Russia’s Channel One migrates from HD/SDI to IP with Evertz Mediator solution

Channel One has updated its content production and distribution workflows installing Evertz Mediator at its Ostankino Technical Centre in Moscow. System integrator OKNO-TV and its service company Telerent worked with Evertz to implement this project.

For several years now, the Ostankino Technical Center has been migrating its own technical infrastructure to IP using Evertz technology and equipment. Upgrade targets are considered to modernize Channel One’s infrastructure, primarily, but that Russian broadcaster is also interested in other things. They need to double the number of channels broadcast from six to twelve, they have a desire to transition to “channel-in-a-box” technology for on-air programs and, also, a need to improve compatibility with the output format requirements of satellite and cable providers.

“Making major changes to our playout facility is not something that we do often so we wanted to be sure it was a good investment. We are now the first broadcaster in Russia to embrace SMPTE ST2110 (IP) and we have modernized our channel distribution and playout by installing a more software driven, adaptable workflow”, has said Igor Yadykin, Deputy Chief of the Technical department at Channel One.

The Evertz Mediator system includes 29 Overture (ORT) Live integrated playout engines; 14 ORT Media Client record servers; 2 Render-X proxy generator servers; an advanced multi-node virtualisation environment hosting Mediator core and computer nodes; 15 VUE CUBE workstations and two Isilon storage clusters (main and backup), each with 9 nodes. For the IP infrastructure, OKNO-TV installed two Evertz EXE routers (main and backup) with MAGNUM SDVN and Client Host servers. An EQX router with MAGNUM were also installed for ingest.