As a government agency In Mexico, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) is the responsible for ensuring that all our citizens have access to an excellent education. The television channel of SEP, General Directorate of Educational Television, provides a important help for primary and secondary school students, with an extensive educational program for schoolchildren. In addition, other Agencies use the latest technology from the General Directorate of Educational Television for the live broadcasts of high-level events and interviews. From its headquarters in Mexico City, the General Directorate of Educational Television transmits its programs by networks private and through public cable services and Satellite.
Like others Mexican television stations run by the government, the General Directorate of Educational Television works to achieve a gradual conversion to high-definition streaming (HD) for the next few years. Advised by the Insitel integrator/consultant, our station is over recently a major restructuring to convert the analog equipment in digital and make the studio ready for HD. Our main goal was to install flexible equipment and fail-safe (easy to handle), which in the long term will be adapt to the needs of the station and allow us a direct path, without interruptions or stumbles, to technology of HD. An important factor in this strategy is the recently installed Production Console Kahuna, shell & Wilcox.
The Kahuna Production Console is ideal for communication organizations such as Management General of Educational Television that they carry out gradually, in stages, the process of conversion to high definition; of In fact, we selected the system because it offers the easiest way for high-definition technology upgrades in the future. In the communication industry, the Kahuna is considers the first production switcher to allow simultaneous operations in HD and SD on the same console. With the Kahuna we can continue broadcasting, for now only in mode SD, and later, when the time comes, we will do the conversion to HD operation with a simple update of software. This will avoid interruptions in the service and not there will be a new learning curve for staff.
The Directorate-General for Television Educativa hopes to put its first HD programming online in the next two years. Still, the station will continue making much of its production with SD sources; by Consequently, we needed a production console that we provide the flexibility to handle multiple inputs in SD and HD at the same time. Kahuna switcher offers up to 80 inputs different in SD or HD, so that the TV can mix signals of existing SD camera, graphics, shots taken with cameras manuals and archival material directly in a production HD. This is possible with the Kahuna thanks to its technology FormatFusion, which enables integration fluid SD sources in HD productions, and HD materials in SD productions, without the channel having to buy any additional version or other equipment to do the conversion to the new version.
The Directorate-General for Television Educativa has also installed Kahuna's Impakt DVE option, offering a complete, fully integrated set of effects 3D DVE. Impakt offers up to four twin channels for DVE, which can be used as four video/key pairs or as eight boxes for video only. Before, our channel used a DVE external, but now, with Kahuna's Impakt, those effects Visuals are integrated into the production console. Our operators can create their own 3D transitions or use existing transition models, with a minimum of preparation. Kahuna gives them easy access to a whole range of tools such as keyers and clip libraries.
As a traditional service of similar transmission, the Directorate-General for Television Educativa is committed to offering its audience the maximum quality of programming available and to be kept to the cutting edge of television technology. At the same time, we went aware that the transition to HD infrastructure would require careful planning that could not be achieved at night in the morning. Solutions such as the Kahuna Production Console they offer us the possibility of tracing an eventual trajectory towards HD within the best cost/effectiveness ratio possible, with minimal impact on our current environment of operation and with built-in functionality that supports the SD and HD content.
