Fox Turkey Goes Tapeless With Grass Valley

Fox TV Turkey, an affiliate of News Corporation Europe, will go on air with a multi-million euro tapeless news, production, and playout system implemented by Grass Valley. As well as providing systems integration for the new broadcast center in Istanbul, Grass Valley also supplied cameras, servers, and infrastructure products.

The contract includes the installation of Grass Valley LDK 400 cameras, a Kayak production switcher, K2 media clients, and a K2 SAN together with an Aurora news production system. The system infrastructure also includes a Grass Valley Concerto Series router and Maestro master control switcher, along with GeckoFlex modular products, Jupiter control and NetCentral facility monitoring.

The order from Huzur Radyo TV follows the implementation of file-based news systems at other News Corporation stations in Eastern Europe. Grass Valley systems engineers developed a carefully tailored turnkey solution from ingest to playout, which also included the integration of legacy equipment, as well as new products. The new installation allows Huzur to work faster and more efficiently than before, while providing a fast return on investment.

“We were drawn to Grass Valley as our systems integrators because we had seen what they had done for other Fox news channels in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Poland,” says Necip Kircin, Chief Technical Officer of Huzur Radyo TV. “Ultimately, the choice was ours, and Grass Valley offered the best proposal, meeting our operational needs and staying within our budget.”

“Our customers today turn to us not just for individual products but for complete, working solutions,” adds Jeff Rosica, SVP of Grass Valley. “We have worked closely with Huzur Radyo TV to clearly identify their operational requirements, developing an end-to-end solution that applies the most appropriate technology at every stage, whether from Grass Valley or from other suppliers. It is a seamlessly integrated solution, which is the important factor for any broadcaster looking for maximum efficiency in operation.”

Also supplied by Grass Valley as part of the complete turnkey solution were an automation system from Harris and an archive system from Front Porch Digital. SSL audio mixing consoles and editing from Apple and Avid were provided by Huzur Radyo TV for integration. The architecture ensures seamless automatic file transfer between the production and post production system and the Grass Valley K2 playout clients.

The system at Huzur Radyo TV will go into full-time service in time for the local elections in Istanbul on March 29, 2009. Live election coverage will come from the new studios in Istanbul, providing a feed to existing news operation across the city.