Slovenia’s Satellite Telecommunication Networks (STN), which offers playout and transmission services to European broadcasters from its facilities in Ljubljana, has installed a Kaleido-X multi-image display processor with a built-in router to monitor the quality of all the station’s incoming and outgoing feeds.
STN currently operates seven satellite uplinks, and a total of 10 are to be fully operational by 2008, transmitting programming for over 20 television companies and 30 radio stations around the world. The channel is using the Kaleido-X in its master control room (MCR), configured to monitor 32 incoming feeds and 24 outgoing feeds, with 124 channels of audio, using two plasma displays.
“We use a number of layouts in the MCR with the Kaleido-X, depending on the monitoring application’, explains Tomaz Lovsin, STN’s managing director. “‘For example, one of our layouts displays all the down-link feeds for all of our programmes. With a single button-push, another layout can be pulled up for live events for monitoring the feeds, master and slave playout, graphics and any other services used for the live programming. The Kaleido-X’s remote panel makes layout recall really easy to manage’.
“With Kaleido-X’s sophisticated alarm reporting, our staff are automatically made aware of any issues in the playout chain, reducing repair times and increasing the overall efficiency of our MCR.”
STN chose the Kaleido-X system following its satisfaction with a Miranda Kaleido-K2 multi-image processor. The latest purchase was made after a transmission test with the facility’s new HD-ready playout servers. STN has equipped its Kaleido-X with the router output option for controlling a sports channel, which previously had its own stand-alone router, and this has helped save space and costs. The Kaleido-X’s built-in router capability can offer up to 48 unprocessed, baseband outputs from any of the HD/SDI video inputs.
The processor offers the highest quality multi-image output without compression, with superior on-screen graphics, for the most critical live monitoring applications. Each chassis can display up to 96 HD, SD or analogue inputs, any number of times, in any size, across up to eight displays of any resolution and orientation, without blocking or grouping restrictions.
All the multi-image outputs can be grouped to create large, highly integrated monitoring systems. Alternatively, each output can be controlled completely independently for multi-room environments, using one or more remote control panels.
