Equipment lets prime-time U.S. shows air in evenings on Yokota

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Equipment lets prime-time U.S. shows air in evenings on Yokota
By Vince Little, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, December 5, 2008

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Yokota’s cable television provider is about to give infomercial pitchman Billy Mays the boot every night.

In a move anticipated for months, prime-time U.S. broadcasts on 33 channels will be shifted to evening hours starting Monday, Allied Telesis and AAFES announced. American Forces Network programming at the base won’t be affected, while sports and news channels also will remain real-time.

The sophisticated hardware and software brought in for the "time-shifting" acts as a computerized container, holding a show for nine hours before it’s rebroadcast. One is required for each channel.

"The time-shift servers work much like a very large TiVo," Keith Southard, chief executive officer of Allied Telesis Capital Corp. in San Jose, Calif., wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. "They take content in, store it on large hard drives, and then replay the content at the designated time — nine hours later in a continuous stream."

Due to the live feed Allied Telesis receives through a fiber-optic link in San Francisco, infomercials have plagued Yokota’s premium cable lineup in prime evening hours since the company began delivering video service in May 2007.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59211