Highlights

It is 1995 and the station's general manager has just returned from a management seminar at a major trade show where the headlines read "Video Servers to Replace Videotape." You've read a little about servers, seen one or two at the trade shows, and seen where non-linear editing systems have headed over the past two years. The facility has a dozen or so linear transports, all in need of replacement or major repairs, and your cart machine for commercials is an orphan unto itself.

Suddenly you hear the miracle bells being chimed. "I can rid myself of transports, of tape, and of maintenance headaches related to the last-second repairs on the library management system" is a dream waiting to happen. And so the server is destined to become your savior ... or so you think!

This is the concept unlikely, but a good one if it's true. Still, the handwriting is on the wall. You know that over the next five years major changes will take place in the facility that will require tape format upgrades, digital conversion, and the implementation of a video server system to support the infrastructure you are about to change.

So the planning begins. Here, in 1995, there aren't as many options available. Products are just being introduced and the pressure of DTV is not upon us. Jump to 1998, and some of the same questions and requirements are squarely upon us. The server is now a reality, with at least four or five major...