One of the most traditional television channels in Latin America has recently renovated its facilities by migrating its production infrastructure to digital technology and will be ready to produce in HD when necessary.
Radio Caracas Televisión C.A. is completing a digital migration process that began a year ago. Recently, the canal opened its production facilities
Radio Caracas Television began operations in the early 50s during its extensive history has marked the way of making television in Venezuela and influenced the television profile of our continent.
Within the history of Radio Caracas Television there are several milestones such as being the first broadcast of a live baseball game in Venezuelan territory. That was in 1953, the Amateur Baseball World Series between Venezuela and Cuba.
A year later, the channel ventured into the genre that would bring him the most satisfaction. In 1954, Radio Caracas Televisión produced its first telenovela: "Camay", which was obviously broadcast live.
Radio Caracas Television is also historic the program "Radio Rochela", a humorous space that has been on the air for five decades. But it was undoubtedly the telenovelas such as "El derecho de nacer" in the 60s, "Cristal" and the controversial "Por estas calles" that brought the channel the most success and achieved the internationalization of Venezuelan television production.
RCTV's investment
The new studios are being used for special live and recorded programming. With the purchase of approximately $1 million from Grass Valley, they acquired the digital equipment needed for three new news production studios, a quarter of central equipment and studio control rooms.
This included nine Grass Valley LDK 200 SD cameras with triax adapters, an LDK 300 with wireless triax adapter, a Zodiak switcher , two KayakDD production digital switchers , a Concerto series router and a large number of Gecko and Camaleon signal distribution and conversion modules.
The conversion of RCTV to grass Valley digital technology is one of the company's last significant businesses in Latin America where broadcasters share the desire to take advantage of the benefits in the cost-benefit ratio of digital technology while having a clear path of subsequent migration towards high definition production, possible across Grass Valley's line of systems and technologies.
"RCTV used cameras from other vendors for several years, but the time was right to consider Grass Valley's production technology for its flexibility, reliability and practical accessibility along with excellent local service and support," said Edgardo Mosca, RCTV's vice president of engineering. "The LDK 300 cameras offer superior performance that we can't find in any other camera of this size. It integrates perfectly with our new robotic system for cameras and gives us the ability to acquire materials in digital format, which will improve our signal quality on the air. We look forward to continuing to use Grass Valley products for many years to come."
Equally impressed by the XOdiak and KayakDD production switchers , Mosca stated, "RCTV has been a Grass Valley customer for decades and we have a large installed base of digital and analog video switchers as well as routers."
