Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

Turner Exec Explains Overhaul

Posted by James Rogers on November 2, 2006

Tags: Infrastructure

Channel: Data Center

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Storage Networking World (SNW) -- Media giant Turner Broadcasting System has set its sights on holographic storage, an overhaul of its power system, and a grid-based architecture to cope with the changing demands of the broadcast marketplace.

Speaking during a keynote here today, Clyde Smith, senior vice president of broadcast engineering at Turner, explained that the firm, which encompasses CNN, Turner Classic Movies, and the Cartoon Network, is working hard to stay ahead of the storage curve.

The growing need for high-definition TV and the associated security risks, for example, are pushing Turner Broadcasting in the direction of holographic storage. "We're very worried about this pristine content being released from the library and being stolen," explained Smith. "Creating secure storage that can be written so that it can be read only by certain drives is very important to us."

The media firm has already dabbled with the technology, which uses beams of light to copy and store data on optical disks. Last year Smith completed a pilot with InPhase, using holographic disk to store a promo for TNT, which went out over the TV network during a 30 day period. (See InPhase Demos Density and InPhase Expands Family .) "It worked very, very successfully," said Smith, adding that he is now tracking "a number of manufacturers" in the holographic space.

Optical storage, such as holographic disk, has historically been used by organizations that need a method of preserving information for long periods of time, and its' advocates claim key advantages over traditional storage media. As an archive technology, optical storage has faster access times than tape and is cheaper than magnetic disk. (See Optical WORMs Into Enterprise.)