Amhara TV chooses Grass Valley for Ethiopia’s first HD station

Ethiopian government-owned Amhara TV has selected Grass Valley to provide several solutions to build Ethiopia’s first HD terrestrial TV broadcast station.

Grass Valley solutions will be used to outfit two HD studios and a master control room. Amhara TV will be available both terrestrially and via the Nilesat free-to-air satellite service.

Amhara TV is using six HD LDK 3000+ cameras and a Kayak HD video production switcher. The master control room will be based around a Grass Valley Maestro SD/HD branding and master control system. Grass Valley is also supplying a Concerto series routing switcher with Prelude router control. A GeckoFlex signal processing system will provide the platform for signal control, complete with an integrated browser-based control system.
While the majority of Ethiopia’s television viewers use standard definition televisions, they will be able to benefit from the oversampling of HD-to-SD down conversion for improved picture quality over SD-originated programming, according to Grass Valley.

“This project with Grass Valley holds real importance for Ethiopia because it will offer our 50 million television viewers their first ever HD experience. With this in mind, it was crucial for us to select a partner we could trust and that could offer us the best HD solutions,” said Leykun Mekonnen, vice-general manager and media technology head, Amhara TV. “Grass Valley’s reputation precedes it as a provider of high quality, flexible, and cost-efficient solutions which enable broadcasters to give their customers premium services.