Imagine Communications has completed a major upgrade of the playout and asset management facilities at Rotana TV in Cairo, Egypt.
The upgrade project has allowed Rotana TV to migrate all of its channels to HD and enabled the playout centre to operate completely in the file domain. The enhancements have enabled Rotana TV to deliver output via a data stream for satellite providers Arabsat and Nilesat, and to other broadcast facilities in Europe and the USA. Rotana TV plans to move IP delivery to outlets in Canada and South America in the future.
“When we installed our original automated playout and asset management architecture in 2009, we knew it was one step in our continuing growth and that we would need to expand it in due course,” said Dr. Naser Refaat, technical services executive manager, Rotana TV. “That system has proved extremely robust and reliable, and it is very pleasing that we do not have to lose any of that capital investment as part of our upgrade.”
Central to the upgrade are Imagine Communications’ Nexio Volt servers and Nexio Farad scalable online storage systems to enable the HD capabilities. Rotana TV already had Imagine Communications’ ADC playout automation and Nexio Motion digital media management, both of which were HD-ready. For the HD upgrade, the motion media management platform provided a file-based environment that included ingest stations both within Rotana TV and remotely at the broadcaster’s facilities in Cairo’s Media Production City. Other Imagine Communications’ equipment, including Nexio IconMaster modular master control switchers, graphics and Platinum routers with integrated multiviewers, was simply upgraded to handle HD signals.
“Our broadcast customers are navigating various states of transition, whether migrating from tape to file, from SD to HD and beyond, or from traditional infrastructures to software-defined networks,” said Mathias Eckert, VP of EMEA at Imagine Communications. “We strive to provide solutions that are tailored for these transitions wherever our customers are in the process. Rotana TV, which five years ago implemented an end-to-end solution for SD playout, demonstrates this clearly. Today, we have upgraded it for file-based HD without compromising their existing investments in equipment and skills, and we have delivered a solution that remains future-proofed, whenever Rotana TV wants to take that next step.”
