Case Study: ChyronHego

Samsung Solid State Drives Bring Sports Fans into the Game

Customer NeedChyronHego graphics technology is used by TV broadcasters and sport teams to engage fans and make the viewing experience more dynamic. But the demands of processing high-definition video and complex graphics were outpacing the capabilities of standard hard drives with spinning disks. The company needed Solid State Drives (SSD) that could deliver better performance and reliability.

Samsung SolutionChyronHego switched to Samsung enterprise-grade SSDs to deliver faster performance and better reliability. The Samsung SSDs are embedded on nearly all of ChyronHego’s graphics production products which are used by major sports organizations including the Olympics, National Football League, Major League Baseball, and many professional football (soccer) leagues around the world.

ResultsSamsung enterprise-grade SSDs enable ChyronHego clients to push the boundaries of on-screen graphics. Broadcasters can display complex, multi-layered graphics in split seconds enabling new viewer experiences. Sports teams can track all on-field activity for improved player performance. The improved reliability ensures that millions of fans watching their favorite team do not miss a second of the action, while receiving enhanced real-time analytics.

Overview

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ChyronHego is the world-leader in technologies for onscreen graphics for broadcast sports, news, and live entertainment. ChyronHego’s hardware enhances the viewing experience by overlaying sophisticated graphics onto live video feeds. For example, the hardware renders the first-down lines in an American football game, the trajectory of a soccer player’s kick, or visually highlights basketball players on opposing teams.

In addition to screen graphics, the company’s technology is also used to track all on-field activity in real-time so coaches can improve player training and performance. The data visualization technology is used by soccer leagues including the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, and Japanese Professional Football League at over 125 stadiums to track over 2,000 matches.

Leading TV broadcasters also use ChyronHego’s graphics technology to enhance news reports, display election results, and monitor real-time weather alerts.

Today’s sports fans have grown up with video games, HD televisions, and movies with ultra-realistic computer generated special effects. To keep up with their higher expectations, sports teams and broadcasters turn to ChyronHego to create dazzling on-screen graphics that engage fans – whether they are in the stadium or watching the game on TV.

ChyronHego’s hardware products capture, store, analyze and render massive amounts of video and graphics feeds. Nearly all visuals are recorded or created in high-definition, which makes the files extremely large and difficult to retrieve and manipulate live TV and stadium displays.

With the need for more complex graphics at higher screen resolutions, ChryonHego needed storage with higher throughput and lower latency. But traditional hard drives with spinning disks simply could not keep up.

“Higher throughput became an issue for us on traditional drives as we began working with high-

resolution content,” says Brian Wisnowski, Platform Engineer at ChyronHego. “We discovered that hard drives with spinning disks were limiting our efforts. A single high-resolution news clip could take up an entire spinning drive. That’s when we started looking at Solid State Drives (SSDs).”

“Higher resolution was driving demand for higher performance,” he says. “We were pulling so much data that our traditional drives just couldn’t handle it. But we were experiencing demand for a new level of player stats collected through data visualization and improvements in other areas. So it was really a combination of the technology and our customers pushing us to a better solution.”

The company also needed more reliability in their storage devices. “The 18-wheeler mobile production studios are always on the move from game to game, and that created challenges with reliability,” says Mark Gederman, Marketing Director. “And if a drive needed to be swapped, it could take quite a long time to move the data.”

The Customer Need:Ultra Fast, Reliable Storage Drives

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ChyronHego switched to Samsung SSDs when their original vendor experienced production and supply challenges. “Our initial switch to SSDs really came down to performance, but after our vendor ran into supply problems, we also realized the importance of supply and availability,” Wisnowski says.

“So we took a look at the Samsung 840 Pro and 850 Pro and saw a significant improvement in performance and plenty of availability,” says Wisnowski. “After that, Samsung was a no brainer. If I knew then what I know now, we would have started with Samsung from day one.”

The Samsung 840 Pro and 850 Pro SSDs can hold up to 2TB of data with sequential read speeds of up to 550MB per second and write speeds of up to 520MB per second.

Samsung is the leader in SSD research, design, and manufacturing.

By controlling the entire design-to-market cycle, Samsung is able to offer industry-leading performance and reliability. The Samsung 850 Pro SSD is fabricated using the world’s first 3D V-NAND architecture. The new process enables higher density and performance with a smaller footprint. The Samsung 850 Pro also has the lowest power consumption of any SSD in its class.

ChyronHego has standardized on Samsung SSDs in almost all of its hardware, incorporating multiple drives in numerous storage arrays.

Because SSDs have no moving parts, they are less prone to damage during transport of the mobile production studio trucks. Their lower power usage also lowers operating and cooling costs.

Quick Profile: The Samsung Solution:SSDs Deliver Performance and Availability

Form Factor: 2.5-inch

Capacity: Available in 128GB, 256GB , 512GB, 1TB, & 2TB

Host Interface: SATA 6Gb/s (compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s)

Sequential Read Speed: Up to 550MB/s

Sequential Write Speed: Up to 520MB/s

Random Read Speed: Up to 100K IOPS

Random Write Speed: Up to 90K IOPS

Power Consumption: 0.4W (idle) / up to 3.3W (active ) / 2mW (Device sleep)

Encryption: AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption / TCG/OPAL v2.0 & Encrypted Drive compliant

Environmental: Operating Temperature of 32o F to 140o F

Weight: 0.15lb

Warranty: 10 years / 150TBW

Samsung 850 Pro Series Solid State Drive

Learn more: samsung.com/business | 1-800-SAMSUNG | 1-866-SAM4BIZ

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© 2015 Samsung Electronics America, Inc. All rights reserved. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. All products, logos and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Screen images simulated. This case study is for informational purposes only. Samsung makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study.

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The Results:Superior Performance and Reliability

With the Samsung SSDs now in nearly every ChyronHego product, the company is benefiting from superior performance that continues to impress clients. Data visualization capabilities are enhanced with the ability to capture and analyze data more quickly.

Wisnowski states that clients have been “consistently impressed” by the performance of the Mosaic XL, a tightly integrated turnkey graphics production platform. “They could not believe how much they could do with the system,” he says.

Samsung SSDs also provide clients with confidence of recording and producing an entire event without experiencing a hard drive failure. “The Samsung 840 Pro and 850 Pro SSDs have been extremely reliable,”

says Wisnowski. “We experience far fewer problems than we ever did with traditional spinning disks. Before Samsung SSDs, there was always the possibility of a disk failure during a broadcast. Now our products with Samsung SSDs are more reliable and more predictable.”

Recovery times from a failed hard drive are also much quicker than before. A 4TB array of spinning disks could take up to a day to rebuild. An SSD array with a similar capacity takes just a few hours.

“Our clients are the leading sports teams and broadcasters in the world and their programming is seen by tens of millions of viewers every day, so we need mission-critical hardware that just works,” says Gederman.

“The Samsung SSDs have performed exceptionally well and are now our standard.”

“Before Samsung SSDs, there was always the possibility of a disk failure during a broadcast. Now our products with Samsung SSDs are more reliable and more predictable.”

– Brian Wisnowski, Platform Engineer, ChyronHego