Corporate stories; made and told in Australia

Amazon studio floor Sydney

(Sydney, Australia, 18th March 2024) An events team in need of live broadcast production, their expanding virtually connected workforce and a need to be nimble with go-live readiness were just some of the reasons behind an international corporations decision to build their first ever broadcast studio located in Sydney.

In creating the broadcast production space one user, Amazon Australia, have sought to answer some key questions such as; how do they give their people a voice at every level within the organisation and how can they support the community groups that they are part of such as those who identify as LGBTQI+, indigenous or people with disability.  Capturing these stories is nothing new but relating it to the business and making everyone feel welcome and supported is something that digital media is really good at.

The multifunctional space changes personality thanks to a digital background

“In a large organisation like Amazon, ensuring that we communicate in an engaging way that supports not only our people but the community we are part of is absolutely critical.  Of course the facility that Techtel have helped us to create is something we are very proud of but what really makes our day is when the content we produce can have a global impact.” said Marcel Varnel, Manager Amazon Events Broadcast and Content Production.

Studio production control room

The purpose-built facility in Sydney, designed by Studio Technical Lead, Andy Burford and installed by local media technology specialist Techtel, contains a television studio with separate control and monitoring rooms that can produce Ultra-High Definition (UHD) content.  The space needed to be designed with it’s future users in mind so making it sleek and welcoming was key to ensure that people who were not familiar with broadcast would feel at ease.

Corporations are starting to understand that video content, beit live or on demand, is the best way to get a message across but it needs to be thoughtful and well planned.  Marcel added, “What we are doing here with this studio is story telling, and just like anyone in this business we know if our story isn’t worth watching then the production won’t be effective.  We work really hard to make sure that all the people who come through this brilliant new facility understand that a great story will give our audience the lasting impact we are looking for.....  It’s a joy to be here telling great stories everyday and Amazon is so diverse we have a lot to cover”

CEO at Techtel Mal Chandler said, “this studio demonstrates to anyone in the corporate world that if you want to get a great return on your investment in media, start first with a story telling plan, with people who are professionals and then working together with someone like Techtel you’ll get a fantastic outcome.”

Directors position

Grass comes first at Venues NSW new Allianz stadium

(Sydney, Australia, 9th November 2023)

Following a competitive tender process, Techtel is pleased to announce that Venues NSW have given themselves a great home ground advantage by selecting the Grass Valley Kahuna Vision Switcher to power their most modern venue ever built; the Allianz Stadium at Moore Park, Sydney.

The decision to go with Grass Valley’s Kahuna Vision Switcher was based on overall value for money as assessed by Venues NSW. The success of Grass Valley’s bid was in part due to the Kahuna’s extensive I/O capability and the wide availability of opperational crew, something only an industry standard platform can offer. Venues NSW already use the Kahuna at their recently upgraded Accor Stadium (Sydney Olympic Park), so a decision to standardise their Vision Switchers based on the best valued solution and on the one industry leading platform was a massive consolidated benefit that meant installing and comissioning a Kahuna for Allianz Stadium was the most advatengous choice.

The rebuilt Allianz stadium, together with the Kahuna, has already hosted FIFA Womens World Cup matches, National Rugby League, A-League and Super Rugby matches.  Allianz Stadium’s Internal Broadcasting and Production Suite Operator, Superscreens CEO Ben Hamm said “The Kahuna has been a really reliable platform which in live events is so important. We loved the simplicity of the panel yet it has some really powerful features that our team now use on a regular basis.”

Techtel is thrilled to have some involvement in nearly every major stadium in Australia” added Mal Chandler, CEO Techtel.  “It’s great to have played a part in the new Allianz stadium and the major upgrades at Accor Stadium which are both exciting venues everyone wants to visit for major sporting and entertainment events in Sydney.”

Techtel Transform Flagship Conference Room at 180 George Street Sydney with Cutting-Edge Broadcast Technology

[Sydney, September 20th, 2023] — Techtel is excited to unveil our transformative role in enhancing the flagship conference room at 180 George Street, Sydney. In collaboration with our esteemed partners, we've played a pivotal role in elevating client engagement through the integration of state-of-the-art Grass Valley and Telemetrics broadcast technology.

Our expertise extends to optimizing a significant portion of the broadcasting console, complemented by cutting-edge technology solutions and the deployment of top-of-the-line pan, tilt and zoom lens cameras. This collaboration has transformed the conference room into a technologically advanced space, setting new standards for modern business interactions, and enabling impactful client meetings, dynamic presentations, and immersive sessions that define a new era of corporate excellence.

Products featured in the conference room design include a carefully curated suite of advanced equipment, encompassing:

  • Fujinon Broadcast Zoom(7.8 - 187mm, 2x Ext, Servo Zoom and Servo Focus) Lens

  • Grass Valley LDX C98 Compact Camera

  • Telemetrics (PTHPS5) Pan and Tilt Head

  • Telemetrics RoboEye with Pan Tilt Head

  • and many more.

At the heart of the solution lies the integrated Telemetrics PTHPS5 Pan and Tilt Head, Grass Valley LDX C98 Compact Camera, and Fujinon Broadcast Zoom Lens, working in tandem to capture every dynamic moment. This dynamic combination provides unprecedented precision and control, elevating the conference room experience to new heights of professionalism and engagement.

Central to the Telemetrics PTHPS5 Pan and Tilt Head is its cutting-edge reframe technology, which is self-hosted within the control panel. This central control hub not only commands the Grass Valley LDX C98 Compact Camera and the Fujinon Broadcast Zoom Lens, but also seamlessly directs the movements of the strategically positioned RoboEye cameras. The control panel's functionality empowers the director or operator to decisively dictate camera actions, granting them the freedom to focus on creative and content-driven decisions rather than being consumed by equipment operation.

This streamlined approach not only enhances efficiency but also produces a polished end result. The solution affords the operator the invaluable capacity to make real-time creative decisions, enabling a more immersive and engaging experience for the audience. As a result, the final product is refined, fluid, and embodies a level of professional finesse that sets a new standard for conference room interactions.

This transformation for Techtel represents a long standing commitment to delivering unparalleled client experiences and pushing the boundaries of innovation in the corporate landscape. We are excited to witness the remarkable content that will be created in this cutting-edge flagship conference room.

Shining a Spotlight on Success: Tom Nunn Joins as Business Development Luminary

(Sydney, July 17, 2023) – Prepare to be impressed by the expertise and accomplishments of Tom Nunn as we introduce him as our newest addition to the world of business development. With a background in television broadcast operations and a proven ability to build strong client relationships, Tom brings a unique blend of technical expertise and charisma to our team.

Tom Nunn's extraordinary tenure as a Technical Director, along with his extensive first hand experience as a field tech/CCU specialist on shows like "Big Brother", "The Voice", "X Factor," and "So You Think You Can Dance" solidify his reputation as a luminary in the industry. His ability to skillfully capture captivating drama and translate it seamlessly to the screen leaves a lasting impact. 

As an operational expert with extensive first-hand experience and a deep understanding of broadcasting intricacies, Tom serves as a trusted resource to offer tailored solutions, strategic insights, and invaluable advice on how to elevate customer production quality to the next level. 

Tom Nunn expressed, "I am thrilled to embrace the transformative journey of business development, where I can leverage my expertise and passion in television broadcast operations and client relations to drive growth and cultivate new opportunities.

"We warmly welcome Tom Nunn to our business development team," said Mal Chandler. "His exceptional track record as a Technical Director and Field Tech, coupled with his unwavering passion for excellence, position him perfectly for success as a Business Development Manager.

Going with the flo; Ashish Lahane dives into the inflo™ software development team at Techtel

Ashish Lahane Profile Headshot, Credits to Marketing Coordinator Eddy Wong 2023 July

(Sydney, July 12, 2023) Techtel proudly announces Ashish Lahane, a distinguished technologist from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, as the new Software Technology Lead for our inflo™ team in Sydney. With his extensive expertise, Ashish will guide inflo™ to make waves in the industry, offering expanded features and riding the tides of success. Under his leadership, Techtel will navigate the currents of technology, ensuring a smooth sailing for the inflo™ software development team.

Immersing himself in the inflo™ software development team at Techtel, Ashish brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise. Surfing the pace of innovation for 7 years as a lead developer, Ashish has honed his expertise in high-volume, low-latency data processing. With his remarkable ability to adapt to shifting tides he emerges as the undisputed captain of the inflo™ team. His unique understanding of full stack technologies allows him to seamlessly tackle challenges and steer the team towards success in building a cutting-edge, cloud-friendly media solution here at Techtel. 

“I’ve always had a strong interest in media technology so when I spotted this opportunity at Techtel, I didn’t hesitate.  The team here is dynamic and the technology stack they are working with is some of the coolest stuff I’ve come across. I’m so excited to see what we can achieve together“ said Ashish Lahane.

Mal Chandler expressed, 'We are excited about Ashish joining the team, as inflo™ is reaching a significant milestone, surpassing expectations in terms of the value delivered since the project has been conceived. Ashish has a strong academic background and his expertise will be a valuable asset to the inflo™ team, both now and in the future."

New Government customer takes on inflo™

An Australian mainland State Parliament has initiated a 5-year agreement with Techtel to provide inflo™ software to record all broadcast video and audio of parliamentary proceedings throughout both debating chambers and 6 committee meeting rooms.  Using the browser based inflo™ software, the parliament will be able to provide access to both historical and future content recordings to Parliamentary Staff, Sitting Members and external users such as Journalists who can search, browse and download content as required.

 

The agreement which sees the platform being launched in mid-2023 integrating features that are highly desirable throughout the Parliamentary Broadcast Community.  Features such as browser-based editing, multi-user credential access and Hansard Metadata integration are but a few of the intuitive features forming part of the delivered solution.

 

Techtel’s product manager for inflo™, Matthew Hall commented, “Techtel has had a strong focus on Parliamentary production systems so we felt we had an unprecedented level of understanding about their needs which lead to the unique solution we proposed.  As part of this project we are really excited to implement some really innovative new features for inflo™ and the end result is going to be a great system for the Parliament, designed, built and supported in Australia, by and Australian Company.”

The Seven Network sets sail with its Spectra BlackPearl Solution

(Melbourne, Australia, 23rd June 2022) After a rigorous review of object-based storage solutions, Network Seven chose to implement the Spectra BlackPearl® Converged Storage System for their network-wide program, news, sport and historic archive. The solution supplied and integrated by Techtel is the first Australian deployment of BlackPearl integrated with VizRT for news production. BlackPearl is a modern object storage solution that seamlessly moves content into multiple storage targets based on pre-set policies.

Seven turned to Techtel for a solution as it became clear that the sun had set on their legacy storage systems and a change was necessary to protect their data whilst making vast improvements to the availability of their content. The BlackPearl solution from Spectra Logic addressed all of Seven’s requirements so Techtel architected a solution that could deliver seven years’ worth of storage at Seven’s main news production centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Additionally, in Melbourne, further flexibility was required to allow Seven to migrate data out of an old Sony PetaSite library that contained program material.

“Seven had been considering the Spectra BlackPearl as a solution to replace our news archive for a while, and for us the real trigger to move on this was seeing the Spectra-VizOne integration being adopted worldwide,” said Andrew Anderson, Director of Broadcast Operations for Seven West Media. “With BlackPearl we know we have a guaranteed level of performance and unlimited data access for the foreseeable future. Techtel’s proven ability to support Spectra products in Australia is well known so we look forward to working with them.”

The solution will serve content to Seven’s network-wide deployment of VizOne and VizStory, allowing news and production editors to retrieve, edit and publish content at breaking news pace. The RESTful integration between VizOne MAM and BlackPearl has been in deployment now for years, which provided absolute confidence to Seven that the solution would be robust and ready to go off the shelf.

BlackPearl has created an opportunity for broadcasters who currently have a costly and complex stack of aging software to migrate to one simple affordable solution.  The BlackPearl object storage solution also allows multi-tenant architecture so several client platforms like VizOne MAM can access data from a common infrastructure removing the need for each system to have its own silo of storage.

“When Seven approached Techtel for an archive solution, choosing a product that was MAM vendor independent made BlackPearl the logical choice. Spectra Logic’s BlackPearl integrates with any modern media and entertainment MAM provider, and when combined with BlackPearl RioBroker®, a software front-end data mover for BlackPearl, it can also integrate with third-party HSM’s for streamlined migration. We worked closely with Seven to ensure that we could deliver the performance they needed and I’m really pleased with the final result,” added Matt Hall, Business Development Manager for Techtel.

Oranda adds resources to extend even more value to emerging sports in Asia

Singapore based Oranda Private Limited, the most agile and innovative broadcast production services business in Asia has chosen to add to their already extensive pool of Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) services through the addition of Haivision’s Makito X H.264 encoders, supplied and supported by local integrator Techtel Pte Ltd.

Oranda Team in the field during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

As a business with over 20 years of experience in Asia, Oranda have the runs on the board to prove that they know what it takes to get the job done in areas where broadcasting video can be a challenge. Oranda’s coverage include major events such as the Olympics, Wimbledon, FIFA Club World Cup, esport competitions, concerts, news summits to events in high risk territories.

The Makito X encoders fit this strategy like a glove, providing ultra low latency end-to-end transport of secure, high-quality HD video, even over unpredictable networks.  During the recent Olympics coverage in Tokyo, the Oranda team faced restrictions in the number of production staff onsite. This was overcome with the clever use of Haivision Play Pro, a free SRT Mobile player, to monitor live production feeds feeds from the field and using the SRT protocol and public internet to provide a cost-effective, low-latency way of getting feeds to the team members producing the content remotely.

Haivision are the original developer of SRT; a technology designed for connecting video between venues & TV Stations that is fast becoming an industry revolution since Haivision’s decision to open source the technology in 2017.

The Makito X encoders are famous for low latency encoding but to add to this Haivision have continued to develop leading technologies like Network Adaptive Encoding.  Network Adaptive Encoding is so clever that it detects the bandwidth of your internet connection and automatically adjusts the encoder settings to provide the best possible picture quality over the connection that is available.  All this in a small blade style package that can either be installed in a highly redundant dense rack frame (MB-21X) with a flexible configuration of encoder and decoder blades, or individually in field-hardened compact cases that are ready to go to some of the most remote locations on earth. Haivision EMS (Element Management System) goes a long way in providing operational efficiency with the provision of a web based interface to manage Haivison encoders and decoders across multiple sites.

CEO of Oranda, Floris Molijn said ”Our vision is to provide turnkey broadcast solutions to the worlds leading broadcasters from some of the most challenging locations around the world, especially in Asia which we call home.  We will continue to expand our capabilities with solutions like the Haivision Makito X to ensure that we can respond faster than any of our competitors to changing world events”.

Susan Lim, Techtel Territory Manager added, “We are inspired when we work with businesses that are similar to ours; privately founded and built up over time through hard but inspired work.  We will be going the extra mile for Oranda every chance we get to ensure that this partnership can make a real difference to both our businesses”. 

Read more about the Haivision Makito encoder here

Foxtel finds Norwegian Superhero hiding inside Bridge Technologies Appliance

After searching the market for a content monitoring platform that has both a heart and a soul, Foxtel recently selected Bridge Technologies from local partner Techtel to become their cop on the beat and catch network issues before they become problems.       

The idea that technology could have a heart and a soul was considered to be a unicorn until it was shown that Bridge Technologies of Norway are part of Scandinavia, the very same region where Santa Clause is based and we all know that he’s our guy when you need a miracle.

Every product Bridge make comes with a little bit of sweat that began life as a Viking; a Viking with one singular passion and that is to find errors in MPEG transport streams and tell operators to do something about it.

Bridge Technologies ambassador Henrik Fjord, a man on a mission to rid the planet of video artefacts

Although the decision was long thought to be a result of Bridge Technologies mesmerizing YouTube presence, Darren Windus Foxtel Head of Distribution Systems recently corrected the record and said “Yeah, Yeah, Nah, Yeah, this stuff is alright ya know”.

Foxtel had an extensive amount of monitoring equipment that was ASI; though now with the addition of the Bridge Technologies VB330 appliance it allows much higher bandwidth capabilities than ASI because it is an IP probe compatible with dual 10/25/50/100 Gbps interfaces that can monitor thousands of channels simultaneously.  It’s so capable that Foxtel plan to use just one VB330 to monitor their entire output of 46 mux groups and at last count 440 services at each of their primary sites.  The VB330 has some cool OTT tricks as well and Foxtel plan to run one unit in the lab just for checking on Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE).

The story could end right here but it doesn’t, because Foxtel also wanted something with a slick UI further upstream to watch their uncompressed IP video from Fox Sports.  This platform needed to be master control operator friendly so that they would be able to validate their multisite routing.  Monitoring uncompressed might sound like watching a cushion before you sit on it but the fact of the matter is much more complex than it might seem and again Bridge has a solution. 

The Bridge VB440 is an uncompressed monitoring beast supplied with dual 100Gbps interfaces that can monitor dozens of sources at once.  Fox Sports can monitor multi-resolution for 4K, HD and SD but they’ve found the event capture feature particularly helpful with resolving PTP and also investigating packet interval timing in detail.

With all these secret agents out in the field it’s nice to know that Bridge has their own equivalent to Miss Moneypenny.  The VBC controller server will give a central view of all Foxtel’s Bridge Technologies probes so that when one of your agents is in trouble you can send for re-enforcements.

See videos of Henrik Fjord and his tours of Oslo at this link

2021 – a year in review

If the past year was a movie, would we call it a thriller, drama or perhaps action? There was certainly never a dull moment and the same was true for our business. Our company had a big 2021 with remarkable success, despite quite a lot of global uncertainty throughout both our direct market and the related markets that we rely on.

Perhaps our greatest achievement this year was the shedding of our skin after we relocated from a HQ of more than 20 years to a new address just around the corner in Artarmon. We learned that engineering people like to collect things and the path to the recycling centre was well worn by the time we were done. Being in a new home has given the entire team that weightless feeling you get when you declutter and we’re all now feeling focused on the future like never before.

Moving on from moving, the march to adapt production workflows to IP video and the flexibility it affords was everywhere. From the smaller production companies embracing NDI to the full-service players that are fully uncompressed with an ST2110 fabric, everyone knew that IP was the way to go. In the enterprise space where uncompressed is first preference, Techtel’s Bridge Technologies and their super flexible VB440 monitoring system became a must-have for anyone to build around this new and emerging standard. Broadcasters like the ABC, NEP, Nine Network, NPC & Foxtel have been busy converting their infrastructure to IP to take advantage of all the flexibility IP unlocks. The VB440 has become their eyes and ears, making a flexibility theory their new reality.

We saw big shifts in 2021 from companies that need to modernise their storage solutions like the Seven Network and NPC. Our partner Spectra has shown tremendous innovation in this area and it was their solutions that we found were time and again in front of the competition. In late October, Spectra released Vail, a game changer for their company and a product that will be truly disruptive in the cloud storage space for many years ahead.

Major venues including Sydney’s Olympic stadium , the Sydney Football Stadium, Marvel Stadium and the Melbourne Olympic Park Trust all took the opportunity to modernise and our partner Grass Valley was especially successful in this respect. Their Kahuna series of vision mixers was chosen to be at the core of the live audience experience and we look forward to seeing our sporting heroes shown on big screens like never before. 

It was a year of continued deployment of LED displays throughout television studio sets and both the ABC and Network Ten made a further push in this area. The stunning backdrops that our customers create are transforming their productions and engaging the audience like never before. 

Techtel’s software developers were busier than ever throughout the year, culminating in the release of V2.2 of Inflo™. Inflo now includes diverse video capture card support, artificial intelligence and asset management, all in a web-based platform. It will be another big year for Inflo in 2022, as we continue to respond to great customer feedback.

So, although it was a rollercoaster ride of a year, the people that work for Techtel are passionate, professional and they rose to the challenge. We didn’t just survive, we made great strides forward and I could not be prouder of everyone under our roof; staff, suppliers and of course our inspiring customers. Everyone keep doing what you do!


Network Nine Adds Spectra Logic StorCycle® Software to its BlackPearl® Platform to Streamline Workflows and Enhance Content Preservation

(Sydney, Australia, 26 November 2021) Network Nine have expanded their Spectra Logic storage ecosystem to include the new StorCycle software solution for storage lifecycle management. 

Following Network Nine’s 2018 upgrade from a legacy storage platform that saw them deploy replicating Spectra BlackPearl object storage solutions paired with Spectra T950 Tape Libraries, Nine found that Spectra’s Storcycle® software could potentially replace another legacy storage system during their recent Sydney relocation.

The storage workflow of the legacy system took graphics and compositing files created by Adobe After Effects and Autodesk Flame and moved these into a disparate tape archive and backup location.  StorCycle replaces the need for this isolated equipment architecture through its native connectivity with Nine Network’s centralised Spectra BlackPearl hybrid storage platform.

StorCycle is a storage lifecycle management software solution that ensures data is stored on the right tier throughout its lifecycle for greater IT and budgetary efficiencies. Created for organizations that need lasting protection and access to data which is no longer active, but still critical to retain, StorCycle scans primary storage for inactive files and completed projects and migrates them based on set policies to a lower cost tier of storage, which includes any combination of cloud storage, object storage disknetwork-attached storage (NAS) and tape. Interoperable with Linux and Windows, StorCycle migrates data, without changing original formats, and allows users to have easy access to all data, including data migrated to longer latency storage mediums like cloud “cold” tiers and tape.

Dylan Van Dyke, Broadcast Tech Manager for Nine Network, said, “Our relocation gave us a unique opportunity to rethink some of our legacy systems and we were really pleased to see that StorCycle could address some workflows that had not been integrated into our main Spectra Object Storage Platform. StorCycle has been running now for some time and we’re really pleased with the results.”

Matthew Hall, Business Development Manager for Techtel, added “Nine Network’s object storage environment, underpinned by Spectra BlackPearl, is now even more capable with the addition of StorCycle. Pairing StorCycle and BlackPearl ensures Nine’s critical data is safe whilst demonstrating a cost savings over their previous workflow. It made sense to choose StorCycle. Native compatibility with BlackPearl alone places it ahead of the competition. But the cost-based logic behind StorCycle’s file movement really sets it apart and we’re excited about the way broadcasters can save money by implementing it into their storage ecosystems.”

About Network Nine

When it comes to connecting brands with the passions of Australians, there’s no other media company like Nine.

As the home of Australia’s most trusted and loved brands spanning news, business and finance, lifestyle, entertainment and sport, we pride ourselves on creating and curating quality content, accessed by consumers when and how they want.

Nine is Australia’s largest locally owned media company with investments spanning television, video on demand, print, digital, and radio. Nine’s assets include the 9 Television Network, video on demand platform 9Now, talkback radio stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR, 2UE, 4BH, 6GT, Magic1278, major mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, digital properties such as nine.com.au, 9Honey, Pedestrian.TV and CarAdvice, subscription video platform Stan, and majority investments in Domain and Future Women.

 

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.com.au

 

About Spectra Logic Corporation

About Spectra Logic
Spectra Logic develops a full range of Attack Hardened™ data management and data storage solutions for a multi-cloud world. Dedicated solely to data storage innovation for more than 40 years, Spectra Logic helps organizations modernize their IT infrastructures and protect and preserve their data with a broad portfolio of solutions that enable them to manage, migrate, store and preserve business data long-term, along with features to make them ransomware resilient, whether on-premises, in a single cloud, across multiple clouds, or in all locations at once. To learn more, visit www.spectralogic.com.

Techtel announces a major new release of inflo®, including support for IP content and Ai.

(Sydney, Australia, 28 September 2021) Techtel are pleased to announce a major new release V2.2 of inflo®, software for digital content capture, storage and processing. The software is 100% Australian-made and developed at Techtel in-house, giving our customers unique access to service, support and the development pipeline.

The latest release of inflo® has more than a few tricks up its sleeve, starting with its compatibility with a host of SDI capture cards from manufacturers such as Bluefish444, Blackmagic and AJA, to name a few, and it can be scaled from just a few inputs to dozens or beyond. Connecting to these cards using a RESTful API interface, inflo® can live anywhere you like, including in the cloud.  NDI, SRT and URL recordings are scheduled for the next release allowing for a hybrid environment where some recordings are stream based and others come from physical cards on premise.

For the operators, there is no client software to install because inflo provides all the tools you need via a simple-to-use web interface, ideal for ease of access and it means multiple people can control the system at once from their web browser of choice.

Also it’s now simple to save your files in multiple resolutions, browse and append various metadata to these files in inflo. The easy-to-use UI has taken content browsing to the next level with the ability to scrub through thumbnails while browsing your library and open a clip of your choice at the precise time-code selected. At the click of a button you can then export your media in either a single format of your choice or complete a batch export containing multiple formats.

Inflo web based live ingest management page

Inflo web based live ingest management page

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are also new to this release of inflo®. Many customers have asked for automatic transcription services and Techtel will soon be releasing a version that has transcription available on tap when you need it. Using the speech-to-text engine of your choice, inflo can already automatically associate the caption and video content, displaying the captions using internally generated WebVTT files with timing intact. This is a game-changer for the navigability of your content, as the entire transcript will be saved as searchable metadata. It’s also simple to jump to a specific point in a video just by choosing a word in the transcript and double-clicking on it. Finally, you can export the asset with captions to downstream VOD systems for a complete end-to-end solution.

Inflo Content Management page

Inflo Content Management page

“This latest release of inflo® really punches above its weight in the market”, said Mal Chandler, CEO, Techtel. “We think that a lot of customers are going to be excited to see that we can do many of the same kinds of functions that were previously out of reach for content producers in the mid-market space”.

“We are really excited to see the pace of inflo’s growth”, said Matt Hall, Product Manager for inflo. “We have a really strong roadmap and our customers are providing new feature ideas regularly, so watch this space for more announcements in the near future”.

Gravity Media chooses TV Logic for sports editing

TV Logic Release image.jpg

(Sydney, Australia, 3rd May 2021) Following an extensive old-fashioned broadcast monitor shoot-out at Gravity Media, Techtel is pleased to announce that the TV Logic LUM-242G was fastest on the draw.  The new monitors were needed as part of an upgrade to Gravity Media’s fast-turnaround sports editing suites that are used both in their trucks and at their post-production HQ in Artarmon.

The LUM-242G is a 24” native Ultra High-Definition Monitor with HDR emulation capable of an impressive wide colour gamut of up to 98% of DCI-P3.  The monitor FPGA also supports a range of features like waveform/vectorscope, audio levels, focus assist, markers, UMD and many more.

TV Logic’s family of UHD monitors that form the LUM series are seeing the implementation of TV Logics new Colour Innovation system that is based on an advanced new engine called Logicolor™ for sophisticated colour processing.  The new engine processes colours using a 24bit linear RGB colour space that allows for correct calculation and flexible support for various colour standards, colour gamuts and Electro-Optical Transfer Functions (EOTF’s).

Initially Gravity Media tested the larger 31” LUM-313G-CI and found that the Color Innovation features like the calibration reports were great features but, with space constraints they looked to a smaller variant that could deliver similar colour accuracy.  The LUM-242G was the obvious candidate and after a quick test to check it could do the job Gravity chose to order seven units.

Adrian Jenner, Director of Technology at Gravity Media said, “We wanted to make sure that the edit suite monitors would be high performing and well supported locally but also offer good value for money.  TV Logic did a great job during the shoot out and the delivery was really impressive too at about two weeks from order to delivery”.

“High quality LCD monitors are receiving loads of attention at the moment as the market looks to upgrade to UHD and HDR with equipment that they know works and will be reliable into the future.  TV Logic have really focused on their premium 24” and 31” offerings and we think they offer more choice than any other manufacturer in the market so we are really pleased to see TV Logic had a model that is the right fit for what Gravity Media were looking for” said Mal Chandler, CEO at Techtel.

 

About Gravity Media

Gravity Media is a brand-new company with a 30-year pedigree, formed by the coming together of four established broadcast and production houses: Gearhouse Broadcast, HyperActive Broadcast, Input Media and Chief Entertainment.

Our broadcast packages are both modular and integrated, meaning we can flex our offering to match your requirements. Come to us for a single service, or a complete end-to-end solution. www.gravitymedia.com

Hawthorn Football Club swoop on Coach Paint

Sydney, Australia, 3rd March 2021 – Techtel is pleased to announce that Hawthorn Football Club (the Hawks), part of the Australian Football League (AFL) has chosen to use ChyronHego’s premier coaching analysis software, Coach Paint®.  The software takes instructive visualisations to another level enabling coaching staff to illustrate game day strategies to the players with engaging content that can be displayed to larger playing groups or even on tablets for individual instruction.

Coach Paint leverages ChyronHego’s expertise in broadcast graphics visualisations by borrowing from technology that is often used in the live broadcasts to the public and making this same technology available in an affordable application designed for coaching staff.  The teams coaching staff are able to add graphics to any part of the game; they can animate and track players or the ball to produce slick video clips that clearly re-enforce their player instruction.

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Hawthorn lays claim to being the most successful football club in the past 50 years of the AFL having secured 12 premierships during that period.  Founded in 1902, Hawthorn has become one of the AFL superpowers who play their home games between the University of Tasmania Stadium (Launceston) and the greatest AFL colosseum, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MGC) which can seat over 100,000 fans.

Hawthorn Football Club Performance Analyst James Barker said “The switch to Coach Paint was a great experience for us that helped widen the ways to make video clips quickly and easily in both off-line and interactive modes; this was fitted perfectly with our coaching strategies and directions.  The players have shown us that they respond quickly to content we produce using Coach Paint and in the end that speed in messaging is what we need”.

“We think the momentum that Coach Paint has in the AFL is really powered by the coaching staff themselves who find the product really quick and easy to pickup and the low cost to get started is also what the clubs love.” said Payam Safa, Techtel’s Coach Paint Specialist.

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In the AFL, Hawthorn join Carlton, West Coast Eagles, Gold Coast, Port Adelaide, St. Kilda, Adelaide, Geelong, Fremantle and AFL House as users of Coach Paint.  Outside Australia, Coach Paint is used extensively in the US by select NBA, NFL and MLB clubs and in the UK by select Premier League clubs to mention just a few of Chyronhego’s extensive user base.

 

 

About Hawthorn FC

Hawthorn Football Club, commonly known as the ‘Hawks’, is a professional Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League and is based at Waverley Park in Mulgrave, Melbourne. Founded in 1902, the club first played in the Metropolitan Junior Football Association 1902-1913 before joining the Victorian Football Association from 1914-1924 and in 1925, Hawthorn officially joined the VFL/AFL competition. Hawthorn has 13 premierships to date and a nationwide membership base that extends beyond 70,000. The club's official colours are brown and gold.

 

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.com.au

 

About Chyronhego

ChyronHego is a global leader in broadcast graphics creation, playout, and real-time data visualization offering a wide variety of products and services for News & WeatherLive ProductionSports TechnologyStadium & In-VenueMaster Control and Corporate and Government Video.  Headquartered in New York, the company also has offices in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, and Canada.

 

ABonAir release new AB4000 4K/UHD wireless Link

Israel, December 16th 2020 – ABonAIR is proud to announce the official release of the AB4000 wireless system, a constant effort and commitment to innovation. The AB4000 is a 4K/UHD mid-range high quality wireless link which is affordable for all. The traffic stopping Price is just $9,000.

The system comes with embedded RCP control and Tally light (included in the above price) and suitable for:

  • House of worship productions

  • Live events

  • Studios

  • Video assist

 

See attached data sheet.

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Leading Australian Telco goes with NOMAD

Sydney, Australia, 13 October 2020 – One of Australia’s largest Telecommunications providers has chosen Techtel to deploy the NOMAD PRO by Bridge Technologies – an RF&IP network probe that is highly portable and easy to use. This enables the end customer to monitor and optimize their network from a variety of facilities and remote locations.

Replacing the legacy VB12 probe, the new NOMAD PRO  is a complete, compact and free-standing unit which can monitor and analyze multiple signals independently and concurrently without the need for a host system. In addition, it has a built in Wi-Fi hotspot which enables it to connect easily to a laptop. As a result, network engineers can deploy and easily move it between various locations on the network as well as remote sites.

The new monitoring probe covers the majority of the customer’s monitoring requirements in IP multicast, OTT and RF networks including ASI, DVB-C, DVB-T/T2 (terrestrial) and of course DVB-S/S2 (satellite).

In addition, NOMAD’s capability to configure individual ETR290™ engines running in parallel on the Ethernet interface, meets the customers need for real-time quality checks and simplified analytics breakdown of all TS streams before delivery.

Bridge Technologies’ patented MediaWindow visualization technology enables complex structures and data to be understood by a user without the deep operator knowledge, allowing them to promptly take corrective actions.

 “Bridge Technologies’ NOMAD provides an unprecedented level of functionality required to remotely monitor, analyze, repair and optimize any IP network. It has a substantial set of monitoring tools for such a small box, which will provide deep analytical functionality to our customer’s infrastructure for many years to come – from ASI to satellite input and beyond ”, said Mal Chandler, CEO of Techtel. 

The NOMAD PRO joins the list of other Bridge Technologies network monitoring solutions recently deployed through Techtel in Australia including OTT and Multicast probes (VB220 and VB120) for monitoring. The variety of the supplied probes can enable users to closely monitor availability and quality of the services from the playout to head-end to transmission and then to broadcast and OTT, so nothing can be overlooked in the signal supply chain from the sources to the destinations.

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Bridge Technologies to Support Australian Nine’s Greenfield IP Site

The VB440 will enable production teams to continuously survey all layers of media transportation

Bridge Technologies, through Australian business partner Techtel, have now completed their integration of the VB440 IP Probe for Nine Network, an Australian free-to-air digital TV service provider. This integration forms a part of Nine’s wider site relocation, involving the creation of a brand new ‘creative campus’ with Internet Protocol technologies incorporated in its core.

A key element of Nine’s site development was the choice to change the data backbone of the studio from an SDI-based environment to a fully SMPTE IP-based infrastructure. This will see Nine working on an uncompressed SMPTE 2110 workflow basis, working with on-air graphics, newsroom systems, post-production, network and infrastructure, and live studio elements.

“Our new offices represent an opportunity to not only bring together our post-merger Willoughby site with our Fairfax site in a more collaborative manner, but also to create an office and studio which are future-proofed for the next 50 years. Key to this future proofing was making a move from SDI to IP. It became readily apparent that IP would render increased efficiency and decreased costs, not to mention the fact that it hugely improves our ability to engage in off-site and live collaborations,” said David Bowers, Chief Technology Officer at Nine Network Australia.

Bowers continued: “It appeared clear to us that whilst SDI is declining in relevance in production environments, support in the field of IP is only going to grow. Bridge Technologies represents one such vital element of support; and the integration of VB440 monitoring solutions into the wider installation gives us an unparalleled ability to understand – and therefore control – our production environment.”

The VB440 provides video, audio and metadata monitoring and analysis on an uncompressed ST2110 basis, and also includes monitoring of ST2022-7 redundancy scheme; an element that is of particular benefit in relation to the back-up needs of the network during day-to-day operation or service migrations. The VB440 represents an analytics solution that can encompass numerous streams and multiple technologies in real time and in parallel. Covering source monitoring, stream analysis, packet behavior, and IAT test performance, the VB440 enables production teams to continuously survey all layers of media transportation on an IP network and facilitates quick rectification of potential problems – including the impact of packet loss and jitter on the production environment and ultimate Quality of Service (QoS).

Payam Safa, Solutions Architect at Techtel – who helped to manage the purchase and installation of the Bridge Technologies system – explained the dual importance of VB440 integration.

“Not only will the VB440 provide Nine with an ongoing ability to monitor their IP-based production network over the upcoming years, but during the transition from SDI to IP it will be a key tool in managing an effective and efficient change and transition process.”

Simen Frostad, Chairman of Bridge Technologies, echoed the enthusiasm of both vendor and client in relation to the project. “Nine have built a truly impressive studio, and have been forward-thinking in their approach to network technologies. Building a greenfield site such as this represents a particular opportunity to think about network analytics right from the beginning, and build monitoring elements right into the overall solution, rather than tagging them on at the end.”

Frostad concluded: “This is a key idea that Bridge has been a proponent of for more than a decade, and we are pleased to see that a network as important as Nine echoes our views on this. We hope that they will provide an inspirational example to other production companies who may soon be faced with the unique opportunity that comes with a move from SDI to IP of redesigning their systems from the ground up, and building in monitoring and support systems from the get-go.”

About Nine Network

The Nine Network (commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network.

Nine’s strategy is to create great content, distribute it broadly and engage audiences and advertisers. We are Australia’s largest locally owned media company – the home of Australia’s most trusted and loved brands spanning News, Sport, Lifestyle, and Entertainment, we pride ourselves on creating the best content, accessed by consumers when and how they want. Nine’s assets include the Nine Network, major mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Australian Financial Review, radio stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR, digital properties such as nine.com.au, 9Now, 9Honey, Pedestrian.TV, subscription video platform Stan and a majority investments in Domain Group and CarAdvice.

Find more info here: https://www.nine.com.au/

About Bridge Technologies

Bridge Technologies creates advanced solutions for protecting service quality in the digital media and telecommunications industries. The company’s award-winning monitoring/analysis systems, intelligent switchers and virtual environments help deliver over 20,000 channels to more than 900 million subscribers in 94 countries. From head-end satellite ingress to microanalytics in the home network, Bridge Technologies offers patented innovation and true end-to-end transparency. A privately held company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Bridge Technologies has worldwide sales and marketing operations through a global business partner network.

Learn more – www.bridgetech.tv

Press Contact:

Fiorenza Mella

XPresso Communications

Tel: +31 71 523 82 10

Email: fiorenza@xpressocommunications.com

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Sky New Zealand adds Content Capacity with Techtel and Net Insight

Auckland, New Zealand, 11 August 2020 – Techtel, New Zealand’s leading broadcast systems specialist has successfully deployed the Emmy® Award-winning Nimbra 400 internet media transport solution by Net Insight for Sky New Zealand – the country’s premium Pay TV Entertainment provider. This comes as Sky is expanding their subscriber offering with more local and international services.

Designed specifically in response to the increasing demand for live media internet transport for premium applications, Nimbra 400 is often referred to the Swiss knife of the Nimbra family. Its design is light and agile, and its functionalities make it the perfect solution for Tier 1 content and media companies looking to lower their costs and increase their reach. The platform does this by optimizing video streaming over constrained networks and maximizes the number of streams processed simultaneously. Nimbra 400 can produce high-quality video at low bitrates while utilizing less expensive IP infrastructure such as internet connectivity thus reducing networking costs.

Sky New Zealand’s subscriber base has an expanding appetite for more live sport and to make the business case work they turned their attention to platforms that can make it happen over the common internet. Nimbra 400 delivers in this respect through both reliability and seamless cross platform management with the broader Net Insight MSR series.

“The Nimbra 400 series has improved our capability to have an agnostic contribution and delivery solution of broadcast quality feeds – for both adhoc and permanent services. We deploy the Nimbra technology for HD feed deliveries from both domestic and international broadcasters. On our internal infrastructure, the units are used as normal multicast and unicast decoders. Multiple SDI ports on a single box gives us flexibility on routing concurrent feeds,” said Ronaldo Raborar, Technical Coordinator at Sky New Zealand.

“With internet transport expanding further into premium live media workflows, the Nimbra 400 platform enables service providers with premium content like Sky New Zealand, to reach new locations faster and more cost-efficiently than ever before”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “We are proud to supply Sky New Zealand with the leading internet media transport solution from Net Insight and look forward to more exciting services from them”.

Sky New Zealand decision builds on Techtel’s established country-wide network of Nimbra nodes, serving the majority of New Zealand broadcasters and providing resilient HD video transport at the highest possible quality, lowest delay and with high availability.

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.tv.

About Net Insight

Net Insight is a global leader in media networks and resource optimization. With more than 20 years’ experience, Net Insight is a reliable key partner to its customers, but also a leader in the industry’s transition towards a continuously improved media experience. With its deep market knowledge and insight, genuine customer focus and world-leading innovative technology, Net Insight makes it easier and more cost-efficient to create and deliver better content. Net Insight acquired Aperi’s product portfolio in 2020. For more information, visit https://netinsight.net/

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Techtel Deploys Cambria FTC™ by Capella Systems for Adstream

Sydney, 19 June 2020 - Techtel has recently deployed Capella Systems, Cambria FTC™ – a scalable transcoding software for professional video distribution for Adstream – Australia’s leading provider of software and digital service solutions to the advertising industry. This comes as the company replaces their legacy software with the more intelligent transcoding solution from Capella which would support a wider range of formats and offer the latest workflow features.

In response to Adstream’s requirements, Techtel chose Cambria FTC™ which imports and exports widely used professional digital video formats, including H.264, MPEG-2, DNxHD, HEVC and many others. The Cambria solution is widely known in the video industry for its exceptional video quality and superior transcoding speed achieved through its internal architecture features including the highest-quality motion compensated frame rate converter; Lossless video and audio pass-through; Superior motion adaptive deinterlacer, smart frame rate converter and video resolution scaler. The result is a flexible, cost-effective, cloud-based transcoding solution for all professional video distribution services.

“We’ve found Cambria FTC to be a highly versatile and flexible transcoding solution that we’ve been able to employ in a number of bespoke or custom workflows. The interface is both easy to navigate and configure with consistent performance and efficient results”, said Simon Martin, Connectivity Manager, Australasia at Adstream.

“We proposed Cambria FTC for their unique capability of VM deployment, RESTful API and their wide range of out-of-the-box features and compatible codecs required by Adstream”, said Mal Chandler, Techtel CEO. “Adstream are pioneers in their adoption of Cambria which is a cloud friendly software solution and we look forward to seeing them exploit the flexibility this offers as they scale it up”, Mal added.

About Adstream

Adstream is the first Connectivity Suite for the ad industry, combining collaboration tools, digital asset management, a global distribution network and powerful analytics to provide smarter, more collaborative advertising workflows.

Brands, agencies, production and post-production teams use Adstream to create great content together, and leverage its world-class network of over 79,000 media destinations in 141 countries, to share their message with the world.

Today over 100,000 businesses use Adstream to reach billions of customers globally. We're a fast-moving team of passionate subject-matter experts located across 37 offices, speaking 45 languages, and on a mission to connect the world's media.

For more information, visit https://www.adstream.com/

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Techtel raises the bat for an Egatel half-century

(Sydney, Australia, 22nd April 2020) Techtel announces that a great milestone of 50 Egatel™ Broadcast Television transmitters have been shipped to the Australia Pacific region since our partnership began some ten years ago.

Egatel, a Spanish manufacturer of Television Transmitters are part of the COMSA Corporation who are the second largest privately held industrial group in Spain with revenues of more than 1.3 Billion Euro and over 8000 employees.  When Techtel first introduced them to our region they had already enjoyed success throughout Europe and Latin America.  Australia/NZ and SE Asia represented a new challenge for them and together with Techtel we are now seeing the critical mass that is the reward for their product’s brilliant performance and reliability.

The latest order that pushed us past the half century came from a very familiar requirement where Egatel has always performed exceedingly well.  The site, Tindal RAAF base in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, needed a solution that would be rock solid reliable avoiding the need for expensive maintenance visits.  These remote Australian locations are harsh, where often temperatures soar and seasons can swing from being very wet and humid to extremely hot and dry.

Hot has been the story of their regional success so far where they first shipped a multi-channel solution to power the shire of Dandaragan on WA’s Turquoise coast.  At that location Egatel supplied two separate transmission sites that cover tens of thousands of residents with a simple and reliable means to watch their free to air television.

It doesn’t get more remote than an oil platform 500km offshore from Darwin and that is also another part of the Egatel regional story.  A large multinational energy company needed to provide their workers with access to Digital Television; Satellite had one vessel covered but another nearby needed a DVB-T solution and again Egatel provided a rock-solid system for a location where simply visiting costs tens of thousands, not to mention the mandatory helicopter evacuation course.

Digicel in Port Moresby needed a high-power redundant system to add a further 30 channels to their subscription television service and here Egatel provided a 2+1, 600 watt solution atop Burns Peak.  As with every site delivered so far, the engineers at Techtel and Egatel designed and implemented the RF combining system that serviced not just our own Transmitters but any legacy platforms that were still in place which is always a delicate exercise to say the least.

The nation of Samoa turned to Techtel and Egatel to convert their nation over to Digital Television where the entire country is based on an efficient DVB-T2 network of 19 new transmission sites; bringing television to areas that previously had nothing.  This major project required meticulous planning by Techtel’s engineers to ensure that the network of transmitters would survive the variations in power stability and climate. 

The local broadcast transmission market has been intensely competitive over the past ten years and we think it’s a fair thing to say that few have survived and only the best have thrived”, said Mal Chandler CEO Techtel.  “Egatel has done what many other manufacturers could not because their product has performed brilliantly on every occasion where we’ve used them.  There is a bright future for this product in our region and we look forward to seeing them being used in our regions high power sites just as they are already.”

Egatel CEO Francisco Javier Valdés added, “We are a company that believes in good service and good quality first, and because of our high standards we do not win every deal. We are successful because we are working towards longer term goals to be the product that everyone is proud to own and they know our reliability gives them one less thing to worry about.  Together with Techtel we are very proud to have provided 50 transmitters as a team and we look forward to announcing 100 transmitters in the future!”

About Techtel

Techtel is a leading independent broadcast technology systems specialist, providing dedicated hardware and software to the Asia Pacific broadcast and telecommunications industries. Techtel’s expertise extends from consulting and systems integration through to the supply, installation and support of solutions from an elite class of worldwide partners. The Techtel Group has regional offices in Sydney and Singapore with branches in Auckland and Melbourne. Visit www.techtel.com.au

About Egatel

Egatel is a highly specialized and skilled company involved with the development and manufacturing of Digital and RF products devoted to Terrestrial Broadcasting.

The company supplies solutions for Radio and TV Broadcasting that meet the professional market needs globally. The portfolio of products and services includes transmitters, re-transmitters and gap fillers, as well as engineering works combined with turnkey projects and the supply of ancillary equipment, when required.  Headquartered in Spain the company is a subsidiary of the COMSA Corporation. Visit www.egatel.es