Grass Valley K2 Summit Servers Central to New Delhi Television’s Migration to HD File-Based Workflows

New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV), an Indian news network, has converted its entire master control and content distribution infrastructure to full high-definition (HD) operations with the purchase of the latest K2 Summit Transmission Server technology from Grass Valley.

The new Grass Valley equipment is now fully operational and working in tandem with an OmniBus automation system to help NDTV streamline its current network of channels and cost-effectively launch new channels while meeting the increasing demand for HD content throughout the country

The challenging project includes a new series of transmission servers that allows NDTV to quickly improve and expand its business, while being fully compatible with the broadcaster’s legacy systems (Grass Valley Profile standard-definition severs), as well as an existing content archive.

The migration to HD file-based workflows was seen by NDTV as an investment to support HD transition in the near future. Offering a comprehensive solution, Grass Valley Summit Transmission Servers—each of the six servers with 16 TB of storage—have facilitated next-generation, integrated file-based workflows to support the playout and production of NDTV’s three nationwide news channels.

“We recognised that in order to stay one step ahead of the competition and to keep our business moving forward, we had to make the move to HD,” said Dinesh Singh, Chief Technology Officer for NDTV. “We have had a great working relationship with Grass Valley over the years—in terms of system reliability and customer support—and its server technologies are the best in the industry. The one hurdle was transferring all of our exiting content to the new servers, and Grass Valley made that process easy as well. When the time came to make our move to HD, Grass Valley was our first choice.”

“The on-air reliability of our K2 Summit Transmission Servers will support NDTV in maintaining their status as India’s top news network,” said Andrew Sedek, Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific for Grass Valley. “The success we’ve had deploying a file-based production environment and transferring content to the new servers at NDTV is a good example of what Grass Valley can accomplish on the local level, and we believe it will continue to lead to new business throughout the region.”

NDTV has now replaced all of its existing Grass Valley Profile SD servers with K2 Summit Transmission Servers and the network is fully operational with plans to expand in the near future.