TELEVISA select Drake intercom

TELEVISA S.A, Mexico’s leading broadcaster, has chosen intercom equipment from Drake Electronics.
The order is one of the largest contracts of its kind ever placed in Latin America, and was awarded to Drake, together with Mexican Distributor, Amtech S.A, following a successful system demonstration at NAB last year and subsequent visits to TELEVISA’s broadcast facility in Chapultapec.
The Chapultapec facility has a combined requirement for over 1000 ports and Drake will supply four 256-port matrices, serving thirteen Production Studios, three News studios, a Master Control Room (MCR) and over one hundred edit suites, as well as other major operational facilities. A fifth matrix has been ordered and is already allocated for special outside broadcast sports events such as the World Cup and Olympics.
The matrices are networked using Drake’s innovative Hi-Que E1 interface card, which provides 60 audio channels between two frames. With the addition of a second Hi-Que E1 card, this interconnection can be made fully resilient by acting as a separate redundant path.
Hi-Que also enables direct connection of a digital telephone exchange to the communications matrix without the need to add conventional telephone hybrids. Using standard E1 connections, up to 60 separate digital telephone exchange lines can be connected to the matrix and users can make and receive direct telephone calls at each user panel. The Drake system allocates a telephone exchange number to each of the appropriate user panels.
The system also includes a selection of over 250 of Drake’s Refresh range of user panels as well as FreeSpeak® – the world’s first fully-featured, license-free, digital wireless intercom. that was unveiled at IBC in Amsterdam last September.
A FreeSpeak® user can do everything that is usually only possible using a traditional wired intercom, including local key assignment of IFBs, groups and full non-blocking mixing facilities – all in a lightweight, stylish beltpack. With high quality 7kHz audio and full-duplex operation, FreeSpeak® has none of the problems normally associated with traditional radio talkback systems (e.g. interference or dropout) that are typical of the congested UHF and VHF bands.
Future Televisa studios and Outside Broadcast facilities in Mexico City will also be equipped with Drake intercom systems, connected over a WAN (Wide Area Network) using Hi-Que’s E1 capability. Long term plans also include increasing the size of the four frames from 256 ports to 380 ports as requirements grow.
London-based Drake Electronics are the European market leader in the development of high performance broadcast intercom solutions and are part of the Vitec Group, a multinational company listed on the London Stock Exchange, which also includes Vinten and Anton Bauer among its operating companies.
(SP)