TSL Awarded Major HDTV Facility Contract In Kuwait City

TSL has announced that it has been awarded a major contract to build a complete HDTV facility from the ground up for a new Kuwait City based broadcaster.
The new station is owned by Dar Al-Watan, a well respected Middle Eastern publishing house that distributes one of Kuwait’s leading national newspapers and a number of major regional publications.
TSL has been contracted to design, supply and integrate a complete HDTV facility on behalf of Dar Al-Watan, which will be split between two sites. The main site will house the largest TV studio in the Middle-East, and a second smaller space, which will contain the HD studios, MCR and two channels of HD Playout. The second site will house a further three HD studios with edit suites. Both sites will produce a variety of HD programmes that will be distributed to homes in the region via satellite.
TSL is working on a number of international HD projects including Red Bee Media, Pacific Quay for BBC Scotland and Pro TV in Romania. For Dar Al-Watan Pebble Beach Neptune automation has been selected for the main site, which will form the heart of the MCR.
Neptune will manage playout of both channels and the design of the new HD playout suite also comprises a Leitch IconMaster modular master control and branding system and a Miranda Kaleido Alto multi-image display processor for monitoring. The playout server will be based around the latest Omneon Spectrum server.
The production side will be based on Apple’s Xserve RAID and Final Cut Pro will take centre stage in the new network’s edit suites. Management of the studio recording and play-in will be by Gallery Software based around its Virtual VTR package.
Russell Grute, TSL’s Head of Sales, commented: “We are delighted to announce this new relationship at IBC, which after 20 years in the business is our first contract in Kuwait. This system has been designed with a very straight-forward tapeless workflow that allows Dar Al-Watan to get up and running in HD very quickly.
(SP)