PlayBox Technology announces the completion of a major upgrade to the play-out facilities at the studios of Hong Kong’s largest independent broadcaster, Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB). The project, which also included customer training, was completed together with the engineering team from Mediatech (International) Ltd, the local PlayBox Technology partner, and was finalized with the installation of 26 servers at the network’s headquarters in TVB City, Kowloon. The installation encompassed nine high definition 24/7 channels. Seven of them are already on air and the others are in pre-commission testing.
“TVB chose this system on the basis of our ability to customize the feature set and match their existing workflow, plus the proven fact that we deliver on time and within an affordable price structure,” comments Pavlin Rahnev, Director, Solution Sales, PlayBox Technology.
Twenty of the servers installed consist of PlayBox Technology AirBox and TitleBox, for playout, with character generation and graphics. Eighteen are configured with 1:1 redundancy level for main and back-up operation on the nine high-definition channels. Control of the nine high-definition channels is via Multi Playout Manager, a fully assignable monitoring and control system. Two redundant Multi Backup Manager servers were added to manage redundancy switching on an existing Snell Aurora router.
An additional pair of servers have been installed for use in staff training, again as main and backup.
PlayBox Technology also supplied four single-channel CaptureBox servers, each with additional playout software installed for video quality control and verification. Once content is approved, it is automatically sent to two 16 terabyte network-attached storage servers, configured for main and redundant operation.
Each channel incorporates a PlayBox Technology SafeBox automated content transfer management tool which replicates remote content to local playout server folders for safe playback. The role of SafeBox is to manage wipe lists coming from the TVB traffic department and to purge the unnecessary content. In line with its ability to match all customer needs, PlayBox Technology developed playlist converters specially for this project. These convert the playlists coming from TVB’s internally-designed traffic system and from an existing Harris Automation to match the PlayBox Technology playlist format.
About TVB Hong Kong
Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong, was first established in November 1967. It has grown from an initial 200 people to over 4,600 including contract artistes and staff in overseas subsidiary companies. TVB today operates mulitplex television channels, providing free and diversified television entertainment to 2.37 million homes in Hong Kong round the clock. Its flagship channels, the Chinese Jade and English Pearl channels, transmit over 17,000 hours of programming every year. During prime-time viewing hours, Jade and Pearl channels achieve a remarkable average of 94% and 81% of Hong Kong’s television audience share respectively. TVB is one of the largest producers of Chinese language programming in the world. In addition, many of the Chinese programs are dubbed into other languages and are distributed to more than 40 countries and 100 cities, accessible to over 300 million households.
About Mediatech (International) Ltd.
Mediatech (International) Limited (MIL) is a solution provider for the professional video market mainly in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and China. Customers include terrestrial television broadcasters, cable headend operators, satellite broadcasters, post-production facilities, telecom service providers, telecom companies, corporations and universities.
With over 100 staff-years of accumulated experience, MIL is not only an equipment reseller but also a system provider, service developer and engineering consultant for the video, broadcast, information and communications technologies industry.
About PlayBox Technology
PlayBox Technology is an international communications and information-technology company serving the broadcast, corporate and digital signage markets in more than 100 countries. It is dedicated to the research, design, development and provision of the best products, systems, solutions and services. With over 13,000 TV and branding channels powered by PlayBox Technology, the chances are you will have experienced our broadcast solutions for yourself. Users cover a wide range of today’s broadcast activities and include start-up TV channels, webcasters, DVB (IP/ASI) TV channels, interactive TV and music channels, film channels, remote TV channels and disaster recovery channels as well as satellite, local, regional, national and international broadcasters.
