Central apparatus room
In broadcast facilities, a central apparatus room (CAR, pronounced "C-A-R"), central machine room, or central equipment room (CER), or central technical area (CTA), or rack room is where shared equipment common to all technical areas is located. Some broadcast facilities have several of these rooms. It should be air-conditioned, however low-noise specifications such as acoustical treatments are optional.[1] Equipment is connected either directly with an attached foldout monitor, keyboard and mouse or remotely via KVM switch, ssh, VNC, or remote desktop.
Gear
These rooms contain broadcast and broadcast IT mission critical gear necessary to broadcast and television operations. CARs usually house Audio routers, video routers, video servers, compressors and multiplexers that utilize broadcast automation systems with broadcast programming applications to playout television programs.
They contain broadcast and monitoring equipment, through which all the operations are monitored by the Transmission Engineer, without disturbing the Studio Recordings. CER usually houses audio and video routers, video servers, compressors and multiplexers, Analog Transmission System, UP Link, Digital Processing Synchronizer, Video Patch Panels, and Audio Patch Panels, including video monitors.[2][3]
Common equipment
- 19-inch racks
- Antenna tracking system
- Audio router
- Broadcast delay
- Camera control unit (CCU)
- Conditional access system
- Character generator Subtitling systems
- Distribution frame
- Encoder
- Fiber optic transceiver
- Frame synchronizers
- GPS receivers
- High-power amplifier
- Integrated receiver/decoder (IRD)
- IF Distribution.
- Media storage
- Multiplexer
- Network switch
- Audio monitoring tools
- Radio frequency devices
- Router
- Serial digital interface (SDI) audio de-embedder
- Talkback (recording)
- Transport stream analyzer
- Video router
- Video server
- video monitoring tools
- Video monitor
- Waveform monitor
See also
- Broadcast engineering
- Data center
- Master control room (MCR)
- Network operations center (NOC)
- Production control room (PCR)
- Server room
- Server farm
- Transmission control room (TCR)
References
- Clyde Broadcast – The CTA (Central Technical Area) Archived July 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- Faculty of Communication – Confluence – The Ravensbourne Wiki – Central Apparatus Room (CAR) Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- Bob Zelin U N L E A S H E D Series – Why do you want Central Machine Room? Archived September 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine