Russia: Orion play-out for Discovery Ultra
October 7, 2020
Orion, a media platform in Russia and CIS, and Media Alliance, a joint venture of the National Media Group and Discovery, have agreed to cooperate in the launch of a new ultra-high-definition TV channel in Russia, Discovery Ultra. The technical partner of the project – Orion group – provides integrated services of the TV channel play-out and its ground-based signal delivery.
Russia has become the first market where the Discovery Ultra – the first educational television channel in the Ultra HD format in the portfolio of Discovery, Inc. – has started broadcasting.
A specific feature of the technical implementation of the project is that Discovery Ultra is being broadcast with a 4K Ultra HD resolution and a reference frame rate of 50p. The TV channel is distinguished by a unique technological formation complex, which is able to work with an extended brightness and color space of 10 bits. This guarantees outstanding image quality transmitted to the viewers ‘ screens.
The signal will be delivered to the Russian telecom operator with the use of HEVC compression in IP format.
Especially for this project, Orion group has developed and implemented the latest broadcasting platform that helps to perform a full cycle of TV channels formation in accordance with the specified technical parameters.
“The Discovery Ultra TV channel concept assumes the effect of “immersion” into the content for the viewer, which can only be achieved with the help of the UHD format. Orion group has proven its reliability in terms of TV channels play-out both in Russian and abroad, including those that broadcast in ultra-high definition format. Therefore, we have chosen this company as a technical partner, because they can provide high – quality and uninterrupted broadcasting,” said Grigory Lavrov, Media Alliance CEO.
“We are very pleased that Discovery, Inc trusted us. For Orion group, this is not the first project in the field of play – out of ultra-high-definition TV channels. However, its implementation has been a very ambitious project for us. The colleagues’ condition was to use unprecedented for the Russian market technical parameters and video content quality. Another challenge was the timing. An experienced team, an outstanding technical base, a creative approach in developing a technical solution and willingness to work within a tight time frame helped us to implement this project in a record couple of weeks,” says Andrey Trufanov, head of the telecom services department at Orion group.