SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sept. 11, 2014 — Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT), the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today announced the release of its Polaris™ playout management suite of tools, tightly integrated with Harmonic’s market-leading Spectrum™ media server family and designed to address the full range of playout applications for broadcasters. The Polaris suite represents Harmonic’s first offering in the emerging Media Orchestration category, which is important as workflows consolidate and simplify, and video delivery becomes virtualized.

“Harmonic’s new Polaris playout management suite represents a significant increase in our commitment to production and playout solutions, and to driving functional integration of the video delivery chain for greater efficiency, flexibility, and simplicity,” said Peter Alexander, chief marketing officer at Harmonic. “Delivery of video channels with advanced capabilities can be achieved in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the resources than was previously possible.”

Harmonic’s new media orchestration offerings include the following:

The Polaris Advance integrated channel playout automation system, offered in partnership with Pebble Beach Systems, raises the bar for integrated channel playout by enabling powerful control and management of the complete multichannel playout workflow from a single interface. Polaris Advance software improves on current integrated channel playout workflows by maximizing flexibility for adaptation to individual customer requirements for efficient play to air, with the simplicity of being tightly integrated with the Spectrum media server system. Leveraging IP control, Polaris Advance facilitates management of the advanced functional-integration features of the Spectrum ChannelPort™ integrated channel playout system, and will migrate to support playout functionality from the Harmonic VOS™ virtualized video delivery platform.

The Polaris Live manual device control application elevates the capabilities of channel-in-a-box solutions by bringing the power and efficiency of fingertip manual control to all functions of the Spectrum ChannelPort system. The Polaris Live solution delivers fully customizable touchscreen control of video, graphics, DVE, and routing into master control and studio environments. The combined system maximizes flexibility and simplicity of operations, with an intuitive user-defined GUI.

In related news, the company has made a strategic investment in Vislink PLC (UK), the parent company of Pebble Beach Systems, becoming one of its largest shareholders.

Harmonic will showcase its comprehensive line of market-leading solutions that optimize the production and delivery of high-value video services in the broadcast, pay-TV, and new media environments at stand 1.B20 during IBC2014 in Amsterdam, Sept. 12-16. Further information about Harmonic and the company’s products is available at www.harmonicinc.com