Evertz Mediator playout system arrives at the technology center of Russian TV Channel One

Channel One, one of Russia’s leading broadcasters, has integrated the Evertz Mediator playout and content distribution system at its Ostankino technology center in Moscow.

Over the past four years, Channel One’s facilities have begun a process of transition to IP using Evertz SDVN solutions. The latest step in this direction has been the integration of Evert Mediator, which is already used to broadcast 12 news, sports and entertainment channels to more than 250 million viewers.

Beyond the goal of further transforming its equipment to integrate with its growing IP infrastructure, Channel One found it necessary to move to Mediator for a number of reasons. These included the doubling of the number of channels broadcast, from six to twelve; the desire to move to channel-in-a-box technology for on-air programs; the need to improve compatibility with the output format requirements of satellite and cable providers; and the willingness to improve the integration of its playout system with its business applications and take full advantage of its graphics capabilities.

29 playout engines

Systems integrator OKNO-TV and its service company Telerent worked with Evertz to bring this project to fruition, which makes Channel One the first Russian broadcaster to adopt the SMPTE ST2110 standard.

The Evertz Mediator system installed at Ostankino includes 29 Overture (ORT) Live integrated playout engines; 14 ORT Media Client recording servers; two Render-X proxy generator servers; an advanced multi-node virtualization environment housing the Mediator core and compute nodes; 15 VUE Cube workstations; and two Isilon storage clusters (main and backup), each with nine nodes. For the IP infrastructure, OKNO-TV installed two Evertz EXE routers (main and backup) with Magnum SDVN and Client Host servers. An EQX router with Magnum was also installed for ingest.

Other components include monitoring tools such as VistaLINK PRO with graphics for the network management system (NMS) ainSITE nd for real-time data analysis; four TR4800E tally routers; two 5700MSC-IP Grand Master Clock and Video Master Clock synchronization systems accompanied by the 5601AC02 Automatic Changeover, and a series of racks with modular products incorporating converters, amplifiers and infrastructure equipment.