CentralCast Delivers Breakthrough Efficiencies to Public Broadcasting Stations with Harmonic

Harmonic’s XOS Media Processor Delivers Exceptional Video Quality to More than Half of U.S. Public Media Viewership

Harmonic announced that CentralCast, the centralized master control facility for U.S. public media, is offering groundbreaking media processing and video delivery efficiencies for more than 170 public media channels by collaborating with Harmonic. CentralCast is leveraging Harmonic’s award-winning XOS Advanced Media Processor to broadcast content to more than half of U.S. public media viewership with exceptional video quality, reliability and efficiency, while minimizing its system footprint and lowering operational costs.

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“We support a rapidly growing number of PBS stations. Partnering with Harmonic gives us a solid media processing foundation for easy scaling to meet the evolving needs of member stations,” said Steve White, chief technology officer at CentralCast. “The unique design of the XOS media processor features a higher channel density than our previous encoding platform, lowering our operational costs while maintaining the pristine video quality our member stations expect.”

Harmonic’s XOS media processor unifies all media processing and distribution functions for CentralCast to deliver 176 transport streams. The XOS media processor’s cloud-native software streamlines equipment needs, reducing power and cooling expenses. By lowering per-channel bitrate, the XOS processor allows stations to fit additional services into the fixed ATSC bandwidth without compromising video quality.

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To meet CentralCast’s unique audio requirements, Harmonic provides support for automatic switching between embedded 5.1 and 2.0 audio sources, ensuring a seamless audio experience for viewers.

In addition, Harmonic provided CentralCast with a comprehensive range of professional services, including system configuration and testing, speeding up the deployment and bringing efficiencies to public media stations faster.

“We’re proud to support CentralCast in advancing its shared master control model and helping public broadcasters preserve local control of their brand, identity, scheduling and long-term business strategy,” said Gil Rudge, senior vice president, solutions and Americas sales, video business at Harmonic. “With the XOS media processor, CentralCast can deliver more channels and services using less hardware, energy and space — a model that embodies the future of efficient, software-defined broadcast operations.”