Panama’s Most Popular TV Network Bases Its New Facility Around Grass Valley HD Production and Distribution Technologies

San Francisco, Calif., November 15, 2011 — Televisora Nacional S.A. (TVN), Panama's most popular TV network, has built a new TV facility in Panama City and installed a full complement of Grass Valley™ production and distribution equipment to support the studio's routing and master control operations for its established TVN channel and new TVMax channel.

Targeted to the male audience, TVMax was created to absorb all the sports programming from the existing TVN channel. As a result, a new sports news program was created for TVMax and the channel now also airs drama series, sitcoms, and reality shows.

The significant installation, among the largest in the country, was completed in May 2010 and is now fully on air. The studio is complete with a Grass Valley Kayak™ HD video production switcher, Apex audio routers, Trinix™ video routers, a Maestro™ master control and channel branding system, numerous K2 Summit™ media servers, GeckoFlex™ signal processing modules, and a Sonata™ MADI audio converter.

"We have had a great experience with the Grass Valley Concerto™ routers and Kayak switchers in the past, so we wanted to move to the next generation of Grass Valley products for our new channel," said Rolando Guerra, Chief Engineer at TVN and TVMax. "We need 24/7 reliability for our operations and Grass Valley technology always provides that. The company also has a great local presence here in Panama, which we have come to appreciate and make use of when necessary."

The Grass Valley K2 Summit servers are being used to seamlessly play back content in multiple resolutions and compression formats. K2 Summit can automatically convert between HD and SD formats (up/down/cross) and various aspect ratios and manage the multitude of file types Televisora Nacional deals with on a daily basis, including DV 25, DV 50 and AVC-Intra. This is a unique capability that other servers on the market do not provide.

"The TVMax installation enabled Grass Valley to show its wide range of local service and support capabilities, in addition to supplying a large amount of equipment," said Jeff Rosica, Executive Vice President of Grass Valley. "This was a challenging implementation for our engineers as we had to integrate a number of disparate systems and make them all work seamlessly within a file-based environment. Everyone agrees this project was a resounding success on a number of levels."

Televisora Nacional is a long-time customer, having purchased Grass Valley cameras, servers, routers, and other equipment for the network's TVN channel, the predecessor to TVMax.

Besides the new equipment, Grass Valley also provided a range of services for the new project that included system installation, training, and maintenance.

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About Grass Valley — the Premier Video Technology Solutions Company

With a rich history serving the broadcast and professional video industries, the Grass Valley name is synonymous with innovation, leadership, and performance. With a full range of products and services supporting many of the world's most high-profile live events, Grass Valley offers the most comprehensive portfolio of software, services and IT infrastructure. customers deploying Grass Valley solutions include most of the world's leading broadcast and teleproduction IT facilities, independent video professionals, as well as emerging content creators and distributors providers of broadband, telecommunications, and transmission services. When you're watching news, sports, or entertainment programming, whether on a TV, the Web, or a mobile phone, you're watching Grass Valley at work in the connected world.

For information about Grass Valley products, please visit www.grassvalley.com.
Press Contacts

Denise R. Williams
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Tel: +1 503 526 8160
Fax: +1 503 526 8109
denise.williams@grassvalley.com

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