Ensemble Avenue Route to Halk TV's Upgrades

Daily News Tuesday 14 September 2010
by Kate Large

When Ankara’s Halk TV decided to upgrade from analogue to digital, it turned to Ensemble Designs to provide the technology.

The upgrade was overseen by Idea Pro, with infrastructure covering a range of Ensemble Avenue products including: ADAs; VDAs; SDI VDAs; embedders; de-embedders; A/D and D/A converters; frame synchronisers; HD down-converters; SPGs and protection switches.

To ensure failsafe operation, the SDI video signal feeds to an Avenue 7455 failover switch. Should a master line fail, the 7455 switches to a backup feed, so Halk broadcasts seamlessly. The failover switch can check for parameters including freeze, audio, and black level. The master reference generator is an Ensemble 7400. Reference signals from this feed the video and audio devices, while a second 7400 card works with an Ensemble sync changeover, for a solid reference system.
Ensemble’s 5330 A/D converters handle analogue-to-SDI conversion, timebase-correcting when needed. For quick adjustments, operators use either Avenue PC software or an Avenue Touch Screen. Prior to encoding, the Avenue 5600 analogue-to-AES converter/audio embedder embeds audio into the SDI stream, then feeds to a Thompson encoder for uplink. A Scopus Metro ethernet encoder feeds the cable networks.

Two Ross Crossover vision mixers were selected, one for the production switcher and one for the MCR switcher. The monitor wall is an Apantac system, with Ensemble frame syncs to bring external feeds in-house. Because Halk needed monitoring, distribution and digital-to-analogue conversion for the main signal path and many router outputs, it chose the Avenue 5130 for signal processing.
Avenue is a modular, tray-based signal integration system in 1RU or 3RU frames. 3Gbps, 1.5Gbps, HD and SD video, analogue, DVB-ASI and audio modules can be used in the same frame, with networks tying Avenue frames together.

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