Sapec Laguna Media Processor, key component in e-learning system in the Philippines

Sapec´s Laguna Media Processor (LMP) has been installed in the Philippines public DTT network to address the signal distribution from 6 different colleges.

This system, installed and commissioned by 90 Degrees North, will support the E-Learning system in the Philippines during and after the worldwide pandemic situation.

90 Degrees North, based in Manila, was responsible for the supply and integration of a Turnkey Radio and DTT System for distance learning purposes for the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC) and soon to be PSUB Polytechnic State University of Bicol.

Because of the crisis created by the COVID Pandemic, presential classes are no longer possible and accepted in the Philippines. This situation caused that most of the educational institutions have switched to online education using different media platforms.

In The Philippines there are areas with not so good access to the internet, where it makes it quite difficult to use streaming technology for e-learning. To address this public concern, some institutions have knock to the door to the conventional broadcast to use the DTT transmission to deliver lectures across difference colleges.

The interactive factor might not be exploited as on streaming, but this DTT system will guarantee coverage where internet cannot reach, cost efficient infrastructure (Free to air for the students), reliability of the signal and robustness in reception. Once more, the advantages and versatility of Broadcast will reach to the people where no other service was able to on these conditions.

The system will address the remote lectures of 6 colleges. Each of them with a dedicated DTT channel.
Sapec´s Laguna Media Processor was chosen to be the key element of this head end. Specifically, the Laguna Octal model, which allows to encode up to 8 channels in 1U and multiplex the output over IP/ASI. In this application, 6 channels (one for each college) where enabled and the signal was furtherly delivered to be remuxed and transmitted over ISDB-Tb.

Laguna Media Processor (LMP) is once more chosen for primary distribution due to its versatility in functionalities (encoding, multiplexing, multichannel…). This time on an ISDB-Tb headend. In this regard, it is also worth to mention that LAGUNA supports one-seg encoding.

The solution Laguna has been around for already quite some time achieving amazing references. And it is a solution that it is in constant development. Proof of that are the new functionalities added during this 2021: SRT, for public IP network secure transport; SMPTE 2022-7 in encoders and decoders: Allowing network redundancy; Up/Down Conversion, both in encoding and decoding; and conversion SCTE 104 <-> SCTE35 for local content insertion management.