Although the Master Control area may
 not be the most exciting place in the whole
 WCTV facility, it is, in fact, the most vital.
     This machinery in this room controls
 what you see on WCTV. Pre-recorded
 programs are played back, live feeds are
 controlled, and the Community Bulletin
 Board signals (both video and audio) are
 generated in here as well.
     In 2006 this room was upgraded in an
 attempt to integrate new technology. It has
 evolved from a tape-based system (with a
 few DVDs here and there) to one based on
 video server technology. Simply put, most
 of our programs are now on a hard drive.
    
     Here you see shades of the old and
 the new. On the bottom is a VHS player
 (yes, we still have shows on tape). We
 have seven of those, along with three
 DVD players.
     The devices in the middle make up
 our new system, called the “NEXUS”,
 from which most shows are played.

     With this new system in place, our producers can now edit their
 programs on our computer editing stations in the Media Lab. When
 projects are completed, the finished programs can be directly
 transferred from the editing station to the NEXUS storage drives
 by way of a standard computer network, thus eliminating the need
 for tapes or disks to transfer programs.

     The computer on which we compose our
 Community Bulletin Board (CBB) is also located
 in this area. We take announcements from local
 organizations, and then produce eye-catching
 graphic pages that make these local messages
 stand out. To have your message put on WCTV,
 just fill out a Bulletin Board Request Form here
 at the WCTV office at 140 Middlesex Avenue,
 or e-mail your request to cbb@wctv.org.

     What you see here is the computer system
 used to input our schedule information into the
 NEXUS. Once that is done, the system will
 automatically call up our programs at the time
 they are needed for playback and send them
 out on our video output stream. This automated
 stream is then sent to the Comcast and Verizon
 cable systems.