Croatia’s First HD Production Facility, Truck Equipped with Miranda Gear

Croatian satellite service provider, CROATEL, has completed the country’s first HD production facility and the first HD OB truck, using Miranda routers, signal management, multi-viewers and channel branding.

CROATEL OB2, a Mercedes Azor OB truck, is built around Miranda’s NVISION 5128 multi-format router. This router is configured with a 96 x 96 matrix, and it handles all of the vehicle’s HD inputs and outputs from 16 camera feeds, the video switcher, audio mixer, and slow motion replay sources. Signal processing and distribution within the truck are performed by more than 40 interface modules, housed in four Densité multi-format frames.

“As we’re driving Croatia’s transition to HD production and broadcasting, it’s crucial for us to work with manufacturers who have a proven experience with HD projects”, says Tonko Barac, Managing Director of CROATEL. “Miranda’s signal management and monitoring systems have made our multi-format operations almost effortless, both in our studio and OB environments”.

CROATEL’s new HD production facility, based in Zagreb, includes new HD studios and HD playout operations. The facility is playing out four HD Arena Sport channels, in both HD and SD, which are delivered by Croatian Telecom’s IPTV and DTH platforms.

The Arena Sport channels cover UEFA Champions League, Spanish Primera football league, Italian Serie A football, NFL, NHL, and CEV volleyball, as well as EHF handball championship, athletics, and boxing matches.

The Zagreb facility’s infrastructure is also based on a NVISION 5128 router, configured 64×64, plus a Densité signal processing system, which includes the XVP-1801 up/down/cross converters with AFD for automated aspect ratio control.

Other Miranda equipment installed includes the LGK-3901 modular channel branding system, which provides animated logos for all eight Arena Sports channels. There are also three Kaleido-X16 multi-viewers, which provide monitoring for 10 ingest channels, as well as for 26 satellite feeds from 14 decoders.

The new truck and facility projects were both completed in January 2011 by Miranda’s local distributor and systems integrator, Kapetanovic Systems.