Fresh facilities for digital television

20 January 2007

Fresh facilities for digital television

Marketing communications company Fresh Media Limited establishes a multi-channel playout facility to meet digital TV channel needs

Fresh Media Limited director Jef Grobben has a passion for television channels, having been intimately involved with the start up of a number of channels in New Zealand over the last 20 years.

He wasn’t satisfied with his involvement in digital television as the CEO of The Arts Channel, to which Fresh Media provides marketing services. So Grobben has driven the construction of a server-based multi-channel playout facility in Owens Road, Epsom to deliver on-air capability for its first client the Documentary Channel, which started on SKY Television on 5 November.

Grobben plans to have a second client in place for the facility by the second quarter of 2007, and hopes others will follow. “With the start of the digital television service FreeView rapidly approaching, the increased activity at SKY Television and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) just around the corner, I wanted to create a facility that could provide cost-effective on-air solutions that small players could take advantage of,” Grobben said.

The new facility utilizes the latest digital technology to provide fully redundant video servers with emergency power backup. A British designed traffic and scheduling software package allows Internet access for programme scheduling and programme asset management, and easy output of the finalized programme schedule for channel website updating. Two video post production suites and an audio post production facility support the operation. Grobben chose Vector Communications as the optical fibre service provider to deliver the Documentary Channel to SKY Television’s Albany site, in a first for Vector in the television sector.

“Because Fresh has the production, marketing and now delivery capability all in-house,” Grobben said, “we can tailor our services to meet the client’s needs.

We are already involved in discussions with four different entities with channel ideas,” he added, “and we can only see that number increasing as the television market fragments and alternative delivery technologies and strategies evolve.”

ENDS

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