Radio Televisión de Guatemala employed harris Corporation equipment to start the first HDTV broadcast in Central America during the World Cup.
Harris Corporation's BCD division announced that Radio Televisión de Guatemala has purchased a complete turnkey package of HDTV transmission, decoding and master control equipment for launch in the region in Guatemala City. Radio Televisión de Guatemala's first HDTV broadcast — the opening ceremony of the Soccer World Cup and its opening game --, made them the first to broadcast HDTV in Central America. The station will continue to air HDTV on Channel 19 on a regular basis following the conclusion of the World Cup.
The broadcast of the World Cup in HDTV format was part of the celebration commemorating the station's 50th anniversary. Harris contributed to the installation of a 1 kW Harris Ranger ATSC transmitter, Harris NetVX HD encoders and a configurable SD/HD master control system, from Leitch IconMaster, including character crawls and squeezeback effects, and NEO XHD up and down converters. The equipment, located at the main transmission center in Guatemala City -- a Nexio video server from Leitch--, will be used for the storage and playback of the content.
The Harris Ranger equipment will be configured with the company's Apex exciter, which offers RTAC (real-time adaptive correction) technology to provide the best image quality through digital signal processing. Harris also supplied the transmission line, RF loads, combiners and power management equipment to prepare the facilities for digital and HDTV transmission.
"Harris is well recognized as a pioneer in digital television, and has worked very actively to incorporate digital TV and HDTV into Latin America," said Edgar Sandoval, director of engineering at Radio Televisión Guatemala--. The deployment of digital television is a major technical challenge, and Harris' knowledge and experience will help spread digital television beyond Guatemala City, to all of Latin America."
