Vietnam satellite TV

Vietnam Satellite Television Launches HD Channels with Grass Valley Production and Editing Infrastructure

Las Vegas (National Association of Broadcasters Convention – Booth# SL106) April 9, 2011 — The first high-definition television channels in Vietnam will rely on a production and post-production workflow from Grass Valley™, based on the company's servers and editing system solutions. The MXF-based system uses Grass Valley K2 Summit™ and K2 Solo™ media servers with EDIUS® editing workstations integrated with HD Vietnam's (the region's Grass Valley-qualified local systems integrator) traffic and automation software.

Vietnam Satellite Television (VSTV), operating under the commercial brand of K+, is a joint venture between Vietnam Cable Television and Canal+ Group. The direct-to-home broadcaster went on air at the beginning of 2010 with 72 SD channels and eight HD channels. It has now added more locally originated channels to its line-up, including two K+ HD services (ie K+1 and K+NS).

To support them, Grass Valley has supplied a server system with six K2 Solo MPEG clients, and two four-channel K2 Summit clients. Editing is provided by five EDIUS STORM 3G workstations on a SAN network with 48 TB of storage. The SAN operates in conjunction with a 96 TB NAS handling the storage needs of all channels.

An important requirement of VSTV is that all content—standard- and high-definition—must be ingested, stored, manipulated, and played out in a common MPEG-2 format with no transcoding, which the Grass Valley solution is uniquely capable of delivering. The server network is fully integrated with HD Vietnam's traffic system, which manages the 10 automated ingest channels and provides capture, MXF file wrapping and transfer, as well as low-res facilities for graphics, subtitles, and voiceovers. The open architecture of the K2 server system allows for rapid development of customized functionality such as this, including setting all user interfaces to the Vietnamese language.

"Grass Valley was able to give us a single solution from ingest through post-production to playout in HD without transcoding, which no one else could offer, " said Manuel Rougeron, Executive Director for VSTV. "We are determined to become the market leader, and high-definition channels are central to our strategy, so this is a really important development for us. Grass Valley delivered just what we needed in a very short time."

"This is another really interesting demonstration of the flexibility of our K2 server solution, and a great project to be involved in, " said Jeff Rosica, Executive Vice President of Grass Valley. "What we have delivered to VSTV is a large central storage SAN with attached production clients, using MXF for file exchange and a common compression format provides a largely automated workflow. That gives VSTV huge power for editing and post-production, while being extremely efficient in the use of resources."

The first two HD channels and two SD channels which use the new server network went on air in October 2010, with the remaining HD and SD channels following in January 2011. HD Vietnam is the Grass Valley authorized system integrator handling completion of the contract. The contract included system design and development of the interface to the existing station traffic and automation systems. The contract also included commissioning and on-site training for users and engineers, in cooperation with HD Vietnam.

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Established in May 2009, Vietnam Satellite Digital Television (VSTV) is a joint venture between two major partners in the field of television i.e. VTV, the national broadcaster, and CANAL +. K + is the commercial brand of VSTV – a satellite digital television operator in Vietnam.
"K+ presently provides four service packages Access, Family, Premium and Premium HD with respectively 33 SD channels, 58 SD channels, 72 SD channels and 72 SD channels plus 8 HD channels,
satisfying all entertainment demands of TV viewers from the younger to older. . Most of K+ foreign channels have been in process of localization in order for Vietnamese viewers to fully experience the channels' content.

For more information, please visit www.kplus.vn

With a rich history serving the broadcast and professional video industries, the Grass Valley name is synonymous with innovation, leadership, and performance. With a full range of products and services supporting many of the world's most high-profile television events, Grass Valley offers the most comprehensive portfolio of flexible and cost-effective digital technologies and systems available. Customers deploying Grass Valley solutions include most of the world's leading broadcast and teleproduction facilities, independent video professionals, as well as emerging content creators and distributors providing broadband, telecommunications, and transmission services. When you're watching news, sports, or entertainment programming, whether on a TV, the Web, or a mobile phone, you're watching Grass Valley at work.