Swedish media house Norrköpings Tidningars Media has installed Nevion’s Flashlink and Ventura systems to help link remote studios via fibre and IP to its technical facility at Norrköping, and reduce costs, writes David Fox.
The systems were provided by Nevion’s Swedish partner JMG, and uses “a unique combination of fibre and IP” to enable 24nt (one of five TV channels at the media house) to produce and gather more news content while reducing operational expenditure.
Remote studios at Linköping and Uppsala are connected by Nevion systems to Norrköping, where news updates are recorded several times a day. The operator at there handles everything, from pan/tilt cameras, to lighting and audio, so that only a reporter is needed at each remote location.
“The Nevion solution allows us to generate more content using the same staff and cost structure, resulting in significant operational savings,” said Bo Enell, television director, Norrköpings Tidningars Media (pictured).
“We were able to rely on Nevion’s products and expertise in everything from dark fibre transport to high-end IP connections, to ensure the highest quality and lowest latency transport for our news content.”
Linköping is connected to Norrköping over dark fibre by Nevion’s Flashlink DWDM system. The connection handles four SD-SDI signals with audio, a 2Gb LAN and remote data converted from RS422 to Ethernet.
Uppsala is connected to Norrköping over Nevion’s Ventura VS901 JPEG 2000 IP encoders, a recent addition to the previously established connection at Helsingborg. Luleå will be the next studio to be completed and connected in the same way.
NTM has also been looking at virtual studio use and recently completed testing using green screens at Uppsala, with the technology in Norrköping. For this Nevion’s equipment would be used for the distribution due to the significant demands on signal quality needed. The next step will be work on the rest of its channels.
“This is a good example of Nevion’s breadth of support for remote production over any distance and over any type of network—even networks combining different transport protocols,” said Kjetil Bonde, Nevion’s VP of sales, Europe.
“Nevion customers are reducing both capital and operational expenses with innovative solutions that bridge multiple transport protocols, and our managed video services provide capabilities wherever they’re needed—with transport hardware for IP, SDH/SONET or fibre and also with service management software.”
JMG had previously worked with NTM, which is owned by newspaper group Norrköpings Tidningar, to expand its existing studio and transmission facility in Norrköping using Flashlink fibre transport and signal processing. NTM has been broadcasting over the DTT network in Norrköping since 2006, and it expanded to Linköping (24Corren), Luleå (24Norrbotten) and Uppsala following Norrköpings Tidningar acquisitions of newspapers in those regions.
The low latency of Nevion’s JPEG 2000 system was a key consideration for this remote production application. The Ventura VS901 boasts low latency and high visual quality, making it suitable for interactive or latency-sensitive applications such as news. It is capable of near-mathematically lossless compression at ratios as low as 1.35:1, providing high visual quality with minimal degradation through multiple encode/decode cycles.
