In September of 2003, the design for a facility to broadcast the news to the Arabic world was started. This network then became the Middle East Television Network, the Alhurra Channel and was launched on 14 February 2004.

•  MTN is a server centric facility with a 30 TB system for on line and 200 TB of near line storage.

• It encompasses 160 workstation all capable of doing online editing in high resolution.

• Current it has 10 ingest units for SDI ingest and is capable of ingesting DV from a camera source at any workstation.

• Outbound it has 6 playback stations currently feeding two air channels.

• For production there are two control rooms that are fully integrated into the server system as well as the news systems. 

• For editing there are eight (8) edit rooms ranging from Avid Adrenalins to DV Express Pros.

• The news system and production database are tightly integrated as to perform as one, thereby allowing instant changes of all materials during the news shows to accommodate the fast pace of news.

• The facility overall is very simplistic to operate and allows even the entry level journalist to compose the story, edit the packages, produce the running list, and create CG and teleprompter material, all from their desktop workstation.

All of this was achieved using standard off the shelf IT equipment and functioned to this caliber of performance.