SysMedia wins major German teletext contract

SysMedia has announced that German national broadcaster ARD, along with its regional counterpart for Berlin and Brandenburg, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), has ordered a Plasma Magenta teletext production and generation system.
The order also includes the supply of a WinCAPS subtitling system for both live and offline captioning.
The Plasma Magenta system is replacing an ageing system that has been operational for the last ten years.
Plasma Magenta, a multi-platform content production and management system, will initially be used to produce analogue teletext services for both the ARD national teletext service and the regional RBB transmission.
RBB's 'News Centre' system gathers and stores news feeds as well as associated content, from which ARD and RBB journalists will extract content and author their own stories into the new teletext production system. Plasma Magenta's user interface is designed for precisely this purpose, allowing non-technical personnel to easily 'drag and drop' content and rapidly publish new stories. In addition, automatic data feeds for such content as sports results, weather and travel information will be injected straight into the new system.
ARD and RBB are distributed via cable, satellite and terrestrially with ARD expected to carry around 4,000 pages of text and RBB approximately 800.
Matthias Nowak, the Project Manager at RBB responsible for the installation of the system, said: "We chose Plasma Magenta and WinCAPS from SysMedia after extensive evaluation. Our editors and technicians believe that because they are so well established their reliability has been proven and it also provides us with a clear route for future service development and expansion."
Colin Prior, Business Development Director at SysMedia, added: "We are delighted to have won this order from RBB and ARD after such a demanding and in-depth evaluation for both the teletext and subtitling requirements. We look forward to working closely with RBB and ARD as they re-launch their teletext services".
(GB)