Brazil. Large flooded areas, forest fires and temperatures above 40 °C are some of the challenges faced by the technical teams of TV Centro América and TV Morena, Rede Globo subsidiaries in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
In 2022, the high cost of the services contracted to connect four generators in Mato Grosso and three in Mato Grosso do Sul, the obsolescence of the equipment and the preparations for the arrival of TV 3.0, pointed to the renewal of infrastructures for the distribution of programming and journalistic contribution. Avicom Engenharia was selected to provide a complete solution, based on the transport of video over IP/SRT and BTS over a redundant public Internet network.
"Avicom's proposal is agnostic and has been validated with great performance. It is a project that innovates by adopting the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) interconnection of programming signals and journalistic contributions. In addition, we are prepared to use 4K signals, meeting the demands of TV 3.0, "says Luis Botelho, Director of Engineering and Technology of Rede Matogrossense of Televisão, responsible for TV Central America and TV Morena. "The previous solution (with dedicated IP connections) cost R$ 10,000 per month per port. Today we have internet with much bigger bands, at a much more interesting cost. All this influenced the economic feasibility study."
"The solution we implemented in TV Central America allows a great expansion of functionalities. At the moment we are working with BTS and SDI-HD, but the system will be able to integrate the station and its affiliates with the public internet in additional applications, including the commercial regionalization solution "splicing", transcoding and integration of signals with IP 2110, among others, "says Jaime Fernando Ferreira, General Director of Avicom Engenharia. "The technologies provided by our representatives Bridge Technologies and MediaKind, combined with our local technical support, will ensure high-quality distribution and contribution flows and minimal latency for years to come."
Public Internet in television distribution
In the Central America TV stations of Cuiabá, Sinop and Rondonópolis, in addition to the TV Morena channels in Campo Grande and Ponta Porã, the back-up signals of the programming are no longer distributed by satellite, after the migration. BTS (Broadcast Transport Stream) transmissions are now sent over an IP/SRT network connection.
In Tangará da Serra (MT) and Corumbá (MS), the main signal and redundancy use only IP/SRT connections to deliver programming to the transmitters.
"Avicom contemplated not only the distribution network, but also the remote switching of transmitters, in case of any problem, which increased reliability," explains Luis Botelho. "The system was the one that best met the assumptions of robustness in the face of bad weather and the very high average temperatures of our region."
The automatic switching between the main and backup signal is done by VB243 probes, from Bridge Technologies, guaranteeing the continuity of transmissions. This smart switch uses ETR290 technology to verify compliance with parameters such as PSI/SI tables, bit rate, and aggregated services to apply the switches.
"All the squares have Bridge Technologies probes combined in a single gateway, to remotely monitor, control and switch IP and BTS flows," says Jaime Ferreira. "The technology they offered provided security to reduce the dependence on satellite services in the distribution of programming, with the consequent saving of resources."
The integration of the probes with MediaKind's robust IP Gateway solution allowed a complete integration, with video transmission and BTS in very low latency, using internet networks in the contribution and distribution of signals. The MK RX1 processor and the MK CE1 encoder were used, solutions used in several projects worldwide and with the best profitability in the market for this type of applications.
