Following a public tender process, Rai (Radiotelevisione Italiana), the national public broadcasting company of Italy, has awarded Imagine Communications a three-year frame contract via local systems integrator Allyn Srl to support its transition from SDI to IP. The agreement positions Imagine’s Selenio Network Processor (SNP) as a core building block in Rai’s migration to SMPTE ST 2110 across its master control rooms (MCRs) and production control rooms (PCRs), as Imagine Communications has claimed in a statement.

As part of its modernization strategy, Rai is migrating key areas of its production and playout infrastructure from SDI to IP, carefully selecting technologies that enable a scalable and operationally sound transition. Under the frame contract, the SNPs will serve as gateway, conversion, multiviewing, and master control devices for newly deployed IP environments. Rai will also focus on trying to leverage the SNP with JPEG XS compression capability to support production-quality, low-latency connectivity between facilities, including links to outside broadcast vehicles.

“Our move to IP is a long-term transformation, and we need a platform that will let us migrate at our own pace without disrupting operations”, explains Stefano Marchetti, head of playout and network engineering at Rai. “Imagine’s SNP provides a practical foundation for how we want to build and manage our IP environments going forward — one that enables incremental deployment, operational continuity, and long-term scalability”.

The SNP design enables it to be easily reconfigured with different personalities and upgraded in the field with new functionality. Its broad interoperability with third-party ST 2110 equipment was also a key factor in meeting Rai’s tender requirements.

At Rai, some SNPs will serve as IP gateways and some as low-latency, HDR-capable production multiviewers, with the intention of enabling content from different video formats and HDR systems to be integrated into a consistent display environment. Other SNP devices will be configured with the Master Control Lite (MCL) personality, delivering branding, live graphics, and full master control functionality within the framework of the industry-proven platform. SNPs configured with JPEG XS compression looks forward to reducing Rai’s cost of video connectivity between facilities by using less bandwidth for signal transport.

“We are proud to support this multiyear project, which is a great example of how broadcasters are approaching IP migration in a thoughtful, incremental way”, affirms said Mathias Eckert, SVP and GM EMEA and APAC for Imagine Communications. “SNP was designed specifically for this kind of transition, allowing customers to move from SDI to IP with confidence, interoperability, and clear operational benefits”.

The initial SNP orders will support deployments at two sites: the creation of an IP backbone for Rai’s Turin MCR and an IP infrastructure build-out at a facility in Rome. Over the duration of the three-year contract, multiple additional orders are anticipated as Rai expands its IP transition across a wider network of sites, ultimately spanning more than 25 locations nationwide.