RTVE renews the European Headend with LAGUNA MEDIA PROCESSOR by SAPEC
Madrid-Copenhague-Ciudad de Méjico, 28 de enero 2020
RTVE has updated the television and radio satellite headend to cover Asia, Africa and Europe with its content to incorporate high definition (HD) and thus offer higher quality to the end user.
For these updates RTVE has used Sapec´s LAGUNA MEDIA PROCESSOR (LMP) encoding equipment, which offers a high image quality at the lowest possible bandwidth, as well as the ability to unify all TV and Radio coding and multiplexing needs in a single device.
On December 15, 2019, the new European headend began its broadcast transmission. In this case, the broadcasted channels were two (2) High Definition Television channels (International TVE and 24H) and six (6) Digital Radio channels (Radio1, Classic Radio, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 5 and Radio Exterior).
LAGUNA has allowed a high level of integration of the solution because in only 1 RU, it has been possible to perform the encoding of the 2 HD channels, the 10 estero audio channels, to perform the statistical multiplexing of the video channels and on top of that, the generation of the MPTS that is sent to the satellite teleport.
LAGUNA MEDIA PROCESSOR is a Universal Platform that allows different functionalities depending on the client’s needs through the installation of the proper licenses: encoding, decoding, multiplexing, etc. In this case the configuration used is shown in the following diagram.
The LMP solution has the possibility to be update in the future (through licenses) to incorporate new TV and/or Radio channels or even update to HEVC (H.265) when required.
Two LMP have been supplied in 1 + 1 configuration in order to guarantee 99.999% availability of transmissions.
“It is an honour that RTVE counts on SAPEC´s technology, not only for its viewers nationwide, but also internationally. The fact that a Broadcaster like RTVE renews its headends for Asia and Africa again with a SAPEC solution, and on top of that, relies on our new LAGUNA solution to encode all its content for the rest of Europe, is a clear sign that we are doing things right, and this motivates us to continue along this technological path ”-States Jose Manuel Lopez, Commercial Director at SAPEC.
For this project, SAPEC has also supplied equipment from its represented partner NEVION. This equipment has consisted of a system of the Flashlink solution to distribute and embed teletext and audios in the video channels to be subsequently processed in LAGUNA MEDIA PROCESSOR.
In addition, two CP525 multiplexers with ASI and IP interfaces have been supplied to remultiplex the generated stream by the LMP with DVB subtitles of TVE International and 24H channels.
Sapec has carried out the entire project as a turnkey solution including installation and configuration of the entire system. Sapec will also carry out the maintenance and technical support of all the supplied headend elements during the next years.
This project has been a test of the trust of RTVE in SAPEC and its new developments, since during 2019, the headends of Asia and Africa were updated with SAPEC equipment from the ALTUM-II family, which allows to generate and multiplex both the Television channel (HD, H.264 4: 2: 2) and the Radio channels in a single encoder, simplifying installation and maintenance and allowing substantial savings in space and consumption.
