Neptun TV Romania builds for HD future with Playbox Technology

Romanian broadcaster Neptun TV has completed a large system expansion involving Playbox Technology. Executive manager Dan Dumitro said “PlayBox Technology has worked with us as a partner for many years and was there at every important step we made in developing our production and playout infrastructure. In our first few years of operation we expanded our resources and our reach, opening a new studio in Bucharest and sourcing content from reporters in every major city in the country.

“This latest upgrade will enable us to offer high definition content delivery as part of our strategy of delivering the best possible content to maximise viewer’s attention. Many Romanian households now possess full 1080-line television receivers and can appreciate the high image detail HD offers compared with 625-line standard definition.

“This year we have made a new agreement with Playbox in changing all our playout and graphics machines to the latest versions. These give us greater efficiency, more storage capacity and very high reliability, enabling our production and presentation staff to work faster and with very high confidence.”

The PlayBox installation includes five AirBox servers, two TitleBox servers, a 32 terabyte network-attached storage server plus minor third-party hardware such as file format converters and a Panasonic vision mixer. These have been integrated, with n+1 redundancy, into Neptun TV’s Constanţa headquarters and the Bucharest studio.

Located at the Black Sea coastal city of Constanţa, Neptun TV produces a wide range of programmes based around news, sports and entertainment. These are transmitted via Romania’s terrestrial network, direct-to-home satellite, on cable and as a live internet stream. Neptun TV commenced terrestrial transmissions in 1995, augmented by direct-to-home satellite transmissions on AMOS 2 in 2007. Online internet streaming began in 2008. The channel is received by 80% of Romanian households, including subscribers to RCS-RDS, UPC Romania, Next Gen, DCS and Dolce IPTV wired services.