Aragón TV and HD: a history of avant-garde and ambition

Laura San Nicolás Lapuente, technical director of Aragon TV, reviews the journey of the transition from the public entity to HD, which will be completed in December 2022 with a very important technological commitment.

The Aragonese Radio and Television Corporation, since it took its first steps in 2006, has always looking to the future. Being born in the new millennium allowed him to obtain a privileged position to be an agent change in the regional television landscape. In this way, far from inheriting the vestiges of other decades, it was able to propose a technological approach from its origins. solvent and avant-garde. Unfortunately, the sign of the times rules, and that is that for just a few years they were not born in the race to consolidate high definition, but in the end of the SD.

This did not prevent them from keeping an eye on the evolution of technology. The chain has always closely monitored the tendencies, pending consolidations and far from jumping into the void in the face of promises and perspectives of gurus.

That is why, step by step, it has achieved milestones in regional television scene, like some early broadcasts in HD tests in 2008 o to consolidation of continuity in high definition in 2016. Barely six years later, they address the last phase: the renovation of its four sets in its production studios on María Zambrano Avenue in Zaragoza.

Experimenting with HD broadcast

Aragón TV was born in 2006. Just one year later, television was already I was exploring possibilities to launch the race for high definition. Just as it transfers Laura San Nicolás Lapuente, technical director who joined the Corporation in 2009, the previous technical management already maintained a firm commitment with technological innovation. For this reason, in 2007 it was decided to apply for membership in a plan Keep it up, initiative of the state administration, dedicated to high definition development.

Once the subsidy was approved, the Aragonese Radio and Television Corporation team was able to create an infrastructure dedicated to exploring the development and extension of high definition on television: “The plan was great for us, since we were able to do a lot of tests on different models of televisions with different equipment.”

The materialization of these efforts in HD came from the hand of a testing channel broadcast through DTT with a content loop, to which he occasionally added disconnections with live sporting events like the Champions League. The capacity of multiplex was not a problem beyond asking for competent authorizations, since the distribution of the licenses in the autonomous community means that Aragón TV has a complete multiplex for its exploitation.

High definition is consolidated in Aragón TV

After eight years dedicated to testing and evolving different technological sections of Aragón TV, HD broadcasts became a reality in 2016. Previously, the technical management of the chain had carried out different operations so that this leap had a technological basis: renewal of the mobile unit, archive o implementation of a new version of the editing system Avid.

The last great leap came with the renewal of the entire continuity system, which allowed them to broadcast in simulcast in both SD and HD, something that extends today. With the renewal of the news, a new boost came for the Corporation's streaming broadcasts, although taking as reference the international signal to avoid problems in the emission rights management.

Six years later, the push for renewal in HD addresses a final phase, possibly the most ambitious in terms of dimensions.

16 lots for a comprehensive renovation

Aragon TV has been working for last two years in proposing what is possibly the most extensive update of his entire television career: the high definition upgrade of the vast majority of production systems on its four sets. San Nicolás provides more details: "It was a very complex tender, since we put out a tender with 16 lots. The first 14 lots referred to technical equipment such as cameras, optics or robotics; the 15th was the production furniture, and the 16th was the installation of the rest of the lots." Instead of grouping the tenders by sets, the technical management chose to divide the tender into product categories in order to have greater maneuverability in the possible case of a change in the configuration of the spaces or possible breakdown.

The Aragonese television team opted for this approach to try to ensure that “the specialists of each type of equipment” were presented to each lot to “encourage attendance”, although an integrator could have presented to each category if they wished. The final awards reflect a wide variety among the integrators chosen for these lots. These include corporations such as Crosspoint, Xeltec, Moncada y Lorenzo, Brainstorm, Unitecnic, COEL, Sony Europe, Datos Media, TSA, Albalá, Abcanto, y SURFACE, among others.

The equipment, whose final installation and commissioning is expected to be completed in December 2022, will be 100% HD. The ultra high definition will have to wait. “We would have liked to take one more step, but in the end we were limited by the budgetary issue,” says the technical director about the decision to dispense with HD equipment with UHD capabilities.

Future challenges: sets, mobile units, archive, IP...

The completion of Aragón TV's HD transition project will not mean the end of the engineering initiatives by Laura San Nicolás' team. The technology manager advances part of the Corporation's roadmap, which involves renewing the news set with a giant LED screen; update systems archive and continuity, and opt for changing the equipment of your mobile unit to make it compatible with a IP model: “I know that other television stations like RTVE have something done and we would like to try it.”

At the same time, the Aragonese Radio and Television Corporation has in its hands a project to renew its video on demand platform to create a OTT con advanced features: multi-device, preferences, recommendations, registered users... A task in which, by the way, the vast majority of regional television stations are immersed.

For now, Laura San Nicolás' team has considered that its television is not yet prepared for scalable options such as SaaS (in the purely broadcast field, not so in the IT world) or the virtualized production, although they are valued for the future.

Avant-garde, despite everything.

The journey of Aragon TV has not been without challenges, but Laura San Nicolás identifies one problem above the rest: the unstoppable progress of technology. "For each batch, we have done a market study, designed a solution and, finally, we have written a specification. What has happened is that, while we had half of the specifications written, some things had become obsolete and we had to modify them as we went along," recalls San Nicolás.

The technical director does not hesitate to affirm that “the Technology advances much faster than we are able to process”, alluding indirectly to the tedious bidding processes that accompany public entities: "I imagine that private television stations in this sense are more implementing. (...) In fact, notice that we changed the continuity in 2016 and already, today, we have equipment that has been left out of support."

“Now, we have to start again"says the technology manager of Aragón TV, so resigned as excited for the unstoppable evolution of the broadcast world.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez