Télévision Suisse Romande taps NETIA's U-Share

Télévision Suisse Romande taps NETIA's U-Share to manage bandwidth for in-house content distribution network.

CLARET, France - Sept.. 20, 2006 - NETIA today announced that its U-Share network management solution will be employed by Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) for their EQUIPRO project to control the distribution of video files over the broadcaster's internal network. TSR's production and post-production departments rely on three different server platforms, and the customized U-Share solution will enable efficient transfer of live video and file-based content between these platforms, eliminating network bottlenecks even as TSR increases the volume of internal program production.

" We have been handling a lot more of our own production in house, which creates a great deal more traffic across our internal network, and NETIA's U-Share will allow us to accommodate the transfer of content throughout the production and post-production workflows without compromising the performance of other devices on the network," said Claude Mex of Télévision Suisse Romande. " It's simply a matter of saving time and money, and NETIA has worked closely with us to ensure a solution that would allow us to work seamlessly with all of our production and broadcast solution partners."

Over the course of content acquisition, production, and post production at TSR, video moves between server platforms from EVS, Avid, and SeaChange. The transfer of media among these three server islands requires significant bandwidth on TSR's IP-based local area network (LAN), and so the company turned to NETIA's U-Share system to optimize the exchange of video and audio content through autonomous and automatic management of its transport network. For each transfer request in a given time slot, U-Share offers the best solution considering network congestion, thus considerably reducing the impact of transfers on other critical operations.

NETIA's U-Share network management solution, part of the company's MANREOTM product range, is typically deployed across geographically distributed broadcast facilities. For the installation at TSR, NETIA worked closely with the broadcaster to adapt its very robust bandwidth management capabilities for use on a LAN. U-Share features three transmission modes - live (priority transmissions), sequential mode (fixed latest transmission time and duration), and remote loading (overnight transfer) - to ensure reliable and efficient transfers of program content to the appropriate server platform, at the right time, throughout the entire production workflow.

" When we looked at the market for network management solutions, NETIA offered the functionality we needed along with an open platform that could accommodate the different server systems incorporated in our production processes," added Mex. " U-Share boasts a successful track record in other European broadcast operations, and we are confident that it will add value to our facility as well, allowing us to leverage our existing infrastructure more effectively through smart, streamlined media transfer."

The U-Share system at TSR is scheduled to go live in the first quarter of 2007.

More information about U-Share and other NETIA solutions is available at www.netia.net.

About TSR

Television for French-speaking Switzerland, Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) is based in Geneva with regional bureaus in Lausanne, Zurich, Sion, Fribourg, Moutier, and Neuchâtel, as well as at the Swiss Federal Parliament building in Berne. TSR is targeted to the estimated 1.6 million French-speaking citizens of Switzerland, providing full-service programming on two channels in order to satisfy the many and varied expectations of this audience. TSR1's mission is to provide television for a general audience. Its evening schedule consists mainly of in-house productions. TSR2's programming includes sports, a daytime schedule that serves children and young people, and an evening schedule featuring documentary films and cultural programming.

For more information, visit www.tsr.ch.