Ethiopian government-owned Amhara TV has selected Grass Valley to provide several systems to build Ethiopia’s first HD terrestrial TV broadcast station.
Grass Valley systems will be used to outfit two HD studios and a master control room (MCR). Amhara will be available both terrestrially and via the Nilesat free-to-air satellite service.
Amhara TV selected six HD LDK 3000+ cameras for their flexibility and high picture quality, and a Kayak HD video production switcher for its advanced HD capabilities. The master control room will be based around a Grass Valley Maestro SD/HD branding and master control system for multichannel control.
At the heart of the HD infrastructure will be a Concerto Series routing switcher with Prelude router control. A GeckoFlex Signal Processing System will provide the necessary modular platform for signal control, complete with an integrated browser-based control system.
While the majority of Ethiopia's television viewers use SD televisions, they will be able to benefit from the oversampling of HD-to-SD down conversion for improved picture quality over SD-originated programming.
