SAN FRANCISCO—Televisora Nacional S.A. (TVN), Panama’s most popular TV network, has built a new TV facility in Panama City and installed a full complement of Grass Valley production and distribution equipment to support the studio’s routing and master control operations for its established TVN channel and new TVMax channel.
Targeted to the male audience, TVMax was created to absorb all the sports programming from the existing TVN channel. As a result, a new sports news program was created for TVMax and the channel now also airs drama series, sitcoms, and reality shows.
The significant installation, among the largest in the country, was completed in May 2010 and is now fully on air. The studio includes a Grass Valley Kayak HD video production switcher, Apex audio routers, Trinix video routers, Maestro master control and channel branding system, numerous K2 Summit media servers, GeckoFlex signal processing modules, and a Sonata MADI audio converter.
“We have had a great experience with the Grass Valley Concerto routers and Kayak switchers in the past, so we wanted to move to the next generation of Grass Valley products for our new channel,” said Rolando Guerra, Chief Engineer at TVN and TVMax. “We need 24/7 reliability for our operations and Grass Valley technology always provides that. The company also has a great local presence here in Panama, which we have come to appreciate and make use of when necessary.”
The Grass Valley K2 Summit servers are being used to seamlessly play back content in multiple resolutions and compression formats. K2 Summit can automatically convert between HD and SD formats (up/down/cross) and various aspect ratios and manage the multitude of file types Televisora Nacional deals with on a daily basis, including DV 25, DV 50 and AVC-Intra.
“The TVMax installation enabled Grass Valley to show its wide range of local service and support capabilities, in addition to supplying a large amount of equipment,” said Jeff Rosica, Executive Vice President of Grass Valley. “This was a challenging implementation for our engineers as we had to integrate a number of disparate systems and make them all work seamlessly within a file-based environment. Everyone agrees this project was a resounding success on a number of levels.”
Televisora Nacional is a long-time customer, having purchased Grass Valley cameras, servers, routers, and other equipment for the network’s TVN channel, the predecessor to TVMax.
Besides the new equipment, Grass Valley also provided a range of services for the new project that included system installation, training, and maintenance.
