Wohler, EITV Join Forces to Bring Closed Captioning to South America

Wohler Technologies announced a collaboration with Brazil’s EITV (Entertainment and Interactivity for Digital TV), a software development and engineering firm serving DTV operators. The two companies are providing a turnkey closed captioning solution to the South American market.

The joint solution — which will be on display in EITV’s booth, F2, at SET Broadcast & Cable 2011 in São Paulo — helps manage captioning data. In particular, it is the first solution to be made available that will enable broadcasters to satisfy the requirements of the newly enacted legislation for captioning in Brazil and South America, while addressing the unique challenges in providing ARIB-B37 captions to HD video both for distribution and broadcast.

“Through its worldwide experience, Wohler has developed in-depth knowledge of ancillary data management for different closed captioning standards and for various broadcast workflows,” said Rodrigo Araújo, sales director at EITV. “This partnership with Wohler enables us to take advantage of the company’s sophisticated hardware solutions to provide our customers with a complete and easy-to-use solution for streamlining handling of captioning data within the DTV delivery workflow.”

For this integrated captioning solution, designed specifically for Brazil and other South American markets, Wohler provides a hardware layer that performs decoding and encoding of CEA-608/708 and B37 closed captioning data to and from HD/SD-SDI video signals in broadcast facilities. EITV is providing the “glue” and services required to connect to captioning sources including automation systems, prepared-captions file servers, and live captioning systems and providers. This turnkey solution provides huge benefits by enabling quick and easy setup of a complete system that addresses all captioning requirements at once. This solution will also soon be available outside South America, adapted to the different standards all over the globe.

“EITV is a valuable partner in this collaboration not only because of its expertise in developing, testing, and implementing advanced solutions for DTV, but also because the company has an extensive understanding of the unique requirements and emerging standards for Brazil and more broadly for the entire South American video and captioning market,” said Renaud Desportes, product manager for Wohler’s HDCC closed captioning range. “We look forward to showcasing this turnkey solution at SET Broadcast & Cable 2011.”

SET Broadcast & Cable 2011 runs from Aug. 23-25 at the Imigrantes Exhibition Center in São Paulo.