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Project: TV NETWORK

Participants-applicants / Background information on the TV stations: 

• TV ERA – Skopje

• TV TERA – Bitola

• TV ART – Tetovo

• TV ZDRAVKIN – Veles

• TV Vis - Strumica (to be included in the sooner future)

• PROBLEMS AND NEEDS

Since the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, four types of media were differentiated:

1. Public broadcasters - broadcasting program on a national and local level. These broadcasters are under the strong control of the governmental bodies (Government and Parliament) that appoint editorial and managerial staff.

2. Private media without a license that broadcast pirated programs and, as a result, disturb the market with their marketing activities.

3. Private media that have acquired a license but do not comply with the existing legislation. These media, from a program point of view, are usually music and film stations. Because of that, their costs are small, thus they use dumping marketing strategies.

4. Private media that have invested in equipment, premises, human resources and the training of staff, as well as in-house production (news, current affairs, documentaries etc.). In this group of media (to which the proposers of this project belong) have the greatest costs because of which they cannot compete with the other low-cost groups. That is the reason why these TV stations have exhausted themselves financially in their struggle to survive on the market. As a consequence, one of the partners has already become bankrupt.

However, despite the unfair conditions on the market, the intentions of these TV stations are to keep investing in news and current affairs programming and continue to be strong competitors of the public and national network.

Due to the fact that these 4 TV stations cannot afford to link to a specific network and exchange articles, pictures, programs and projects (the Law provides for only two national private networks), an ideal way to enable the exchange of news, stories and video reports on immediate and interesting events is through telecommunication connection of the 4 TV stations. This will give them an opportunity to compete with the national networks with their news and current affairs programs from all over the country. The advantages will be coverage of national news with footage and not just bare information read by the reporter (as is the case at the moment). With such coverage, the 4 TV stations will be highly competitive on the field of news and current affairs.

• PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Telecommunication linkage for broadcasting audio and video reports related to immediate events nationwide. These TV stations cover a large percentage of the strategically important regions in the country:

• TV ERA - located in the capital city Skopje. TV ERA covers the place where the most important events of the social and political life in the country, both nationally and internationally, take place.

• TV TERA - covering the southwestern region, located in the second largest city in Macedonia, and second important place for social and political events. Geographically, it is situated only 16km from Greece, to the South, and 50km from Albania, to the West.

• TV ART - covering the northwestern region of Macedonia, with viewers of different ethnic background (Albanians, Macedonians, Romas, Turks), and also the seat of the two biggest political parties of the Albanians in Macedonia.

• TV ZDRAVKIN – located in the central region with the polluting industry and the target of political parties due to the fact that Veles, according to statistical data, is the most polluted town in Europe.

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

DISCUSSION OF THE TECHNICAL TASK OF THE PROJECT

The wired transfer of the video signal at a broadcast level in real time is a great demand even in these days of the communication technology. The broadcasters can use fiber optic links (leased lines) for transmission between the studio and the transmitter (standard STL transmission) which is not applicable for this application. The main reasons are:

1. The distance of the distributed local TV stations,

2. No possibility for “on demand” calls (fiber optic lines are currently not switched);

3. The high costs of the “star” network topology with leased fiber optic lines (of both the lines and the necessary equipment)

The best solution should be based on packet switched wideband networks. These networks can offer the features like “broadcast” which is very useful for this application. The network can “broadcast” the packages of the video files in the same time from one site to different distributed users. Unfortunately, those networks are not available in Macedonia as wide band. The maximum throughput of the current packet switched network “MAKPAK” is 512 KBPS in Skopje and 256 KBPS outside Skopje. These speeds are far from the speeds needed for video transfer.

The only solution can be the ISDN-switched network with Primary Access, which is currently available from the Macedonian Telecomm. The transfer rate is 2 MBPS, which could be used for file transfer of short video files.

The solution that is given in this project is based on the ISDN primary access connections.

TECHNICAL SOLUTION

As was noted above, the only currently possible cost effective solution for the file transfer of the short video files is the switched ISDN network with Primary Access, which is offering the speeds up to 2 MBPS. This speed was accepted from the investor as suitable for this application.

The complete system is divided in two parts. One part of the system is based at the site of the local TV stations and the other part is communication environment (ISDN network with PRI access).

All the local TV stations are preparing and broadcasting some news for their local audience. Sometimes there is some news that is interesting for the other local TV stations. Instead of traveling long distances to be on the site, this solution will allow some short video files to be transferred with the system to all interested TV stations.

VIDEO FORMAT

The transmission of the video files over the network of distributed users needs some standards to be accepted from all the users. It is not possible to reuse the transferred video files with different compression, different encoders, etc. It is necessary for all the stations to prepare the material for transmission on the same standard, format and compression.

The designer of this documentation is suggesting the DV (digital video) standard to be accepted from all of the distributed sites. The designer is expecting this format to be the new digital standard for TV broadcasters in Macedonia.

This standard is described with:
Data rate 25Mb/s
Data rate 3.13 MB/s
Compression rate 1:5
Sampling rate 4:2:0 (PAL) and 4:1:1 (NTSC)
File size (MB/min) 188

The main advantages of the DV format are:

1. All of the manufacturers (Panasonic, JVC, SONY, Canon,…) brought this standard together as the future standard for consumer video. All of the mentioned companies currently are supporting this format.

2. The quality of this standard is very good and can be compared with the analogue broadcast standard Betacam SP.

3. This format is well accepted among the broadcasters. Some manufacturers of the broadcast equipment developed some versions of this format (DVCPRO – Panasonic and DVCAM – Sony) with the same quality for the broadcast applications;

4. There is a large professional product list that is currently on the market supporting this format

5. As was already mentioned, this format was intended for the consumer market. Hence, there is a large support for the videotapes at a fraction of the price of the former and current broadcast formats, from every tape manufacturer. (E.g. Betacam SP, Digital S, Digital Betacam, DVCPRO50…).

DV ENCODERS

DV encoder is the necessary part of this system. Its task is to encode the video material into DV format (file) which is intended for transmission over the network. Some of the stations are still using the linear editing as default editing stations, some of them are using non-linear editing.

The material that is intended for transmission over the network may be in different formats (analogue and digital). The DV encoder board must be able to accept both digital and analogue signals. The system could not accept DV encoder that has only DV (Digital Video) input (IEE1394 or “firewire” interface).

If the DV encoder accepts both analog and digital video sources, than the system will run both in the DV digital environment and in analogue environment. The stations that are using both analog and DV digital format will have to encode their video information with the PC based encoder which will be unique for all the network users.

The investor has two possibilities:

Professional DV encoder/decoder board with composite, Y/C and component inputs and output and “firewire” which will cost about 7.000, US$ per site. (Matrox Digisuite DTV with firewire option) or

Boards that are not in the professional class but can accept Composite, Y/C and “firewire” video inputs and outputs with dual stream real-time editing and encoding/decoding capabilities, with estimated costs of about 1.500, US$ per site. (Matrox RT2000).

ROUTER

In order to do the file transfer, there is a need of proper communication equipment. As was noted in the previous sections, the communication has to be done over the 2Mbps channel, which is only possible via the Primary access ISDN network.

The communication will be “on the demand” over the circuit-switched ISDN network. A dialing number will be allocated to every site.

These requirements will be solved with proper communication equipment. There is a need of a router equipped with a port for Primary access ISDN network. Current communication solutions for this purpose will cost about 4,500 – 5,000 US$ per site.

The Router will be connected to the PC equipped with the DV encoder/decoder card.

• APPROACH

Installation of strong and powerful telephone lines in each of the projected TV stations with sophisticated computer technology for transmission of video and audio material with speed of 2 mega bits in a second.

Exchange of information can happen every day, with a compulsory minimum of 3 articles from Skopje (great concentration of important daily events) and minimum of 1 article from the other regions daily. The few-minute footage will contain site video coverage, statements, surveys (if required), archive footage and complete interviews with source audio, while the text will be in the form of a script sent via e-mail. This option seems to be the best because it enables all TV stations to create their articles in accordance with their own policy, but, at the same time, there is a possibility to avoid pretentious details in specific articles on the part of any TV station.

The details and ways of cooperation of the TV stations will be defined within a Protocol endorsed by all entities and, of course, all subjects will have separate contractual obligations towards IMF.

TV ERA is overburdened due to the fact that it is located in Skopje. Therefore, a separate reporter-cameraman will be engaged to assist in the coverage of all significant events. This position shall be filled in on the basis of an open competition announced in public media. TV stations will be obliged to send in an interim report on the project every 6 months.

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