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  • Record a programme using the 7 day TV guide
  • Record a programme using the 7 day TV guide
  • Search the programme archive
  • Search the programme archive
  • Create playlists
  • Create playlists
  • Full Screen playback
  • Full Screen playback
  • Create Clips
  • Create Clips

Cambridge Imaging Systems’ Box of Broadcasts system (BoB) is a feature rich and highly configurable off-air recording system which has been developed over a number of years, principally for use by the MOD, BBC Monitoring, the BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council) and Bournemouth University’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice.

BoB is controlled with a web browser based scheduling interface. From a simple EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) displaying the next seven days Freeview TV and Radio, users can select recordings at the click of a mouse button. They can also search from a database of programmes coming up over the next seven days by programme title or keyword and record items from the search results.

The selected programmes are recorded at the time of broadcast and made available in the user’s personal account. More importantly, they are added to a long term archive of programmes available to everyone. Metadata records for the archived programmes are created from the EPG information and users can enrich or correct the data at any time. A long term archive of programmes is then built up which can be accessed by anyone from a google style search box. Finding a programme is simple – search for a word or phrase and choose from the available hits.

BoB also provides the opportunity to add programmes to the archive which have already been broadcast. Our customers know from experience that many requests for programmes happen after transmission. For this we provide a short term archive of the major channels – usually lasting between a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on storage available.

Users can also make shorter clips from a full programme and also add them to the database. They can also collect records in their own playlist and make them accessible to the other users and tagging is also available which provides a ‘Folksonomy’ allowing the user to classify data themselves.

Box of Broadcasts system architecture

administration software for use with the BoB system

Imagen Client
Imagen Database Client
Full management over your programme archive. Search, delete, modify your programmes.

Tape Ingest
Tape Ingest
Add material on tape to your BoB archive. Works with any tape deck which supports Sony Contol Protocol.

ImagenLite
ImagenLite
Add digital material (Mpeg-2, QT, WMV, AV to your BoB archive)

Media Plan
Media Plan
Set up blanket record schedules and control which channels are accessible by BoB Users. Full control over all Scheduled recordings.

Archive View
Archive View
Graphical view of MPEG-2 Transport streams held in your Buffer. Archive View allows you to extract raw MPEG-2 for offline editing, add to the database, transcode to another format or prepare a file to burn to DVD.

Scope and sizing

Cambridge Imaging’s BoB system (Box of Broadcasts) typically utilises RAIDs ranging in size between 1TB and 20TB, although it will happily sit on top of much larger systems. The system is extremely scalable. Any size RAID can be added to the system at a later date, instantly increasing the amount of disk space available for online media.

Extra Modules

  • Support for Analogue sources
  • Support for Satellite channels
  • Ordering facilities – output to DVD
  • Easily add Extra Transcoders and Storage

System architecture

We prefer to use industry standard protocols and interfaces and embrace the use of open-source code to speed development and to keep costs down. We have experience of integrating our software with many different types of administrative, commercial and industrial systems. We use open interfaces based upon SOAP and XML for all of the modules in our DAM systems and we use PHP and PostgreSQL for our web applications. All our applications run on Windows 2003 Server platform.

T-Gate/S-Gate

Solid State, Ethernet attached, DVB Receivers developed for the BoB system by Cambridge Imaging Systems. These units tune into digital television stations and multicast the MPEG-2 Transport streams onto the network. Broadcast streams can then be saved to networked storage servers. Sgate can stream a multiplex from a satellite feed. For more information on T-gate click here for a pdf. For more information on S-gate click here for a pdf. If the network is fast enough and supports industry standard multicast protocols, any number of users can also view broadcast TV over the network.

Tgate logo - Tgatge developed by Cambridge Imaging Systems Ltd

Sgate logo - Sgate developed by Cambridge Imaging Systems Ltd

Capture/Feedserver

This server runs the CIS Capture and FeedServer software. Together they write the unmodified MPEG-2 streams to the storage RAID, schedule and manage the available video sources, performs EPG management and indexed access to the recorded video.

Transcoder Server

This server accepts the MPEG-2 Transport stream and transcodes to a variety of formats such as H.264, Flash Video, Quicktime, WMV and MP3 and AAC.

Database and Web Server

The Database and Web Server offer universal access to the live EPG data, scheduling controls and the long-term program archive. Administrators also have access to usage statistics and archive management.

Storage RAID

The RAID is used for storing the short term 48+ hours TV buffer. It also stores all the programmes in the archive in all formats created by the transcoder. RAIDS ranging in size between 3 and 20TB are typically installed as part of a BoB system.