Joseph Electronics said the KVM solution enables MLB Network to transmit and receive production data on a single dark fiber and reroute signals quickly to and from any of the 86 edit stations in the network's 24/7 operation.

"Joseph Electronics worked with MultiDyne to design a KVM system that could operate on a single fiber strand, which is something no one else could offer," said Tab Butler, senior director of media management and postproduction, MLB Network.

"By covering bidirectional communications in a single piece of glass, we were able to cut our dark fiber costs. At the same time, our editors' experience with the keyboard, mouse and video is the same in terms of feel and response time as it was when the computer was located right under their desks."

To combat space and power limitations at its studio headquarters, which houses the postproduction operation, MLB Network moved its recording encoders, storage systems, computers for 86 edit machines, proxy storage and MAM infrastructure to a new data center over one mile away.

The editors and their work spaces — each of which contains two 24-inch computer monitors with an audio monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse — remain at the studios. The data center and the studios are connected by redundant, point-to-point bundles of dark fiber.

Signals from the keyboard, mouse, monitors and computer audio all traverse back and forth on a single strand of fiber.

Unlike competitive solutions that require two or more fibers to connect the work spaces to each of the 86 edit machines, JE and MultiDyne devised a KVM solution that requires only one fiber strand per machine, with a dual-image, dual-link feature.

In this way, MLB Network needs half the amount of dark fiber, which results in significant savings for an operation of its size.

At the same time, MLB Network can use the KVM system in concert with an optical router to reroute transmitters and receivers quickly and dynamically if hardware problems occur, eliminating the need to take an edit space out of service. Instead, in only a minute, any physical machine at the data center can be assigned through the router to any specific edit work space at the studios.

MLB Network's KVM system consists of 86 MultiDyne transmitters at the data center, connected to 86 Cisco C-240 edit workstations running Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2016 for editing. At the studios, 94 MultiDyne receivers are reserved for 86 HD edit work spaces.