Cuba Rushford School District consists of three schools located in the towns of Cuba and Rushford, New York. All three schools have used Synergy for several years. Due to the obsolescence and lack of expandability inherent within their Synergy systems, the district sought an upgrade. The urgency of the need was heightened by some critical system failures that were occurring at Cuba Elementary School. This all led to an upgrade of all three schools in April of 2004.

The Head End at Cuba Rushford Middle High School

Three Schools In Three Days

The Synergy-To-Phoenix upgrade at Cuba Rushford schools was the most ambitious project completed by Realm Control Corp. (then known as Xolutionz) to date due to the timeframe -- all three schools were to be upgraded in only three days. Because the Synergy failures were occurring at Cuba Elementary, we started with that school to ensure that we would have enough time to validate 100% stability. Testing by the Media Director at Cuba Elementary continued while the Middle High School was upgraded on day two and finally Rushford Elementary was upgraded on day three.

Analog Meets Digital

The upgrade included a new and powerful capability: digital media control. Paul Austin, the Technology Coordinator for Cuba Rushford School District, decided to install three Enseo Alchemy digital file servers. At each of the two elementary schools, four-channel file servers would be installed. At the middle-high school, an eight-channel file server would be installed. The expectation was that the existing analog devices would be supported (including full control of the DVD Players) and the digital media capabilities would function seamlessly aside the analog devices.

Video On Demand

Because Cuba Rushford Schools decided to install the Enseo digital file server, they benefited from a new capability that is available to all Phoenix systems that support the Enseo servers: Video On Demand. The way it works is this: a separate source is defined within the Phoenix database for each channel that is available on the server. Then the Media Director can define whether the channels are available at all times as Video On Demand channels or are rather available to the Phoenix scheduler. Marking channels as "On Demand" is a simple matter of clicking a checkbox. For those channels defined as "On Demand," any user can select an Enseo title via the web client and thus claim a stream. Phoenix handles all of the routing required to deliver the digital media to the destination that the user is in. Then, the user controls a digital file just as s/he would control a VCR or DVD player using the web client or the AMX handheld remote control.

The Upgrade

Paul Austin and Shane Burke met at Cuba Elementary School on Monday, April 5. Rich Olson, the installation Technician from Univisions Communications Group, arrived shortly thereafter with the NetLinx hardware. The hardware and software were in place quickly and most of the day was spent validating performance. Phoenix worked as expected, with the exception of one DVD player that required a shorter IR pulse length. After addressing that issue, Cuba Elementary was fully operational. Pat, the Media Director at Cuba Elementary, continued to test the next two days to further validate performance. Some issues were encountered with various Television Managers that needed attention. However, the Phoenix software worked properly during all testing.

Day two at Cuba Middle High School wasn't quite so simple due to some issues that were encountered regarding control of their Philips BTS 64x128 matrix router when used in conjunction with the All-Call Paging feature. While it worked fine when controlled by Synergy, it was being overwhelmed with commands when controlled by Phoenix. This was occurring because the 260 Million Instruction Per Second (MIP) processor that drives NetLinx was sending commands much faster than it's 3 MIP AXcess counterpart. Shane dealt with that and the site was operational by day's end. Validation was performed by Rich Olson, Paul Austin, Shane Burke, and Nick, the Media Director at the Middle High School.

Day three at Rushford Elementary was uneventful. Rich Olson and Shane Burke had Phoenix fully installed and validated early in the day. Some time was spent training the Rushford Elementary Media Director, Barbara. After that, Paul and Shane returned to Cuba Elementary to fix a problem with one Television Manager that Pat had encountered.

The upgrade was successful at all three schools. Cuba Rushford Schools is now able to take advantage of the many new capabilities offered by Phoenix as well as the very powerful Enseo Alchemy digital file servers.

Conclusion

Cuba Rushford Schools is an important milestone because the installations validate that Phoenix works well in a hybrid environment controlling both digital and analog media, including Video On Demand. Patrick Calandra and Rich Olson of Univisions Communications Group both did outstanding work in facilitating and assisting with the upgrade. Paul Austin and the entire Media Center staff at Cuba Rushford Schools were very helpful throughout the entire process. Realm Control Corp. would like to thank everybody involved in the completion of these three upgrades from Synergy to Phoenix.