LONDON -- Czech public broadcaster Czech Television (Ceska Televize) has gone live with Synamedia's virtualized Digital Content Manager (DCM) and completed its transition to transmitting all programs in the DVB-T2 format.

Czech Television went out to public tender in April 2019, selecting Synamedia and local systems integrator LICA CZECH for the on-premise virtualized headend solution and related systems integration services. A key requirement was to meet the broadcaster's October deadline for starting regional broadcasting on this platform.

Synamedia and LICA CZECH fulfilled a strict precondition to demonstrate that they could handle the complexity of switching the new headend from a national to regional mode of transmission using the DVB-T2 standard, with a short reaction time and with little or no interruption to viewers. Prior to the switchover at the end of October, the public broadcaster used a third party's headend for its national DVB-T2-based transmissions while continuing to transmit regional programs using DVB-T signals.

Synamedia's virtualized DCM is now fully integrated with Czech Television's playout automation system. It virtualizes the entire video headend, providing HEVC encoding and statistical multiplexing capabilities in a single solution. It is also capable of fulfilling other tasks including MPEG2 or H.264 encoding, DRM, packaging and advertising.

Synamedia