New extension to playout network provides facilities for 24-hour football coverage

True Visions, a leading cable and satellite operator in Thailand, has extended its Imagine Communications playout solution to broadcast this year’s worldwide football championships in 4K Ultra HD. This is the first Ultra HD channel in Southeast Asia, and it was designed, built, tested, proven and put on air in just four weeks.

True Visions holds the broadcast rights to the football tournament, being held in Russia this month. To meet its audience expectations, it is offering a number of new services, as well as the Ultra HD channel. As the company already depends upon Imagine Communications technology for its transmission and newsroom infrastructure, it turned to Imagine and Thai systems integrator B.E.C. Co., Ltd. to extend the capacity.

True Visions’ enhanced playout solution features Imagine’s Nexio+™ AMP® software-defined media servers providing six HD ingest channels in both a main and a hot standby installation. Imagine’s microservices-based Versio™ integrated playout platform upconverts the HD clip for UHD playout, while redundant Versio™ IOX systems support the high-bandwidth storage needs of the UHD workflow. Rounding out the Imagine system, True Visions’ existing Platinum™ VX router is used to switch to the live UHD feed, and D-Series™ playout automation provides frame-accurate control of the high-capacity media environment.

“We have built a very strong business in Thailand by providing the best in sport, movies, entertainment and news, and our subscribers are extremely demanding,” said Roengrit Sereejumroenrojn, director of engineering at True Visions. “They expect to be immersed in the football, and Ultra HD is one of the ways we can bring the action to life for them.

“Imagine and B.E.C. designed a solution that would enable us to leverage our existing automated playout environment to deliver the exceptional quality of Ultra HD,” he added. “More than that, they installed and tested it in time for our technical teams to rehearse before the opening ceremony on 14 June. Already the audience is loving what we are delivering.”

Mathias Eckert, SVP & GM EMEA/APAC, Playout & Networking Solutions at Imagine Communications, added “True Visions is leading the way, and there is no doubt that its pioneering Ultra HD coverage of the world’s most widely viewed sporting event will set the bar for many other broadcasters.

“We are delighted that we could provide True Visions with the core platform for this groundbreaking deployment,” Eckert added. “Our microservices-based technology running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware makes for fast rollouts of new services and enables media companies to add the latest functionality to existing installations without disrupting the existing signal paths and workflows. This is a great showcase project for us, and we hope that True Visions’ subscribers enjoy the football in the full glory of Ultra HD.”

Imagine Communications is demonstrating UHD playout and other next-generation solutions in collaboration with its local channel partners, Broadcast Engineering Services Pte. Ltd. (Stand #6F3-04) and Broadcast Technology Ltd. (Stand #4T1-01), at BroadcastAsia2018, taking place June 26-28 in Singapore.

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About Imagine Communications
Imagine Communications empowers the media and entertainment industry through transformative innovation. Broadcasters, networks, video service providers and enterprises around the world rely on our optimized, future-proof, multiscreen video and revenue enablement solutions every day to support their mission-critical operations. Today, nearly half of the world’s video channels traverse our products, and our software solutions drive close to a third of global ad revenue. Through continuous innovation we are delivering the most advanced IP, cloud-enabled, software-defined network and workflow solutions in the industry. Visit www.imaginecommunications.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @imagine_comms.