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Miranda scores SE Asian first

MediaCorp TV (MCS), Singapore's largest terrestrial broadcaster, has installed a Miranda HD system for its new Channel 38, which is South East Asia's first HDTV trial on a terrestrial platform. The Miranda HD installation includes interfacing, master control and channel branding equipment, as well as signal and facility monitoring. The new channel will air to over a thousand Singapore households, community clubs, libraries and retail outlets during a six month trial. Currently, the new channel is providing an average of 14 hours of HD content per week during primetime hours.

MediaCorp TV (MCS), Singapore’s largest terrestrial broadcaster, has installed a Miranda HD system for its new Channel 38, which is South East Asia’s first HDTV trial on a terrestrial platform. The Miranda HD installation includes interfacing, master control and channel branding equipment, as well as signal and facility monitoring. The new channel will air to over a thousand Singapore households, community clubs, libraries and retail outlets during a six month trial. Currently, the new channel is providing an average of 14 hours of HD content per week during primetime hours.

As part of the Media Development Authority’s initiative to speed up the adoption of HD technology in the region, MCS developed the system to determine the viability of HDTV over this free-to-air platform. The HD system includes Miranda’s Imagestore HDTV master control and branding processor, the Kaleido-K2 multi-image display processor, the iControl facility monitoring system, and a range of interfacing products.

“We heard about a large number of major broadcasters and networks, in the US, Europe and in other parts of Asia, who have transitioned to HD with Miranda’s support, and we liked the company’s approach to managing aspect ratio during SD and HD conversion using AFD,” said Yeo Kim Pow, senior VP of MediaCorp Technologies Pte Ltd. “We wanted one man operation for the HDTV channel, and the Miranda system has achieved this. A single operator can control and monitor the playout of one or more HD channels.”

MCS’s eight analogue transmission channels and much of its SD programming has been upconverted using Miranda XVP-811i up/down/cross converters. These signal processors can automatically detect the input format, and perform the appropriate up/down or 720p/1080i cross conversion to provide consistent HD and SD outputs. Miranda’s DAP-781i audio processors are also used at MCS for Dolby 5.1 decoding.

Miranda’s iControl facility monitoring over IP system is used at Channel 38 to watch for any signal deterioration along the HD transmission path – all the way to the fibre link before transmission. iControl offers highly customized, graphical representations of the facility, and this helps operators to easily identify the source of any potential problems. This, coupled with the built-in signal probing that exists in Miranda’s Kaleido-K2 multi-image display processor, has meant that MCS doesn’t need additional boxes or people for probing and taping into the signal paths.

MCS uses the Imagestore HDTV master control and channel branding processor for playing out animated and still branding graphics to enhance HD programme presentation.