BCE to broadcast 7 RTL Hungarian channels

CLT-UFA, a subsidiary of RTL Group, has selected BCE for the broadcasting of its seven Hungarian language cable channels.

BCE created a state-of-the-art multi-site playout platform through a partnership with Luminis.

BCE and Luminis worked jointly on the integration of a multi-playout platform with direct connection to RTL Group’s operations in Luxembourg and Hungary, since the channels are broadcast from Luxembourg, where the final editing and playout takes place, while local productions are often initially produced in Hungary. Dedicated to the customer channels, the control room in Luxembourg manages ten feeds for seven channels: three channels are broadcast in both HD and SD and four channels are broadcast in SD only.

“This innovative control room system is a breakthrough in playout services. It gives the possibility to future customers to juggle between our services and their employees and to benefit from BCE’s stable and secured technical environment while accessing the platform from multiple locations,” commented Tun Van Rijswijck, COO at BCE.

“Working with Luminis was a great experience during the integration and our day-to-day work with the company is very promising.”

BCE and RTL Group’s activities in Luxembourg and Hungary are connected thanks to BCE’s telecom network, with a direct fiber link. The Hungarian content is sent to BCE and RTL Group in Luxembourg using Movie2Me (BCE’s high speed content distribution system) point-to-point technology and they broadcast the edited and packaged content following the playlist back through the same line.
Thanks to this fiber link between Hungary and Luxembourg, BCE and Luminis created a broadcasting platform which can be completely virtualized for operators in Budapest and Luxembourg.
The solution was built around a solution from Grass Valley and integrated in less than three months in Luxembourg.

“This cooperation between BCE and Luminis opens new opportunities to provide our customers the unique combination of high-end technical background paired with affordable operational costs.” says Gábor Varsányi, CEO at Luminis.

“We successfully bridged the geographical gap between Luxembourg and Budapest to enable local playlist editing and control at BCE while providing preparation services and technical supervision remotely from Hungary resulting in significant savings for the RTL cable channels. ”