Techtel announces a major new release of inflo®, including support for IP content and Ai.

(Sydney, Australia, 28 September 2021) Techtel are pleased to announce a major new release V2.2 of inflo®, software for digital content capture, storage and processing. The software is 100% Australian-made and developed at Techtel in-house, giving our customers unique access to service, support and the development pipeline.

The latest release of inflo® has more than a few tricks up its sleeve, starting with its compatibility with a host of SDI capture cards from manufacturers such as Bluefish444, Blackmagic and AJA, to name a few, and it can be scaled from just a few inputs to dozens or beyond. Connecting to these cards using a RESTful API interface, inflo® can live anywhere you like, including in the cloud.  NDI, SRT and URL recordings are scheduled for the next release allowing for a hybrid environment where some recordings are stream based and others come from physical cards on premise.

For the operators, there is no client software to install because inflo provides all the tools you need via a simple-to-use web interface, ideal for ease of access and it means multiple people can control the system at once from their web browser of choice.

Also it’s now simple to save your files in multiple resolutions, browse and append various metadata to these files in inflo. The easy-to-use UI has taken content browsing to the next level with the ability to scrub through thumbnails while browsing your library and open a clip of your choice at the precise time-code selected. At the click of a button you can then export your media in either a single format of your choice or complete a batch export containing multiple formats.

Inflo web based live ingest management page

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are also new to this release of inflo®. Many customers have asked for automatic transcription services and Techtel will soon be releasing a version that has transcription available on tap when you need it. Using the speech-to-text engine of your choice, inflo can already automatically associate the caption and video content, displaying the captions using internally generated WebVTT files with timing intact. This is a game-changer for the navigability of your content, as the entire transcript will be saved as searchable metadata. It’s also simple to jump to a specific point in a video just by choosing a word in the transcript and double-clicking on it. Finally, you can export the asset with captions to downstream VOD systems for a complete end-to-end solution.

Inflo Content Management page

“This latest release of inflo® really punches above its weight in the market”, said Mal Chandler, CEO, Techtel. “We think that a lot of customers are going to be excited to see that we can do many of the same kinds of functions that were previously out of reach for content producers in the mid-market space”.

“We are really excited to see the pace of inflo’s growth”, said Matt Hall, Product Manager for inflo. “We have a really strong roadmap and our customers are providing new feature ideas regularly, so watch this space for more announcements in the near future”.

Gravity Media chooses TV Logic for sports editing

(Sydney, Australia, 3rd May 2021) Following an extensive old-fashioned broadcast monitor shoot-out at Gravity Media, Techtel is pleased to announce that the TV Logic LUM-242G was fastest on the draw.  The new monitors were needed as part of an upgrade to Gravity Media’s fast-turnaround sports editing suites that are used both in their trucks and at their post-production HQ in Artarmon.

The LUM-242G is a 24” native Ultra High-Definition Monitor with HDR emulation capable of an impressive wide colour gamut of up to 98% of DCI-P3.  The monitor FPGA also supports a range of features like waveform/vectorscope, audio levels, focus assist, markers, UMD and many more.

TV Logic’s family of UHD monitors that form the LUM series are seeing the implementation of TV Logics new Colour Innovation system that is based on an advanced new engine called Logicolor™ for sophisticated colour processing.  The new engine processes colours using a 24bit linear RGB colour space that allows for correct calculation and flexible support for various colour standards, colour gamuts and Electro-Optical Transfer Functions (EOTF’s).

Initially Gravity Media tested the larger 31” LUM-313G-CI and found that the Color Innovation features like the calibration reports were great features but, with space constraints they looked to a smaller variant that could deliver similar colour accuracy.  The LUM-242G was the obvious candidate and after a quick test to check it could do the job Gravity chose to order seven units.

Adrian Jenner, Director of Technology at Gravity Media said, “We wanted to make sure that the edit suite monitors would be high performing and well supported locally but also offer good value for money.  TV Logic did a great job during the shoot out and the delivery was really impressive too at about two weeks from order to delivery”.

“High quality LCD monitors are receiving loads of attention at the moment as the market looks to upgrade to UHD and HDR with equipment that they know works and will be reliable into the future.  TV Logic have really focused on their premium 24” and 31” offerings and we think they offer more choice than any other manufacturer in the market so we are really pleased to see TV Logic had a model that is the right fit for what Gravity Media were looking for” said Mal Chandler, CEO at Techtel.

About Gravity Media

Gravity Media is a brand-new company with a 30-year pedigree, formed by the coming together of four established broadcast and production houses: Gearhouse Broadcast, HyperActive Broadcast, Input Media and Chief Entertainment.

Our broadcast packages are both modular and integrated, meaning we can flex our offering to match your requirements. Come to us for a single service, or a complete end-to-end solution. www.gravitymedia.com

Hawthorn Football Club swoop on Coach Paint

Sydney, Australia, 3rd March 2021 – Techtel is pleased to announce that Hawthorn Football Club (the Hawks), part of the Australian Football League (AFL) has chosen to use ChyronHego’s premier coaching analysis software, Coach Paint®.  The software takes instructive visualisations to another level enabling coaching staff to illustrate game day strategies to the players with engaging content that can be displayed to larger playing groups or even on tablets for individual instruction.

Coach Paint leverages ChyronHego’s expertise in broadcast graphics visualisations by borrowing from technology that is often used in the live broadcasts to the public and making this same technology available in an affordable application designed for coaching staff.  The teams coaching staff are able to add graphics to any part of the game; they can animate and track players or the ball to produce slick video clips that clearly re-enforce their player instruction.

Hawthorn lays claim to being the most successful football club in the past 50 years of the AFL having secured 12 premierships during that period.  Founded in 1902, Hawthorn has become one of the AFL superpowers who play their home games between the University of Tasmania Stadium (Launceston) and the greatest AFL colosseum, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MGC) which can seat over 100,000 fans.

Hawthorn Football Club Performance Analyst James Barker said “The switch to Coach Paint was a great experience for us that helped widen the ways to make video clips quickly and easily in both off-line and interactive modes; this was fitted perfectly with our coaching strategies and directions.  The players have shown us that they respond quickly to content we produce using Coach Paint and in the end that speed in messaging is what we need”.

“We think the momentum that Coach Paint has in the AFL is really powered by the coaching staff themselves who find the product really quick and easy to pickup and the low cost to get started is also what the clubs love.” said Payam Safa, Techtel’s Coach Paint Specialist.

In the AFL, Hawthorn join Carlton, West Coast Eagles, Gold Coast, Port Adelaide, St. Kilda, Adelaide, Geelong, Fremantle and AFL House as users of Coach Paint.  Outside Australia, Coach Paint is used extensively in the US by select NBA, NFL and MLB clubs and in the UK by select Premier League clubs to mention just a few of Chyronhego’s extensive user base.

About Hawthorn FC

Hawthorn Football Club, commonly known as the ‘Hawks’, is a professional Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League and is based at Waverley Park in Mulgrave, Melbourne. Founded in 1902, the club first played in the Metropolitan Junior Football Association 1902-1913 before joining the Victorian Football Association from 1914-1924 and in 1925, Hawthorn officially joined the VFL/AFL competition. Hawthorn has 13 premierships to date and a nationwide membership base that extends beyond 70,000. The club's official colours are brown and gold.

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.com.au

About Chyronhego

ChyronHego is a global leader in broadcast graphics creation, playout, and real-time data visualization offering a wide variety of products and services for News & Weather, Live Production, Sports Technology, Stadium & In-Venue, Master Control and Corporate and Government Video.  Headquartered in New York, the company also has offices in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, and Canada.

ABonAir release new AB4000 4K/UHD wireless Link

Israel, December 16th 2020 – ABonAIR is proud to announce the official release of the AB4000 wireless system, a constant effort and commitment to innovation. The AB4000 is a 4K/UHD mid-range high quality wireless link which is affordable for all. The traffic stopping Price is just $9,000.

The system comes with embedded RCP control and Tally light (included in the above price) and suitable for:

• House of worship productions

• Live events

• Studios

• Video assist

See attached data sheet.

Leading Australian Telco goes with NOMAD

Sydney, Australia, 13 October 2020 – One of Australia’s largest Telecommunications providers has chosen Techtel to deploy the NOMAD PRO by Bridge Technologies – an RF&IP network probe that is highly portable and easy to use. This enables the end customer to monitor and optimize their network from a variety of facilities and remote locations.

Replacing the legacy VB12 probe, the new NOMAD PRO  is a complete, compact and free-standing unit which can monitor and analyze multiple signals independently and concurrently without the need for a host system. In addition, it has a built in Wi-Fi hotspot which enables it to connect easily to a laptop. As a result, network engineers can deploy and easily move it between various locations on the network as well as remote sites.

The new monitoring probe covers the majority of the customer’s monitoring requirements in IP multicast, OTT and RF networks including ASI, DVB-C, DVB-T/T2 (terrestrial) and of course DVB-S/S2 (satellite).

In addition, NOMAD’s capability to configure individual ETR290™ engines running in parallel on the Ethernet interface, meets the customers need for real-time quality checks and simplified analytics breakdown of all TS streams before delivery.

Bridge Technologies’ patented MediaWindow visualization technology enables complex structures and data to be understood by a user without the deep operator knowledge, allowing them to promptly take corrective actions.

 “Bridge Technologies’ NOMAD provides an unprecedented level of functionality required to remotely monitor, analyze, repair and optimize any IP network. It has a substantial set of monitoring tools for such a small box, which will provide deep analytical functionality to our customer’s infrastructure for many years to come – from ASI to satellite input and beyond ”, said Mal Chandler, CEO of Techtel. 

The NOMAD PRO joins the list of other Bridge Technologies network monitoring solutions recently deployed through Techtel in Australia including OTT and Multicast probes (VB220 and VB120) for monitoring. The variety of the supplied probes can enable users to closely monitor availability and quality of the services from the playout to head-end to transmission and then to broadcast and OTT, so nothing can be overlooked in the signal supply chain from the sources to the destinations.

Bridge Technologies to Support Australian Nine’s Greenfield IP Site

The VB440 will enable production teams to continuously survey all layers of media transportation

Bridge Technologies, through Australian business partner Techtel, have now completed their integration of the VB440 IP Probe for Nine Network, an Australian free-to-air digital TV service provider. This integration forms a part of Nine’s wider site relocation, involving the creation of a brand new ‘creative campus’ with Internet Protocol technologies incorporated in its core.

A key element of Nine’s site development was the choice to change the data backbone of the studio from an SDI-based environment to a fully SMPTE IP-based infrastructure. This will see Nine working on an uncompressed SMPTE 2110 workflow basis, working with on-air graphics, newsroom systems, post-production, network and infrastructure, and live studio elements.

“Our new offices represent an opportunity to not only bring together our post-merger Willoughby site with our Fairfax site in a more collaborative manner, but also to create an office and studio which are future-proofed for the next 50 years. Key to this future proofing was making a move from SDI to IP. It became readily apparent that IP would render increased efficiency and decreased costs, not to mention the fact that it hugely improves our ability to engage in off-site and live collaborations,” said David Bowers, Chief Technology Officer at Nine Network Australia.

Bowers continued: “It appeared clear to us that whilst SDI is declining in relevance in production environments, support in the field of IP is only going to grow. Bridge Technologies represents one such vital element of support; and the integration of VB440 monitoring solutions into the wider installation gives us an unparalleled ability to understand – and therefore control – our production environment.”

The VB440 provides video, audio and metadata monitoring and analysis on an uncompressed ST2110 basis, and also includes monitoring of ST2022-7 redundancy scheme; an element that is of particular benefit in relation to the back-up needs of the network during day-to-day operation or service migrations. The VB440 represents an analytics solution that can encompass numerous streams and multiple technologies in real time and in parallel. Covering source monitoring, stream analysis, packet behavior, and IAT test performance, the VB440 enables production teams to continuously survey all layers of media transportation on an IP network and facilitates quick rectification of potential problems – including the impact of packet loss and jitter on the production environment and ultimate Quality of Service (QoS).

Payam Safa, Solutions Architect at Techtel – who helped to manage the purchase and installation of the Bridge Technologies system – explained the dual importance of VB440 integration.

“Not only will the VB440 provide Nine with an ongoing ability to monitor their IP-based production network over the upcoming years, but during the transition from SDI to IP it will be a key tool in managing an effective and efficient change and transition process.”

Simen Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies, echoed the enthusiasm of both vendor and client in relation to the project. “Nine have built a truly impressive studio, and have been forward-thinking in their approach to network technologies. Building a greenfield site such as this represents a particular opportunity to think about network analytics right from the beginning, and build monitoring elements right into the overall solution, rather than tagging them on at the end.”

Frostad concluded: “This is a key idea that Bridge has been a proponent of for more than a decade, and we are pleased to see that a network as important as Nine echoes our views on this. We hope that they will provide an inspirational example to other production companies who may soon be faced with the unique opportunity that comes with a move from SDI to IP of redesigning their systems from the ground up, and building in monitoring and support systems from the get-go.”

About Nine Network

The Nine Network (commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network.

Nine’s strategy is to create great content, distribute it broadly and engage audiences and advertisers. We are Australia’s largest locally owned media company – the home of Australia’s most trusted and loved brands spanning News, Sport, Lifestyle, and Entertainment, we pride ourselves on creating the best content, accessed by consumers when and how they want. Nine’s assets include the Nine Network, major mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Australian Financial Review, radio stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR, digital properties such as nine.com.au, 9Now, 9Honey, Pedestrian.TV, subscription video platform Stan and a majority investments in Domain Group and CarAdvice.

Find more info here: https://www.nine.com.au/

About Bridge Technologies

Bridge Technologies creates advanced solutions for protecting service quality in the digital media and telecommunications industries. The company’s award-winning monitoring/analysis systems, intelligent switchers and virtual environments help deliver over 20,000 channels to more than 900 million subscribers in 94 countries. From head-end satellite ingress to microanalytics in the home network, Bridge Technologies offers patented innovation and true end-to-end transparency. A privately held company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Bridge Technologies has worldwide sales and marketing operations through a global business partner network.

Learn more – www.bridgetech.tv

Press Contact:

Fiorenza Mella

XPresso Communications

Tel: +31 71 523 82 10

Email: fiorenza@xpressocommunications.com

Sky New Zealand adds Content Capacity with Techtel and Net Insight

Auckland, New Zealand, 11 August 2020 – Techtel, New Zealand’s leading broadcast systems specialist has successfully deployed the Emmy® Award-winning Nimbra 400 internet media transport solution by Net Insight for Sky New Zealand – the country’s premium Pay TV Entertainment provider. This comes as Sky is expanding their subscriber offering with more local and international services.

Designed specifically in response to the increasing demand for live media internet transport for premium applications, Nimbra 400 is often referred to the Swiss knife of the Nimbra family. Its design is light and agile, and its functionalities make it the perfect solution for Tier 1 content and media companies looking to lower their costs and increase their reach. The platform does this by optimizing video streaming over constrained networks and maximizes the number of streams processed simultaneously. Nimbra 400 can produce high-quality video at low bitrates while utilizing less expensive IP infrastructure such as internet connectivity thus reducing networking costs.

Sky New Zealand’s subscriber base has an expanding appetite for more live sport and to make the business case work they turned their attention to platforms that can make it happen over the common internet. Nimbra 400 delivers in this respect through both reliability and seamless cross platform management with the broader Net Insight MSR series.

“The Nimbra 400 series has improved our capability to have an agnostic contribution and delivery solution of broadcast quality feeds – for both adhoc and permanent services. We deploy the Nimbra technology for HD feed deliveries from both domestic and international broadcasters. On our internal infrastructure, the units are used as normal multicast and unicast decoders. Multiple SDI ports on a single box gives us flexibility on routing concurrent feeds,” said Ronaldo Raborar, Technical Coordinator at Sky New Zealand.

“With internet transport expanding further into premium live media workflows, the Nimbra 400 platform enables service providers with premium content like Sky New Zealand, to reach new locations faster and more cost-efficiently than ever before”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “We are proud to supply Sky New Zealand with the leading internet media transport solution from Net Insight and look forward to more exciting services from them”.

Sky New Zealand decision builds on Techtel’s established country-wide network of Nimbra nodes, serving the majority of New Zealand broadcasters and providing resilient HD video transport at the highest possible quality, lowest delay and with high availability.

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.tv.

About Net Insight

Net Insight is a global leader in media networks and resource optimization. With more than 20 years’ experience, Net Insight is a reliable key partner to its customers, but also a leader in the industry’s transition towards a continuously improved media experience. With its deep market knowledge and insight, genuine customer focus and world-leading innovative technology, Net Insight makes it easier and more cost-efficient to create and deliver better content. Net Insight acquired Aperi’s product portfolio in 2020. For more information, visit https://netinsight.net/

Techtel Deploys Cambria FTC™ by Capella Systems for Adstream

Sydney, 19 June 2020 - Techtel has recently deployed Capella Systems, Cambria FTC™ – a scalable transcoding software for professional video distribution for Adstream – Australia’s leading provider of software and digital service solutions to the advertising industry. This comes as the company replaces their legacy software with the more intelligent transcoding solution from Capella which would support a wider range of formats and offer the latest workflow features.

In response to Adstream’s requirements, Techtel chose Cambria FTC™ which imports and exports widely used professional digital video formats, including H.264, MPEG-2, DNxHD, HEVC and many others. The Cambria solution is widely known in the video industry for its exceptional video quality and superior transcoding speed achieved through its internal architecture features including the highest-quality motion compensated frame rate converter; Lossless video and audio pass-through; Superior motion adaptive deinterlacer, smart frame rate converter and video resolution scaler. The result is a flexible, cost-effective, cloud-based transcoding solution for all professional video distribution services.

“We’ve found Cambria FTC to be a highly versatile and flexible transcoding solution that we’ve been able to employ in a number of bespoke or custom workflows. The interface is both easy to navigate and configure with consistent performance and efficient results”, said Simon Martin, Connectivity Manager, Australasia at Adstream.

“We proposed Cambria FTC for their unique capability of VM deployment, RESTful API and their wide range of out-of-the-box features and compatible codecs required by Adstream”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “Adstream are pioneers in their adoption of Cambria which is a cloud friendly software solution and we look forward to seeing them exploit the flexibility this offers as they scale it up”, Mal added.

About Adstream

Adstream is the first Connectivity Suite for the ad industry, combining collaboration tools, digital asset management, a global distribution network and powerful analytics to provide smarter, more collaborative advertising workflows.

Brands, agencies, production and post-production teams use Adstream to create great content together, and leverage its world-class network of over 79,000 media destinations in 141 countries, to share their message with the world.

Today over 100,000 businesses use Adstream to reach billions of customers globally. We're a fast-moving team of passionate subject-matter experts located across 37 offices, speaking 45 languages, and on a mission to connect the world's media.

For more information, visit https://www.adstream.com/

Techtel raises the bat for an Egatel half-century

(Sydney, Australia, 22nd April 2020) Techtel announces that a great milestone of 50 Egatel™ Broadcast Television transmitters have been shipped to the Australia Pacific region since our partnership began some ten years ago.

Egatel, a Spanish manufacturer of Television Transmitters are part of the COMSA Corporation who are the second largest privately held industrial group in Spain with revenues of more than 1.3 Billion Euro and over 8000 employees.  When Techtel first introduced them to our region they had already enjoyed success throughout Europe and Latin America.  Australia/NZ and SE Asia represented a new challenge for them and together with Techtel we are now seeing the critical mass that is the reward for their product’s brilliant performance and reliability.

The latest order that pushed us past the half century came from a very familiar requirement where Egatel has always performed exceedingly well.  The site, Tindal RAAF base in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, needed a solution that would be rock solid reliable avoiding the need for expensive maintenance visits.  These remote Australian locations are harsh, where often temperatures soar and seasons can swing from being very wet and humid to extremely hot and dry.

Hot has been the story of their regional success so far where they first shipped a multi-channel solution to power the shire of Dandaragan on WA’s Turquoise coast.  At that location Egatel supplied two separate transmission sites that cover tens of thousands of residents with a simple and reliable means to watch their free to air television.

It doesn’t get more remote than an oil platform 500km offshore from Darwin and that is also another part of the Egatel regional story.  A large multinational energy company needed to provide their workers with access to Digital Television; Satellite had one vessel covered but another nearby needed a DVB-T solution and again Egatel provided a rock-solid system for a location where simply visiting costs tens of thousands, not to mention the mandatory helicopter evacuation course.

Digicel in Port Moresby needed a high-power redundant system to add a further 30 channels to their subscription television service and here Egatel provided a 2+1, 600 watt solution atop Burns Peak.  As with every site delivered so far, the engineers at Techtel and Egatel designed and implemented the RF combining system that serviced not just our own Transmitters but any legacy platforms that were still in place which is always a delicate exercise to say the least.

The nation of Samoa turned to Techtel and Egatel to convert their nation over to Digital Television where the entire country is based on an efficient DVB-T2 network of 19 new transmission sites; bringing television to areas that previously had nothing.  This major project required meticulous planning by Techtel’s engineers to ensure that the network of transmitters would survive the variations in power stability and climate. 

“The local broadcast transmission market has been intensely competitive over the past ten years and we think it’s a fair thing to say that few have survived and only the best have thrived”, said Mal Chandler CEO Techtel.  “Egatel has done what many other manufacturers could not because their product has performed brilliantly on every occasion where we’ve used them.  There is a bright future for this product in our region and we look forward to seeing them being used in our regions high power sites just as they are already.”

Egatel CEO Francisco Javier Valdés added, “We are a company that believes in good service and good quality first, and because of our high standards we do not win every deal. We are successful because we are working towards longer term goals to be the product that everyone is proud to own and they know our reliability gives them one less thing to worry about.  Together with Techtel we are very proud to have provided 50 transmitters as a team and we look forward to announcing 100 transmitters in the future!”

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.com.au

About Egatel

Egatel is a highly specialized and skilled company involved with the development and manufacturing of Digital and RF products devoted to Terrestrial Broadcasting.

The company supplies solutions for Radio and TV Broadcasting that meet the professional market needs globally. The portfolio of products and services includes transmitters, re-transmitters and gap fillers, as well as engineering works combined with turnkey projects and the supply of ancillary equipment, when required.  Headquartered in Spain the company is a subsidiary of the COMSA Corporation. Visit www.egatel.es

Techtel deploys Egatel DVB-T/T2 Transmitters to Tindal RAAF Base

Techtel, Australia’s leading broadcast systems integrator has been selected by Imparja to upgrade the TV Transmission site at Tindal RAAF Base in remote Northern Territory.  The RAAF base was suffering coverage issues and needed to deploy a reliable, higher performance solution that would survive the harsh climate in this very remote location.   

The new Egatel DVB-T/T2 Transmitters selected will receive VHF Signals (for SBS and ABC Channels) and UHF signals (for commercial channels) from the nearby parent transmitters, before retransmitting them in UHF at the Tindal RAAF Base. The expected result is a wider and better coverage for the local viewers facilitated by the increase uplink transmit power from 10W to 20W.

The Egatel TUWH1200 is the new high-efficiency 25W ultracompact transmitter. Being only 1RU in size, makes its installation, operation and maintenance easier for users, as well as offers an unbeatable cost – performance (CAPEX / OPEX) ratio. Furthermore, this transmitter model expands the capabilities of Egatel’s Wideband High Efficiency Transmitters covering any requirement and broadcast network topology, providing an ideal solution for extending digital TV networks. The transmitter can operate as a multi-standard transmitter or a retransmitter and supports several input interfaces depending on the mode of operation: ASI or TSoIP in transmitter mode and RF in retransmitter mode.

 “Imparja selected Techtel due to its proven track record and continued reliability of its existing Egatel DVB-T/T2 transmitter footprint”, said Mark Tilbrook at Imparja. “We are also confident that Techtel will support us through the installation process and stay with us after the job is complete with excellent service and support”.

“Techtel is proud to build on our long-term relationship with Imparja, and we are pleased to support them in providing an enhanced coverage and viewing experience in Tindal”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “Together with our technology partner Egatel we are continuing to demonstrate to the market our expertise in transmission technology which offers remote regions such as Tindal a high performance product that is ready to handle the tough environment out there.”

Techtel Continues to Operate As Usual During COVID-19 from Remote Offices

During the COVID19 pandemic Techtel is continuing to operate with staff working in remote offices.  Our business has not stood down any staff and we continue to operate in a capacity that should see no service interruption to our customers.  Our online store (shop.techtel.com.au) remains open, our office remains staffed and capable of receiving and dispatching deliveries.  Our contract support customers should feel at ease that our support team remains engaged and ready to help; if local spare parts is part of your support agreement our warehouse is open and accessible at any time.  Contact our staff if you have any questions or feel free to leave us a note at info@techtel.com.au.  We wish everyone good health and hope that this interruption to our lives will soon be behind us.

Techtel Announces First Release of Inflo™; the New Way We Integrate

Sydney, 31 March 2020 – Techtel, Asia-Pacific’s leading broadcast systems integrator has developed an integrated browser-based software solution for the Tasmanian Parliament consisting of a purpose-built web interface which manages up to four simultaneous recordings of their video feeds. This comes as the customer deploys a brand new Television Broadcast System, also provided and integrated by Techtel in 2019, with an emphasis on automation and remote control of their broadcast equipment.

For the Tasmanian Parliament to have full remote control of their video recordings, Techtel designed a customised web application utilising a REST API interface which integrates with a video server from Bluefish444. This setup enables a single operator to control multiple HDI-SDI video outputs from up to four simultaneous events from the comfort of their own web browser.

An added streaming capability from the video server back to the control desk offers confidence monitoring for the operator through on-demand generation of video thumbnails.

Finally, all of these features are controlled via a unique user interface, designed by Techtel, with comprehensive drill-down detail and a high level of customisation.

“We developed this integration as the direct result of feedback from the Tasmanian Parliament - our customer wanted to be able to manage the recordings of their video feeds via a simple web interface and the Bluefish444 REST API integration lets them do just that.” said Matt Feeney, Director of Projects at Techtel.

This custom integration is derived from Techtel’s wider software integration platform, Inflo™ - a bespoke, “soft-coded” service which connects video files with multiple formats from multiple platforms and applications via one simple User Interface, helping organisations who deal with large amounts of video content aggregate their diverse subsystems from disparate platforms into one intelligent multifunctional system.

“We are proud to embrace the growing trend towards controlling broadcast technology from anywhere with an internet connection and this deployment for the Tasmanian Parliament is the first phase of a broader software development effort from Techtel. We are looking forward to adding more modules and appliances to this matrix which will enable more diverse workflows for our customers”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO.

Malaysia’s Broadcaster adds 4K Processing Capability Following their Major Vantage Media Processing Platform Enhancement

(Singapore, 21 February 2020) Techtel, Singapore’s leading broadcast systems integrator has successfully upgraded Vantage Media Processing Platform – a central content ingest facility consisting of two domain systems for dual production and backup for one of Malaysia’s Pay TV Service Providers. This comes as the broadcaster strengthens their focus on efficiency, agility, growing digital reach, content and revenue diversification.  

Complementing the customer’s established Vantage media processing and workflow orchestration platform, Techtel has added three Lightspeed G6 servers to a new Vantage Transcode Multiscreen and Vantage Post Producer software applications in order to accelerate video processing and enable H.264 transcoding.

Vantage Transcode Multiscreen solution combines the quality of x264, GPU acceleration, and complete workflow automation for multiscreen encoding. With Transcode Multiscreen, the broadcaster can now automate the entire process of content ingest, transcoding, packaging, encryption, delivery, media asset management and storage.

Vantage Post Producer application now provides the broadcaster with 4K processing capability, automated editing and assembly of finished content from multiple input media files. As a result, the broadcaster has kicked off a new season of Premier League with the first live 4K UHD broadcast in Malaysia, offering a premium viewing experience to the country’s football fans.

During the final stage of the project, Techtel upgraded 13 existing Vantage servers from Vantage Array to Vantage Array Pro – a premium optimization and management tool with advanced features, for the entire Vantage domain, controlled by one central server.

This multifaceted, interdisciplinary project involved close collaboration between Techtel and  Telestream to supply professional services including hardware commissioning, installation of Vantage utilities and workflow designer, licensing of Vantage domain, integration with existing Vantage products and network services, migrating workflows between domains and extensive product training.

“Telestream’s Vantage Media Processing Platform empowers efficient, automated processing of video content throughout the entire digital media lifecycle, from capture to viewing. We are pleased it has been instrumental in our customer’s operations and will continue to support and enhance its features for the years to come”, commented Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO.

Techtel Brings Broadcast-level Superior Display Effects to ABC Studio 38 with 7 LED Video Walls

Techtel continues to bring broadcast-level superior display effects to ABC Studios, this time in Melbourne's Studio 38 by integrating 7 LED video walls comprising a total of 11 million pixels over 40 square metres:

The Seven Network Deploys State-of-The-Art Teleprompting Solution by CueScript

Sydney, 12 February 2020 – Recently Techtel delivered a comprehensive CueScript Teleprompting solution to one of the Seven Network’s refurbished Melbourne studios. This is the first CueScript solution deployed by Seven Network and it comes as the broadcaster undergoes a studio refit to replace its ageing equipment with products of quality engineering, robustness and flexibility.

As a part of the versatile solution, Techtel provided four sets of on camera systems consisting of a prompter integrated with talent monitor, hood and cue lights/camera numbers – an integration which occupies minimal studio floor space and prevents the talent from looking off camera. Seven Network is using this permanent four-camera set up in their main studio for hosting sport panel shows, wellness and light entertainment events including its flagship shows, The Front Bar, AFL Game Day and The House of Wellness.

In addition, Techtel provided four lightweight 10.4 inch prompter systems which enable Seven Network camera crew to achieve a variety of setups by moving the units around the facilities so they can be used for live links, interviews, outdoor events and ad-hoc broadcasts. These units are also compact and light enough to be easily used with a jib and carried offsite by simply folding away their flexible hoods.

“We were looking for both a technological and aesthetic improvement and CueScript’s solution ticked all the boxes for quality, configuration options, connectivity, brightness and overall look” said Andrew Anderson, Director of Broadcast Operations, Seven Network. “The on camera monitors and head up units are first class and loved by our crew and presenters. The new system is in use for all our in house productions including the 10” solution on our portable and jib camera, something we have been unable to achieve in the past. We have been very satisfied with the consultancy we’ve received from Techtel and CueScript and the ease of installation and implementation”.

Techtel Deploys 4K Media and Production Facility for AFL Superpower West Coast Eagles

Sydney, 24 January 2020 - Techtel has completed an extensive end-to-end systems integration and commissioning of a brand new 4K/Ultra HD media and production facility for the West Coast Eagles AFL Club. Located in the heart of the club’s brand new Training and Administration Centre, this media and production facility is a showcase of cutting edge technologies brought together to boost member engagement and provide a superior and differentiated offering for their sponsors. The new facilities consist of an integrated TV studio, radio studio, and media theatre.

The TV studio utilizes the latest in 4K production technology enabled by Newtek’s VMC1 Vision Mixer, which supports NDI - a widely adopted IP standard, and accommodates the most demanding workflows as well as virtualized production allowing the football club to easily expand its current capabilities. The Newtek NVG1 IP Graphics server complements this technology as a powerful, turnkey graphics system allowing seamless integration of industry-leading VizRT playout capabilities into the West Coast Eagles’ video production workflow. Furthermore, Techtel installed a “Green Screen” curtain for easy background footage manipulation and winched lighting bars which support an array of DMX controlled LED studio lights by Lumos for advanced lighting control.

The radio studio is designed to accommodate a host and up to 4 guests. All audio sources are mixed locally with all microphones also available as Dante IP sources. The option for video coverage is also provided through the 3 Panasonic PTZ NDI cameras while a Newtek Tricaster Mini allows the operators the ability to control and switch the cameras. Furthermore, an integrated Newtek Talkshow device provides Skype™ native integration in both the TV and radio studios.

Portable devices have also been provided to allow for additional cameras to be connected at various points throughout the facility. The result is a versatile, interconnected system that allows operators to output content to a variety of platforms including live streaming to the playing field scoreboard, the media theatre screen or the Internet. Alternately, content can be recorded to a Newtek media asset management system, allowing it to be edited and uploaded to the West Coast Eagles’ website, YouTube or published as podcasts.

The media theatre features lectern microphones which are available as press-splits at the rear of the theatre or as Dante sources. A Panasonic PTZ NDI camera with a birds-eye view also provides a video feed from the theatre. Site-wide communication is enabled by the ClearCom HelixNet Partyline System, which is available in the TV control room and studio, radio studio and various beltpack connection points throughout the facility.

 “Techtel has reasons to be proud of this project. We built the entire installation from the ground up with the unique technical features that now put West Coast Eagles on a par with international clubs”, says Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “We are confident that these new, state of the art media and production facilities will prove to be an excellent tool for West Coast Eagles’ member and sponsor engagement initiatives and we look forward to cheering West Coast on in season 2020”.

“Techtel’s flexible workflow design allows us to efficiently make the best use of the club’s resources, and deliver a more dynamic and engaging stream for our supporters. Thanks to Techtel, West Coast Eagles is now geared for 4K Ultra HD production, delivering multi-platform coverage of our news and events”, said Steven Bandy, Head of Production at West Coast Eagles AFL Club.

2019 – A Year In Review

Mal Chandler, ceo, techtel

Dear Customers, Vendors, Partners and Friends,

On behalf of the global Techtel team, thank you for an amazing 2019 and for your continued partnership. As we enter into 2020, Techtel is fortunate enough to be engaged with scores of customers and more than thirty vendors across the globe. We’ve worked with many of you for years, and others are just beginning your relationship with us. Regardless of our time together, we are deeply grateful for all that you have done to push us to build great broadcast facilities and networks.

With that said, I want to take a moment to recap 2019 and share what we plan to accomplish for you in the year ahead.

We began this year by welcoming a new South East Asia Country Manager, Susan Lim in a new office. Susan’s goal remains to continue the business’ transition into a full service systems integration resource for our regional customers, aligning the value offering more closely with the Techtel Australia HQ. Thanks to Susan, along with new projects from our long-standing South East Asia customers like Astro and Discovery Networks, we’ve been awarded major contracts from Mediacorp and SITA, which we are very excited to be sharing with you in the year ahead.

The year has also began with the conclusion of a three year “ABC Automation Project” which transformed ABC’s 12 Head Studios into new production and broadcast facilities. We did this by drawing on previous experience in studio automation at SBS where we developed an entirely new system design in line with ABC’s requirements. The solution involved a brand new studio automation control core as well as brand new Broadcast IT equipment.

We have continued our expansion into the South Pacific with Samoa Digital Communications Limited appointing Techtel to build and operate the country’s first Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Infrastructure. As of October this year, 70% of the Samoan population now enjoys a feature-rich and reliable Digital Terrestrial TV network with the remaining 30% to follow in early 2020. What’s most unique about this project is the software integration service that Techtel provided to deploy a custom-built Network Monitoring System. This solution is based on a combination of various hardware and software components forming a versatile telemetry platform which required custom programming to produce a single screen dashboard of the entire network while providing users with an extensive drill down of each transmission site.

In partnership with many of you, we have also launched our own software integration, Inflo, to help organisations who deal with large amounts of video content aggregate their diverse subsystems from disparate platforms into one intelligent multifunctional system.

2019 was a remarkable year by any measure, but we still have a lot of work to do. Our largest priority is continuing to listen to you, our customers and vendors. This means continuing to respond to your rapidly changing needs as you adapt to new industry conditions and technologies. For starters, we are kicking off 2020 with a few more software integration projects, including a bespoke MAM solution for an Australian Government agency.

In 2019 Techtel has shifted from a traditional systems integrator towards being a proven software developer, including the appointment of a permanent software solutions architect. We expect 2020 to be a busy year for our software development team and we look forward to sharing more about our achievements early in the new year.

Lastly, we’re creating more opportunities for our ever-expanding vendor base to engage and learn from our customers while continuing to push our roadmap with events around the globe, including Broadcast Asia 2020.

Please continue to push and motivate us in doing what we are set out to do. We are looking forward to seeing or meeting as many of you as we can next year. On behalf of everyone at Techtel, I would like to wish you and your families a festive holiday season.

Mal Chandler
Techtel
CEO

Techtel Enables First UHD-editing Workflow for RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication

Sydney, Australia, 22 November 2019 – Techtel, Australia’s leading broadcast systems integrator has successfully upgraded RMIT University’s (“RMIT”) infrastructure to power its School of Media and Communication with the Harmonic MediaGrid 4000 shared storage system. The upgrade for RMIT connects 44 concurrent Adobe Premiere edit seats, teachers and multiple ingest facilities to a single, high-performance, shared storage resource with UHD editing capability. This comes as the faculty moves increasingly towards UHD editing workflows which demand shared, real-time storage and video codecs with high capacity requirements.

Built specifically to support media applications with storage cost and management complexity reduction in mind, MediaGrid 4000 shared storage handles everything from compressed workflows to online digital libraries and uncompressed video. Boasting a low rate of IT utilization, this model not only reduces operational costs, but also increases workflow productivity by reducing media copy and transfer times. The unparalleled capacity and throughput of the Harmonic MediaGrid system makes it possible to consolidate “islands” of storage and run all workflow steps off a single system, thus simplifying its IT infrastructure to increase efficiency and reliability.

“The Harmonic MediaGrid 4000 shared storage system offers an ideal solution for UHD-based workflows, while offering SAN-comparable performance and NAS simplicity to facilitate the optimal balance of bandwidth and capacity”, says Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “We are confident that with increased performance and density of the Harmonic MediaGrid system, RMIT’s School of Media and Communication can truly deploy one storage platform to support the entire production workflow”.

“Based on the first-hand experience we had with the rock-solid Harmonic MediaGrid 2000 shared storage system provided by Techtel back in September 2013, when it came time to upgrade to UHD workflows, we chose the MediaGrid 4000 system”, commented David Beesley, Technical Services and Facilities Manager with the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. “To support over 40 edit stations with thousands of student users and require a system that has negligible impact on the workload of the University’s IT staff, we needed a robust storage solution that is reliable, scalable, bandwidth efficient and simple to manage. The Harmonic solution delivers on all fronts, with excellent after-sale support from Techtel, and all the while providing reliable, high-capacity concurrent performance to power our post-production workflow and contribute to a state-of-the-art and hands-on learning environment for our students."

Techtel has been providing shared storage solutions for production, archival and playout purposes for over a decade with its users ranging from Football Clubs to major broadcasters such as SBS, Nine Network and Astro Arena. Each project illustrates the company’s capability to choose the appropriate technology, and deliver the critical project management, commissioning and support that customers expect.

70% of Samoan population switches from Analogue to Digital TV, based on a bespoke DVB-T2 DTT network with custom-built NMS, designed and integrated by Techtel.

70% of the Samoan population which amounts to over 20,000 households now have access to a feature-rich and reliable Digital Terrestrial TV network due to a bespoke solution that was provided and integrated by Techtel in response to specifications to suit the Samoan environment developed for SDCL by a local specialist broadcast consultancy, BroadSpectrum Consultants. This marks the completion of Phase 1 of the national Digital Terrestrial Television Project initiated by the Samoan Government who prioritised television as a service as part of the wider Samoan economic development push.

Samoa’s new DVB-T2 network uses the latest Egatel transmission technology to provide an efficient and inventive method of providing national coverage without using any high capacity private networks to twenty transmitters across the country.  Techtel, however faced a challenge to develop a practical and robust solution to manage and monitor the entire network from the Head-End operation room where utilising unmanaged GSM network was the only commercially viable choice.  To overcome this challenge, Techtel developed an NMS (Network Monitoring System) solution based on the Servelec Remote Telemetry Units (RTUs) in conjunction with TConnect application. This combination forms a versatile telemetry platform that is effectively a blank canvas which requires custom programming to produce a single screen dashboard of the entire network while enabling users to drill down to each transmission site and then to each individual device to effectively monitor and manage the network from a central station.

Reaching some of the sites is only possible during a few and short windows around the year; and overcoming challenges like this was critical to the success of the project and sustainability of the operation in the years to come. Each transmitter site is equipped with an RTU to interconnect the site sensors, GPIOs, IT and broadcast devices and power systems to the Master Control Room (MCR) providing constant feedback about conditions inside either buildings or outdoor cabinets distributed around the islands.  SNMP traps are harvested from the connected appliances in the transmitter locations and forwarded to the central NMS based on certain rules. Furthermore, Techtel’s programmers have fine-tuned these rules to minimise the data rate over unmanaged mobile network while maintaining accuracy and reliability of the alarms.  Then Techtel integrated non-SNMP capable devices to a custom-build API gateway that makes SOAP XML API calls and translate the responses to standard SNMP messages so they can normalise the system to one unified communication protocol.

In order to minimise OPEX, all alarm messages from the remote stations are pushed in real-time to the NMS Dashboard via secured VPN tunnels using minimal bandwidth possible. In addition, a built-in 4G modem provides network operators with full access to the individual devices across the DTT network via secured VPN tunnels over GSM. This allows them to reach the native Web GUI of devices in the remote sites without a need to have any external utility server, router or managed services at the remote sites.

“Given the tough geographical condition with many difficult-to-reach transmission sites, paucity of telecommunications infrastructure and costly GSM services on Samoan Islands, our major challenge was to come up with a reliable yet bandwidth-efficient solution to manage and monitor this complex Digital Terrestrial TV network from a central station covering all 20x transmission stations across the country with no compromises”, said Payam Safa, Solutions Architect and Samoan DTTV Technical Project Manager at Techtel.  

“Our in-house NMS system is completely self-contained where VPN services, NTP distribution agents, multi-layer IP switching and routing functions together with SNMP services and API gateways are tightly integrated together with an intuitive and user-friendly Web-based front-end to offer unprecedented features and capabilities to our customer and to the Broadcast market in general.  Broadcast operators need to find intelligent and inventive ways to reduce the total cost of ownership of their network while still offering world class services to their customers and Techtel was proud to help SDCL achieve this”, Payam Safa added.

 “It was great to see Techtel rise to the challenge in providing a network monitoring solution tailored to the current Samoan environment, geographical challenges faced by operations on the ground and available communications infrastructure on island. The team developed and delivered a cost effective remote monitoring and control solution which is a win-win not only for us as a multiplex operator, the operational cost savings indirectly benefit local content providers in the long run”, said Tuiaopo Andrew Ah Liki, Chairman at Samoa Digital Communications Limited.

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Techtel CEO Presents his IBC Findings at the IBC Debrief Event in Sydney

Watch Techtel CEO Mal Chandler present the latest innovations from our vendors Bridge Technologies, Spectra Logic and Synamedia: https://lnkd.in/g6BTH5e