First pan-African news channel on air with Stingray channel in a box from Pebble Beach Systems

First pan-African news channel on air with Stingray channel in a box from Pebble Beach Systems 04 Jun 2014

Leading automation, content management and integrated channel specialist, Pebble Beach Systems, today announced that Africa 24, the first pan-African news channel, has installed the Stingray channel in a box solution at its Paris transmission centre.

Africa 24 is a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week television news network which aims to provide editorially independent, balanced and realistic coverage of the African continent. As the most watched French-language African channel, it broadcasts to a core audience of viewers from Sub-Saharan Africa, and is also available via satellite to subscribers in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. The network was launched in 2009 and expansion plans include offering further language variants including English, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese.

Stingray leverages Pebble Beach Systems' best of breed automation and integrated channel technology to deliver a full HD ingest and playout channel-in-a-box solution for systems of up to 6 channels. In addition to hosting clip-based channels, it is designed to handle complex reactive channels featuring live content, late-breaking changes and dynamic schedules. Thanks to its client-server architecture, multiple channels can be controlled from a single operator position, and user privileges and access to specific functionality can be set on a per channel basis.

Africa 24's single channel fully redundant Stingray system was supplied by Pebble Beach Systems' partner in France, Soft4TV, and was installed in May, with operator training completed early in June. It integrates into the broadcaster's existing technical infrastructure, offering automatic media movement from the current media SAN. Stingray's native 2D Flash graphics playout capability is deployed to deliver graphics which are dynamically updated when breaking stories arrive, and Stingray's audio and DVE functionality are used to generate transitions between news segments.

Yacine Barro, the Executive Director of Africa24 confirms:

When the service providers for our backup channel moved location, we elected to migrate the management of both main and backup channels to our own technology in-house. We are a new broadcaster and are still growing, so a key priority was to find a solution that could evolve with us. We evaluated all the big name channel-in-a-box solutions, and Stingray was the most open and scalable, offering the greatest potential to add more channels and language variants. Of course, Pebble Beach Systems' excellent reputation and great references were also a factor!

Pebble Beach Systems Managing Director Peter Hajittofi comments:

Stingray is based on proven 64-bit architecture and leverages our best-of-breed Marina enterprise automation and Dolphin integrated channel device, so Africa 24's mix of live and clip-based programming, with frequent late-breaking changes to the schedule, really plays to the strengths of this channel-in-a-box solution.

About Pebble Beach Systems

Pebble Beach Systems is a world leader in automation, channel in a box and integrated channel technology, with scalable products designed for multichannel transmission, news, sports and interactive television as well as content management, workflow and direct archive control. Installed in more than 50 countries and with proven systems ranging from single up to over 100 channels in operation, Pebble Beach Systems offers open, flexible systems which encompass ingest automation, workflow automation, archive automation and complex file-based workflows.

For further information, please contact:

Tom Gittins Sales Director

Email: tom.gittins@pebble.tv

Web: www.pebble.tv

Pebble Beach Systems is a Vislink company

About Vislink plc

The Vislink Group is a global technology business specialising in the collection and delivery of high quality video and associated data from the field to the point of usage. Vislink provides solutions to the broadcast market for the collection and play out management of live news, sport and entertainment events and to the surveillance market including defence, law enforcement and public safety customers for the delivery of secure video and data communications. With offices in the UK, USA, Brazil, UAE, and Singapore, Vislink employs over 300 people worldwide. Our solutions include the design and manufacture of microwave radio, satellite transmission, cellular, wireless camera systems and broadcast management software; our development and manufacturing operations are in the UK and the USA.

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