Fox Sports Australia has chosen the Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) 160 port ControlCenter-Digital KVM Digital Matrix System for its Artarmon broadcast facility. The final decision was made after consulting with the engineers at Chief Entertainment, next door, who have been using the G&D Control Centre KVM Matrix system for more than four years.
The KVM Matrix will allow Fox Sports to locate all their PCs and Servers in centralised secure and temperature-controlled locations, and provide agile remote control of the keyboard, mouse and monitor for each. Rooms and suites can easily be configured dynamically for different user requirements, based on a schedule or controlled by an orchestration tool.
The visual, interface and switching performance of the system is immediately apparent, with rapid switching between target devices, making it suitable for time-critical applications such as the studio control rooms.
Another critical requirement for Fox Sports is its use of specialised interface devices, such as Contour ShuttlePro2 controllers for instant replay systems and Wacom pen tablets for edit suites – both of which G&D supports out of the box. For Fox Sports, it made the G&D system an easy choice for any application and any level of criticality.
“The G&D KVM system provided us with the most cost-effective solution with proven resilience and reliability,” stated Stephen Edwards, Director of Technology and Infrastructure, Fox Sports Australia.
The G&D ControlCenter-Digital160 KVM solution comes in a 6RU chassis with up to 160 dynamic ports. Aside from being available in sizes of 80 and 288 ports, it is also expandable and can easily interface to local or remote legacy systems. The Fox Sports system has a mixture of RJ45 and Fibre ports for further flexibility and long runs, boasting up to 140m on CAT6 and up to 10km on fibre.
With features like “Cross Display Switching”, single operators with the one keyboard and mouse can easily control multiple computers depending on which screen the mouse cursor has been moved to. That is, by moving the mouse cursor from one screen to the next, the operator will have full control of the PC associated with that screen, automatically and seamlessly.
Studiotech Australia supplied and commissioned the G&D KVM system as well as provided training for operators and technical staff.
Visit www.studiotechau.com