Media house links four remote studios to its central facility via a unique combination of fibre and IP
Nevion, the leading provider of managed video services for broadcasters, service providers and government entities worldwide, has provided Swedish media house Norrköpings Tidningars Media AB (NTM AB), with its Flashlink and Ventura solutions to help it link its remote studios to its technical facility at Norrköping. The solution, provided by Nevion’s Swedish partner JMG, is a unique combination of fibre and IP and will 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 solutions to the Norrköping facility, which records news updates several times a day. The operator at Norrköping 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 AB. “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 AB have also been looking at a virtual studio and have 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 all of their 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 vice president 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 fiber and also with service management software.”
JMG had previously worked with NTM AB, which is owned by newspaper group Norrköpings Tidningar, to expand its existing studio and transmission facility in Norrköping using Nevion Flashlink fibre transport and signal processing solutions. NTM AB 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 solution was a key consideration for this remote production application. The Ventura VS901’s low latency and high visual quality make it the ideal solution for interactive or latency-sensitive applications such as news production. It is capable of near-mathematically lossless compression at ratios as low as 1.35:1, providing the highest possible visual quality with absolute minimal degradation through multiple encode/decode cycles.
Since its inception more than a decade ago, the Flashlink product family has gained a reputation for meeting real-world signal processing and video broadcast distribution requirements with products that are easy for broadcasters to use. Flashlink products are recognised for their high feature density with extensive control and monitoring capabilities and ultra-low power consumption, packed in attractively small form factors.
