Turkey's Turkuvaz Media Group Upgrades Facilities to IP With Lawo
Turkuvaz Media Group, a major Turkish media company with TV, radio, newspaper and magazine assets, has commissioned a newly-updated media center facility in Istanbul with Lawo as a premiere technology supplier. System integration services for this key broadcast installation are supplied by Lawo’s partner in Turkey, Radikal Elektronik.
The Turkuvaz Media Center is Turkeys biggest media campus, comprising a Plaza, a TV block and a Printing block, an area of 50.000 square meters that hosts 160.000 square meters of production space. The company operates nine TV channels and four radio channels, with 12 12-meter-tall studios measuring from 200 m² to 1500 m², and five 6-meter-tall studios between 100² to 350 m² in the TV complex. The TV buildings also contain ten studio control rooms, six producing in 4K and four in HD.
Turkuvaz’ IP infrastructure includes several networked Lawo mc² mixing consoles and crystal radio consoles linked with a sophisticated central routing system, as well as a V__matrix video processing system equipped with Lawo C100 software-defined processing blades. In addition to renovating the broadcast studios, a new OB van equipped with Lawo IP networking was rolled out in November 2020, with the overall project completed in December.
The newly-modernized studio control rooms are customized for their individual tasks: news, 4k-video post-production, HD sports programming, and a shared HD SCR, integrated by an IP infrastructure built upon Lawo systems. This major renovation allows for efficient, flexible IP workflows, including remote production capabilities for future-proof operation utilizing the highest quality standards.
“Before we even started planning our new facilities, our project team analyzed the market situation to find a coherent future-proof solution for an IP infrastructure,” states Yavuz Nart, General Technical Manager at Turkuvaz. “With Lawo, we found a company with of the latest IP broadcast technology under one roof. Lawo IP technology has been long established in the market, and they are known a technology leader with high quality products and an extraordinarily high expertise in broadcast. And who better to install this new system than Radikal, who have been a trusted audio partner for many years.”
Lawo equipment installed during the upgrade includes eight new 48-position mc²56 mixing consoles fitted with the unique Dual-Fader option to provide 80 total faders, giving Turkuvaz operators direct surface access to large numbers of audio channels. Audio connectivity comes by way of DALLIS stageboxes; a central routing matrix with 8,192 x 8,192 mono crosspoints was built using a Nova73 HD Router.
“As an audio engineer and systems designer in broadcast, you must of course have faith in the quality of the products you offer to your customer,” says Seha Akbaş, Systems Engineer at Radikal. “With Lawo, we are working with a manufacturer that delivers the very highest quality standards, paired with innovative solutions and fast, expert support. We are very happy to be involved in what has turned out to be one of the biggest projects in Radikal’s history, providing Turkuvaz the best broadcast solutions available on the market, with the most modern IP infrastructure found anywhere in Turkey today.”
In addition to an mc²36 console providing “all-in-one” functionality, the audio setup includes six radio studios with Lawo crystal mixing consoles and companion Compact Engines. The media center’s video and audio processing is handled with eight V__pro8 video processing units and Lawo’s V__matrix software-defined IP Core Routing, Processing & Multi-Viewing platform, fitted with two C100 processing blades to perform SDI IP encapsulation and de-encapsulation. The networking fabric of the new Turkuvaz facilities connects the DALLIS units to the Nova73 central router via MADI, with RAVENNA linking router and console cores. AES67 / ST2110 networking with video devices between console cores and router are also implemented.
“We are very impressed with our new IP infrastructure,” says Mustafa Yavuz, Assistant Technical Manager of Turkuvaz. “It enables us to apply radical new workflows inside the studios, as well as the capability for remote production. Desire for this new option had already been on the rise, but with the pandemic affecting operations, remote production has proven to be the best solution for maintaining up-to-date and reliable broadcast production. Radikal and Lawo have always listened to us, presenting and installing optimal solutions to achieve our goals. We can now proudly look at our new facilities as one of the most modern broadcast centers to date!”