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May 2008 RTE Publishing Expands Television News to Mobile With StreamZ
www.rte.ie
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 RTÉ Publishing is responsible for the provision of high quality, innovative, multiple media products and services to a variety of Irish and international customers. Here, Emer Conlon works as IT Project Manager, responsible for new technology initiatives including mobile and interactive TV.
Emer was charged with creating a new system to deliver RTÉ Mobile, for which the Digital Rapids StreamZ encoder was chosen. Selected for its ability to support multiple encoding formats on one box, StreamZ had a dual role within the project: to capture news content from RTÉ1 using GPI signals, automatically copying it over for use in the Mobile TV news channel and to encode Mobile TV News Channel for two different Mobile operators simultaneously. StreamZ's abilities to capture content frame accurately and automate the copying were paramount in their choice, enabling RTÉ to launch a News Channel with no extra staff resource required.
In October 2007, the new Mobile TV project won the runner-up prize in the Telecommunications and Media category at the BT Inspired IT Awards. The mobile RTÉ Entertainment channel was launched in May 07, with the mobile RTÉ News channel available to the public from early October.
The Mobile TV Live and Looped News Channel plays out live news 3 or more times a day, then loops the previous news programme in the hours between live news bulletins. The channel is largely automated, requiring minimal schedule management by journalists. The system is run off GPI triggers, simple electronic pulses that are synchronised with the start and end of every news programme. These are set in the main RTÉ scheduling system and are frame accurate, a vital consideration when taking content from the main RTÉ channel output and repackaging it into a new channel.
Three servers are used to run the channel: one Digital Rapids StreamZ, used for capture, records the news content used for looping in between shows; Harris Channel One runs the News channel schedule and another Digital Rapids StreamZ encodes the final channel for Mobile operators.
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