VILVOORDE & ANTWERP, Belgium—After 20-plus years at DPG Media, a leading player in the media and broadcast industry in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, I currently serve as the head of technology for their news and sport operations in Belgium, where DPG Media owns numerous media brands like VTM (television) as well as radio stations (Qmusic, Joe), online services, magazines and a strong digital media presence with newspapers like HLN, AD and the Volkskrant.
News City, where I work, is the headquarters in Antwerp for our news and sport departments and hosts our biggest news brands in Belgium, including VTM Nieuws, HLN and DeMorgen.
It’s an exciting time of growth for our company. A pivotal moment in this expansion was the recent move from our office in Vilvoorde to our new headquarters in Antwerp, marking a significant transformation in our operational setup. All equipment stayed in our datacenter in Vilvoorde whilst Antwerp became a full remote location.
The Path to All-IP
In order to streamline these operations, reduce costs, and enhance overall efficiency, we are transitioning to an all-IP infrastructure. We teamed up with our technical colleagues from RTL-TVI (a leading channel in French-speaking Belgium that is 50% owned by DPG), to identify a robust and proven IP routing solution that would support a decentralized workflow and meet our needs for flexibility and scalability.
Our implementation goals were clear: minimize development, limit risks, and ensure seamless integration. And with elections and major sporting events on the horizon, we needed a functional solution, not just a roadmap. After extensive research and evaluation, we chose EVS’ Strada routing solution to replace our existing systems and SDI infrastructure.
Connecting our master control rooms—the heart of our operations where all signals converge—the EVS Strada solution lets us work efficiently across various outputs and in conjunction with the galleries used for production. Built on the Neuron Network Attached Processor and Cerebrum broadcast control and monitoring system, it meets all the requirements for efficient and flexible broadcast operations: IP processing for audio and video, IP audio shuffling, JPEG-XS/ST2110-22 compression, and HD/UHD up/down/cross conversion. We’ve also added the new low-latency multiviewer, Neuron View, for monitoring multiple feeds in real-time using different layouts.
Thanks to Strada, our MCR team now has a single control platform to independently manage signals for news, entertainment, sports and digital channels across all locations. The solution integrates smoothly with our existing workflows, maintaining compatibility with our current SDI equipment while leveraging an IP backbone. This hybrid approach minimizes operational disruption and offers the benefits of modern IP technology, providing greater flexibility and scalability compared to traditional broadcast infrastructure.
Customized Panels
The new system has significantly boosted our functionality and efficiency, allowing us to create packages and organize sources logically, providing a better network overview and allowing us to save configurations for future use. This is a huge time-saver.
The customizable panels of Cerebrum are a major advantage, allowing our team to switch sources and manage signals independently, enhancing operational efficiency and user autonomy. Customization was a critical factor in our decision, and EVS was incredibly attentive to our needs. Together, we ensured the system was tailored to our workflows and UI requirements.
Although we are still in the early stages, the potential of this transformation is clear. We are fortunate to rely on such a professional team, guiding us through the biggest transformation our organization has undergone in the past 20 years. We eagerly anticipate the positive outcomes and continued growth that this new IP infrastructure will support. l
Sven Van Vlem is the head of technology for News City at DPG Media. He can be reached at info@dpgmedia.be.
For more information, visit https://evs.com/.
