Belgium’s Studiotech and MNC Software undertook digital terrestrial transformation across Chad’s DTT network - centralised control with 30 remote transmitter sites across the country.
Belgian systems integrator Studiotech is undertaking a major digital terrestrial transformation project across the African nation of Chad. The DTT network in Chad calls for a central control facility in the capital, N’Djamena, with 30 remote transmitter sites located around the country. This project, titled ONAMA, requires that all of the transmitter sites be controlled and monitored from the central facility with minimal operator interventions.
Because the customer’s network has specific requirements and constraints, Studiotech chose to work with MNC’s Mosaic control platform, due to its flexible architecture capable of supporting these demands. Individual Mosaic instances at each site maintain control, monitoring and logging even if there are network instabilities with the central facility.
“Mosaic has a proven track record with similar systems across remote and difficult to access sites, which gave us a great degree of confidence,” said Nicolas Tardieu, General Manager at Studiotech. “The system is also straightforward to implement and operate, which means we could install and integrate on site without needing to rely on the MNC Software team, although that support certainly was there should we need it.
“Combined with a flexible licensing scheme, which meant we could build the functionality we required cost-effectively, we could show a strong ROI to the end customer in Chad. It is clearly a strong solution for this challenging project.”
Mosaic interface.
For example, ten of the network’s remote sites have remux capabilities to localize services. Remuxing is similar to transcoding, but differs in that it takes video, audio and subtitle streams from one container format and places them into another without altering the content of the streams. As long as the target container supports the original stream codecs, the process is relatively quick, and maintains data quality and fidelity. It also maintains the original file sizes, which may or may not be desirable.
With an accessible user interface, full set of monitoring tools and ability to integrate with existing systems, Mosaic has been a good choice to meet the variable, evolving needs of the ONAMA project broadcasters. It is also scalable, architected to handle a range of challenges and deployable anywhere from an OEM set-up, up to geographically diverse systems, as in Chad. Thousands of devices can be supported on a single server representing hundreds of thousands of monitoring points.
Mosaic includes automation features, and built-in redundancy and fail-safe mechanisms. Darren Frearson, CEO of MNC Software, said, “This major ONAMA project strengthens still further MNC Software’s footprint in African broadcasting infrastructure. Mosaic’s flexibility makes it ideal for projects like these, where there are a lot of remote devices requiring complex monitoring and control, interconnectivity can be challenging, and skilled staff are in short supply.” mncsoftware.com
