New Government customer takes on inflo™

An Australian mainland State Parliament has initiated a 5-year agreement with Techtel to provide inflo™ software to record all broadcast video and audio of parliamentary proceedings throughout both debating chambers and 6 committee meeting rooms.  Using the browser based inflo™ software, the parliament will be able to provide access to both historical and future content recordings to Parliamentary Staff, Sitting Members and external users such as Journalists who can search, browse and download content as required.

The agreement which sees the platform being launched in mid-2023 integrating features that are highly desirable throughout the Parliamentary Broadcast Community.  Features such as browser-based editing, multi-user credential access and Hansard Metadata integration are but a few of the intuitive features forming part of the delivered solution.

Techtel’s product manager for inflo™, Matthew Hall commented, “Techtel has had a strong focus on Parliamentary production systems so we felt we had an unprecedented level of understanding about their needs which lead to the unique solution we proposed.  As part of this project we are really excited to implement some really innovative new features for inflo™ and the end result is going to be a great system for the Parliament, designed, built and supported in Australia, by and Australian Company.”

The Seven Network sets sail with its Spectra BlackPearl Solution

(Melbourne, Australia, 23rd June 2022) After a rigorous review of object-based storage solutions, Network Seven chose to implement the Spectra BlackPearl® Converged Storage System for their network-wide program, news, sport and historic archive. The solution supplied and integrated by Techtel is the first Australian deployment of BlackPearl integrated with VizRT for news production. BlackPearl is a modern object storage solution that seamlessly moves content into multiple storage targets based on pre-set policies.

Seven turned to Techtel for a solution as it became clear that the sun had set on their legacy storage systems and a change was necessary to protect their data whilst making vast improvements to the availability of their content. The BlackPearl solution from Spectra Logic addressed all of Seven’s requirements so Techtel architected a solution that could deliver seven years’ worth of storage at Seven’s main news production centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Additionally, in Melbourne, further flexibility was required to allow Seven to migrate data out of an old Sony PetaSite library that contained program material.

“Seven had been considering the Spectra BlackPearl as a solution to replace our news archive for a while, and for us the real trigger to move on this was seeing the Spectra-VizOne integration being adopted worldwide,” said Andrew Anderson, Director of Broadcast Operations for Seven West Media. “With BlackPearl we know we have a guaranteed level of performance and unlimited data access for the foreseeable future. Techtel’s proven ability to support Spectra products in Australia is well known so we look forward to working with them.”

The solution will serve content to Seven’s network-wide deployment of VizOne and VizStory, allowing news and production editors to retrieve, edit and publish content at breaking news pace. The RESTful integration between VizOne MAM and BlackPearl has been in deployment now for years, which provided absolute confidence to Seven that the solution would be robust and ready to go off the shelf.

BlackPearl has created an opportunity for broadcasters who currently have a costly and complex stack of aging software to migrate to one simple affordable solution.  The BlackPearl object storage solution also allows multi-tenant architecture so several client platforms like VizOne MAM can access data from a common infrastructure removing the need for each system to have its own silo of storage.

“When Seven approached Techtel for an archive solution, choosing a product that was MAM vendor independent made BlackPearl the logical choice. Spectra Logic’s BlackPearl integrates with any modern media and entertainment MAM provider, and when combined with BlackPearl RioBroker®, a software front-end data mover for BlackPearl, it can also integrate with third-party HSM’s for streamlined migration. We worked closely with Seven to ensure that we could deliver the performance they needed and I’m really pleased with the final result,” added Matt Hall, Business Development Manager for Techtel.

Oranda adds resources to extend even more value to emerging sports in Asia

Singapore based Oranda Private Limited, the most agile and innovative broadcast production services business in Asia has chosen to add to their already extensive pool of Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) services through the addition of Haivision’s Makito X H.264 encoders, supplied and supported by local integrator Techtel Pte Ltd.

Oranda Team in the field during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

As a business with over 20 years of experience in Asia, Oranda have the runs on the board to prove that they know what it takes to get the job done in areas where broadcasting video can be a challenge. Oranda’s coverage include major events such as the Olympics, Wimbledon, FIFA Club World Cup, esport competitions, concerts, news summits to events in high risk territories.

The Makito X encoders fit this strategy like a glove, providing ultra low latency end-to-end transport of secure, high-quality HD video, even over unpredictable networks.  During the recent Olympics coverage in Tokyo, the Oranda team faced restrictions in the number of production staff onsite. This was overcome with the clever use of Haivision Play Pro, a free SRT Mobile player, to monitor live production feeds feeds from the field and using the SRT protocol and public internet to provide a cost-effective, low-latency way of getting feeds to the team members producing the content remotely.

Haivision are the original developer of SRT; a technology designed for connecting video between venues & TV Stations that is fast becoming an industry revolution since Haivision’s decision to open source the technology in 2017.

The Makito X encoders are famous for low latency encoding but to add to this Haivision have continued to develop leading technologies like Network Adaptive Encoding.  Network Adaptive Encoding is so clever that it detects the bandwidth of your internet connection and automatically adjusts the encoder settings to provide the best possible picture quality over the connection that is available.  All this in a small blade style package that can either be installed in a highly redundant dense rack frame (MB-21X) with a flexible configuration of encoder and decoder blades, or individually in field-hardened compact cases that are ready to go to some of the most remote locations on earth. Haivision EMS (Element Management System) goes a long way in providing operational efficiency with the provision of a web based interface to manage Haivison encoders and decoders across multiple sites.

CEO of Oranda, Floris Molijn said ”Our vision is to provide turnkey broadcast solutions to the worlds leading broadcasters from some of the most challenging locations around the world, especially in Asia which we call home.  We will continue to expand our capabilities with solutions like the Haivision Makito X to ensure that we can respond faster than any of our competitors to changing world events”.

Susan Lim, Techtel Territory Manager added, “We are inspired when we work with businesses that are similar to ours; privately founded and built up over time through hard but inspired work.  We will be going the extra mile for Oranda every chance we get to ensure that this partnership can make a real difference to both our businesses”. 

Read more about the Haivision Makito encoder here

Foxtel finds Norwegian Superhero hiding inside Bridge Technologies Appliance

After searching the market for a content monitoring platform that has both a heart and a soul, Foxtel recently selected Bridge Technologies from local partner Techtel to become their cop on the beat and catch network issues before they become problems.       

The idea that technology could have a heart and a soul was considered to be a unicorn until it was shown that Bridge Technologies of Norway are part of Scandinavia, the very same region where Santa Clause is based and we all know that he’s our guy when you need a miracle.

Every product Bridge make comes with a little bit of sweat that began life as a Viking; a Viking with one singular passion and that is to find errors in MPEG transport streams and tell operators to do something about it.

Bridge Technologies ambassador Henrik Fjord, a man on a mission to rid the planet of video artefacts

Although the decision was long thought to be a result of Bridge Technologies mesmerizing YouTube presence, Darren Windus Foxtel Head of Distribution Systems recently corrected the record and said “Yeah, Yeah, Nah, Yeah, this stuff is alright ya know”.

Foxtel had an extensive amount of monitoring equipment that was ASI; though now with the addition of the Bridge Technologies VB330 appliance it allows much higher bandwidth capabilities than ASI because it is an IP probe compatible with dual 10/25/50/100 Gbps interfaces that can monitor thousands of channels simultaneously.  It’s so capable that Foxtel plan to use just one VB330 to monitor their entire output of 46 mux groups and at last count 440 services at each of their primary sites.  The VB330 has some cool OTT tricks as well and Foxtel plan to run one unit in the lab just for checking on Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE).

The story could end right here but it doesn’t, because Foxtel also wanted something with a slick UI further upstream to watch their uncompressed IP video from Fox Sports.  This platform needed to be master control operator friendly so that they would be able to validate their multisite routing.  Monitoring uncompressed might sound like watching a cushion before you sit on it but the fact of the matter is much more complex than it might seem and again Bridge has a solution. 

The Bridge VB440 is an uncompressed monitoring beast supplied with dual 100Gbps interfaces that can monitor dozens of sources at once.  Fox Sports can monitor multi-resolution for 4K, HD and SD but they’ve found the event capture feature particularly helpful with resolving PTP and also investigating packet interval timing in detail.

With all these secret agents out in the field it’s nice to know that Bridge has their own equivalent to Miss Moneypenny.  The VBC controller server will give a central view of all Foxtel’s Bridge Technologies probes so that when one of your agents is in trouble you can send for re-enforcements.

See videos of Henrik Fjord and his tours of Oslo at this link