Harris Corporation announced that Paxson Communications Corporation, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, will standardize on the Leitch DTP turnaround processor throughout its nationwide broadcast television distribution system. Paxson has ordered 56 DTP-220 systems to support its group of television stations, 52 of which are currently on air in digital.
The DTP is an all-MPEG-2 compressed stream processor that allows broadcasters to overlay graphics/logos on pre-compressed high-definition and standard-definition streams inexpensively and with superior video quality. Working entirely in the compressed domain, the DTP enables broadcasters to decrease storage requirements, lower distribution costs and streamline operations as a result of having smaller files and narrower pipes to manage.
With 52 of our stations already broadcasting in digital, we were looking to acquire flexible equipment that is essentially ready to go out of the box equipment we can install across the board in all our stations, no matter what the size of the operation or the level of technical expertise on-site, said Dave Glenn, vice president of engineering for Paxson Communications. We wanted a system that would enable multicasting, bit-stream splicing, Emergency Alert System (EAS) insertion and control via IP, and the Leitch DTP was the only system that could do it all. We evaluated the market for several months before making the final decision, and the DTP out-performed all the top competitors.
The DTP provides MPEG-2 switching and stat mux for one HD program combined with two SD programs, or up to six SD programs, and offers broadcasters many unique benefits. Complete control of the DTP is possible via IP connections. Its flexible software architecture allows new features to be rolled out quickly and efficiently in most cases by doing software-only updates to units in the field. The DTP allows a remotely encoded DTV signal to be localized with such applications as logo overlays, crawls, time and temperature, stock information, and local weather and news, enabling content owners to derive additional revenue from their national content by making it more relevant to local audiences. In addition, by avoiding artifact-inducing MPEG decode/re-encode concatenation, the original MPEG stream picture quality is preserved to the greatest extent possible.
We are very pleased that Paxson has once again chosen Leitch equipment to support its transition to digital, said Tim Thorsteinson, president of Leitch, which is part of the Broadcast Communications Division of Harris Corporation. Paxson has relied on our Videotek® Signal Quality Manager® for remote monitoring and quality assurance for several years, so the companys decision to standardize on our DTP not only represents a significant sale for our company, but also reinforces our continuing relationship with the largest television station group owner in the U.S.