Quartz centralizes the London News Network

The London News Network has completed a large project centralizing ITV playout at its facility in central London. The new installation is built around a 12 Channel QMC master control system from Quartz. It supports 12 ITV regional channels, including London (Carlton London and LWT), Westcountry, HTV Wales/West, five Meridian sub-regions and three Anglia sub-regions.

Quartz QMC Master control technology at LNN for ITV regions centralcasting.

The 12 independent channels all have access to a large pool of sources through the core routing infrastructure, which was also supplied by Quartz. Two large Q256 SDI video routers are at the heart of the new playout facility. One is configured 512x256 and the other 384x256. The Q256 solution provides all crosspoint switching for the QMCs as well as supporting the rest of the facility.

Quartz's SC-1000 redundant system controllers and a wide range of Quartz panels provide manual control over the whole system. Many of the panels use LCD button technology, pioneered by Quartz for router systems, which allows intelligent menus in panels and automatic re-legending of buttons. These panels match the QMC manual panels, which use the same button technology.

Automated playout is driven by Encoda Automation, which is interfaced to the router control and all 12 channels of master control.

Large QMC systems, such as the one at LNN, are designed by networking multiple QMC channels together. This allows QMC to cost effectively scale to meet the needs of all broadcasters, whether operating a single channel, or the sophisticated multichannel system of tomorrow.