been deployed in large-scale projects for corporate and government including: Channel 4, British Library, British film Institute, The Imperial War Museum and many more. For more information, please click here: http://www.cambridgeimaging.com/