Multi-Media Centre DR BYEN.

Installation of a new routing system for radio & TV.

DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) is Danmark´s national public radio and TV station headquartered in Copenhagen. DR Radio comprises four FM stations and additionally offers 14 radio channels on DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and more than 30 channels on the Internet. DR TV comprises two channels DR1 and DR2. Besides the analogue transmission, both channels are broadcast via the new digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform.

In 2006 DR moved all their activities into the new multi-media centre which has been given the name DR BYEN. The new building now houses all the National Danish public service broadcaster's production and broadcast facilities in the Copenhagen area with a staff of approximately three thousand - previously spread over 12 different locations.

 

Time schedule and background

DR BYEN opened at the beginning of 2006. In June 2007 they started with their regular radio and TV transmission. The router project was supported and finalised in cooperation with the Danish Lawo distributor Interstage A/S.

The complete routing system was set up for a factory acceptance test in Rastatt first before delivering it to DR Byen.

Most important for this project was reliability and resiliance.

 

The Lawo solution

The system is based on the Lawo Nova 73 HD router and comprises two fully redundant stars, designed after the Dual Self Healing Star (DSHS) principle using four Nova73HD router cores. Each star is placed in each of their basement for optimal security. All system components including modules are hot pluggable for full on-air servicing and reconfiguration.


Technical details

Every star has

  • more than 300 redundant direct MADI connections for the linking of broadcast consoles and breakout boxes
  • 850 AES in/out
  • 280 analogue in
  • 550 analogue out
  • 165 direct HD SDI interfacing (Embedded Audio)
  • More than 3,500 in/output channels via MADI
  • A total of more than 2,200 audio in/outputs

The system also offers a wide variety of internal DSP facilities including mixing/fading abilities, and both software interfaces and hardware surfaces are included for easy access and control of such functions.

 

Background: „Dual Self Healing Star”-structure

The “Dual Self Healing Star" (DSHS) concept is based on a structure of two or more Nova73 HD routers. The interfaces are provided by DALLIS I/O frames which are connected via optical fibres. Fitted with redundant master cards, each one of them is connected with both system cores. However, in contrast to a classical dual star structure there exist additional mirroring lines between the system cores that represent the additional and crucial redundancy level of the DSHS: only this facilitates that in case of a defect (e. g. broken cable) the I/O frames are switched independently from the system cores. This is why within the DSHS the switch-over between the cores is only necessary if a central error occurs in a core.

 

 Feature: The HD SDI boards

For the Nova73 DSHS routing system Lawo delivered 165 HD SDI embedder / deembedder boards. This card designed especially for the DALLIS system supports SDI data streams in the HD format with 1.5 GBit/s as well as the 270 MBit/s SD format.

The integrated solution offers various advantages: firstly, the DR benefits from the extreme packing density of the board which can simultaneously deembed 8 signals and embed further 8 signals. The user can select the SDI signal’s audio group freely for every stereo pair and even insert an audio delay of up to 240 ms. Secondly, the integration allows configuring, setting and monitoring embedder and deembedder directly on the audio side in the 8k matrix.

Furthermore, sampling rate converters can be activated on demand, providing for immaculate sound even when operated asynchronously with video. Of course the board can be run without SRCs if the audio matrix is used for the transparent signal transfer clock-synchronised with the video. The advantages on the video side are the relay-bypass for SDI transfer required in case of failure and the integrated additional SDI through socket for signal distribution as well as the integrated SDI signal generator.

 

Comments from the customer

Lars Sorner, head of projects at Danish Broadcasting, says: „Reliability has been of paramount importance in this installation. The “Dual Self Healing Star” philosophy is ideal for us, and combined with the full redundancy, we have achieved our vision of the highest possible security. On top of that we get the ideal scalability and interface possibility."

 

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