Switch TV goes live in HD

November 30, 2018

1 minute read

German systems integrator Broadcast Solutions designed and supplied equipment for Switch TV’s new HD TV station

Located in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, Switch TV is a new HD TV station wholly-owned by the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS). The free-to-air (FTA) channel is targeted at the 18-35 demographic, and is packed with a variety of local productions, live shows, and news programmes.

German systems integrator (SI) Broadcast Solutions was assigned as the main contracting partner to implement a new HD TV station for Switch TV. Alongside its Hungarian team, Broadcast Solutions designed and supplied broadcast equipment for the creation of the entire broadcast and IT infrastructure, from story creation through live studio production to post production and playout.

At the core of the studio sits the Ultrix-FR2, Ross Video’s hybrid 12G router with integrated multiviewer. According to Broadcast Solutions, the installation of Ultrix-FR2 has enabled the infrastructure to be simplified, offering agility to the sound department, which is centred on an Allen & Heath D-live digital mixer. The studio is further equipped with Sony HSC-300RF and BRC-H800/AC cameras, Grass Valley’s Kula mixer, and a Tricaster TC1 from NewTek. Ingest and playback is managed by Avid’s Airspeed 5500 servers and Interplay Command.

For news programmes, Broadcast Solutions installed an Octopus Newsroom system which manages playback of clips, on-air graphics, and Autoscript IP prompters. Communications between the production team members is facilitated through a Dante-networked AEQ Crossnet intercom system.

Broadcast Solutions also installed Avid’s Nexis shared storage and Interplay production asset management systems to manage post production. Journalists and editors can utilise the MediaCentral UX web-based editing system, which creates on-the-fly streaming proxies from materials, and enables editing for up to 15 journalists at the same time.

Scheduling and programme planning is managed by Commlaude’s PlanAir channel management system. The non-live content is played back from Playbox Airbox Neo channel-in-a-box (CiaB) servers. All the programmes are backed-up with a Promax LTO archive. And for monitoring of the channel, Broadcast Solutions supplied a IPTV system that is capable of processing SDI, DVB-T, and DVB-S inputs.