Eesti Telekom, one of the largest telecommunication companies in the Baltics, has purchased a PlayBox Technology system for the broadcast playout facility at its headquarters in the Estonian capital city, Tallinn. Installed and fully commissioned, it is being used to control the branding, scheduling and delivery of four new broadcast channels in three separate countries.
“Eesti Telekom chose this solution for several reasons,” commented PlayBox Technology executive director Ivanka Vassileva. “Firstly, we are able to perform encoding and redundancy-routing within the system which keeps the infrastructure size down and allows easy future expansion to accommodate extra channels. Secondly, management of files in several languages is easy because we can multiplex several audio channels into one container using ISO-639 language codes. Each of the four channels consists of an AirBox playout server preloaded with TitleBox and CaptureBox plus a multilanguage subtitling server with a direct DVB output. All are configured with full primary and secondary redundancy. They are located in the company’s central apparatus area and controlled from a master playout suite.”
The PlayBox Technology AirBox is a content playout and streaming system capable of operating both in standard-definition and high-definition. Designed for 24/7 unattended operation, it can be connected easily to third-party devices. AirBox supports MPEG1/2/H.264, HDV and DV streams from practically any production platform capable of providing AVI, MPEG, MXF, QuickTime or WMV content. Files from third-party broadcast content servers are natively supported.
TitleBox delivers on-air graphics which can be controlled interactively. Multi-layered simultaneous crawls, rolls, animated logos, clocks and text templates can be activated by a mouse click. TitleBox provides total control during on-air session, including text selection, running speed and transitions.
CaptureBox allows high-definition or standard-definition content to be captured from SDI digital feeds, analog sources and MPEG transport streams. Four video sources can be monitored on a single screen and controlled via a new streamlined user interface. Up to four video sources can be monitored on a single screen and controlled via a new streamlined user interface. Audio levels can be monitored as loudness/true-peak displays and adjusted when required. The ingested materials are available for playback seconds after ingest commences. The feature set also includes capture list import from third-party traffic systems.
