Televisa digitizes its ATSC broadcast with Sapec technology

The family of encoders with integrated modulator, Gredos, allows Televisa to distribute its signal under the ATSC standard to the most remote places in Mexico.

After the analog television blackout that took place in December of last year, Televisa evaluated several options to acquire equipment for the broadcast of the digital terrestrial signal under the ATSC standard, to the most remote places in the country.

The objective was to bring Televisa's digital signal to small towns, thus complying with the Law that forces broadcasters to migrate the broadcast of their content to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), leaving behind the analog era in Mexico.

The Spanish company Sapec was presented to the tests with its Gredos equipment, a family of encoders with an integrated modulator (designed and manufactured by Sapec), which reduces costs without compromising the quality of the encoded signal, allows the electronic programming guide (EPG) to be passed, as well as to configure the necessary parameters and generate by itself the necessary tables to attack the internal ATSC modulator that it has and deliver the modulated signal to the amplifier for broadcast.

Added to this solution are amplifiers and the development of management software for the management and maintenance of both equipment; That is, from a single application you can, from changing the input format to the encoder to changing the amplifier powers in a transparent and very deductive way. In this way, Sapec manages to offer an ideal ATSC headend solution for the transmission of this signal, in accordance with the standards established for Digital Terrestrial Television. All this means that equipment costs are reduced and the technical solution is only two pieces of equipment: the Sapec Gredos encoder/modulator and the digital amplifier, all thought and designed to facilitate operation.

This project began in the second half of 2015 and currently more than 200 stations are installed and fully operational. Throughout the first half of 2016, the supply and installation of the rest of the equipment will be carried out, that is, 200 more pieces of equipment.