In 2014, the Cabildo de Tenerife proposed to provide information about its activity and management to citizens in a complete, accessible, updated and truthful way. Information transparency as the main foundation of a participatory and collaborative Open Government model in which citizens could have information on its public activity.
In order to make this information available, it was decided that the means of communication with citizens would be a Cabildo Insular Television Channel with Internet presence, for which, by Agreement of the Insular Government Council dated November 10, 2014, a collaboration agreement was approved with the public insular company Instituto Tecnológico de Energías Renovables, (ITER, S.A.), for the creation of this means of communication.
Under this collaborative environment, the Development Department began a new line of activity for ITER focused on the development of audiovisual solutions and that meant the launch, in just two months, of the on-line television platform Tenerife TV channel, which began broadcasting on December 19, 2014.
After the launch of this on-line television platform and its great acceptance, in 2018 the Cabildo of Tenerife decided to go one step further. Since 2007 the Cabildo de Tenerife had the ownership of a Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) channel that never started broadcasting. Thus, it expanded the project wit Tenerife TV; a thematic channel of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and also accessible from the Internet (OTT), aligned with the strategy of the Cabildo of Tenerife and oriented towards education and culture.
In this context, and under the innovative umbrella of this initiative of the Cabildo de Tenerife, the development of the broadcasting system and continuity of the channel’s programming in a totally virtualized environment is proposed; a singularity that makes it unique in Spain, which provides added value and allows the system to be offered as SaaS (Software as a Service).
In this project, the Development Department of ITER, S.A. assumes the leadership of the technical execution of the implementation of the television channel; designing the system architecture and developing the broadcasting platform, continuity and live production. For this purpose, it relies on the ALiX Project infrastructures, with the D-ALiX DataCenter, its fiber optic networks and the Teide HPC supercomputer, the second most powerful in Spain, on which the platform is virtualized and several ad hoc software solutions are developed for the broadcasting of the DTT programming and its streaming to the Internet, the broadcasts are redundant and the signal change is automated in case of failure of the main systems.
Finally, and in record time, in December 2018, test broadcasts of Tenerife TV began on DTT channel 47 (682 MHz) and via the Internet.
This platform contains the systems, applications and networks necessary to:
- To store, categorize and document Tenerife TV’s multimedia productions.
- Transcode the content according to the technical parameters required to guarantee the quality of the broadcast.
- Review and correct their quality prior to issuance.
- Generate a flexible programming schedule that integrates all elements: videos, playlists, live broadcasts, priority broadcasts, backup broadcasts, etc.
- Launch the broadcasting for its DTT radio broadcasting, and through the Internet (OTT), by means of a versatile playout.
- Perform live signals, thus guaranteeing continuity in the broadcasting of events.
- Define graphic information spaces on the broadcast itself: flies, tablets, crawls, etc.
- Guarantee the continuity of the broadcast.
- Analyze the emission signal.
- Maintain all redundant systems to avoid continuity failures in an automated manner.
- Manage the storage of the emitted signal to be treated as a judicial copy.
Tenerife TV Promotional Video
The television channel Tenerife TV began test broadcasting in December 2018.
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