Televisa taps Synamedia for broadcast upgrade

Mexico’s Televisa has chosen Synamedia to help it overhaul its broadcast distribution infrastructure.

Julien Signes (source: Synamedia)

Televisa is using Synamedia’s Media Edge Gateway (MEG) and PowerVu conditional access throughout its nationwide network, spanning 180 stations across the country, to increase video distribution, processing and delivery agility, according to Synamedia.

During an evaluation phase, Synamedia said Televisa used dozens of MEGs as a part of its strategy to broadcast the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.  Synamedia, which managed backup channels and frame rate conversion, said the success of this project contributed to Televisa’s ultimate decision to select Synamedia as its new software partner.

MEG is a software-defined receiver with edge processing functions such as transcoding, regionalization, time delay, and blackout, across satellite, CDN and IP networks. The combination of Synamedia’s PowerVu distribution platform and MEG provides Televisa with secure content distribution, centralised control, and edge processing to tailor content handoffs to meet the needs of affiliates and MVPDs, according to Synamedia, protected by PowerVu conditional access.

Earlier this month, one of Televisa’s largest stations went live with Synamedia MEG and PowerVu across the city of Guadalajara. The project will continue to roll out through Summer 2024 and in stages for the next two years, to cover all stations in Mexico.

“Not only did Synamedia build us a truly unique solution – one that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world – but it also demonstrated exactly what we desired in a partner: commitment to both innovation and our long-term success. Our internal team sourced our hardware provider Siselectron to provide a powerful SR1 device (2^nd Gen AMD EPYC processor) and work on the customization for our specific needs. From there, we knew we wanted software and hardware partners agile enough to meet our present and future needs. Synamedia was quick to sign up and deliver, and has been an instrumental part of the team, already demonstrating positive results. We’re thrilled with our choice.,” said William Aguirre, GM, satellite operations, Televisa.

“Televisa was seeking a partner who could deliver agility and innovation, and I’m proud we rose to the occasion. Our team is built on commitment and passion to solve problems for our customers – and that’s exactly what we’re doing with Televisa and our MEG product line. Televisa selected 400 MEG software endpoints to support the transformation of its broadcast ecosystem across a country with nearly 130 million residents. It’s a massive undertaking and we’re energized to continue our successful collaboration for years to come,” said Julien Signes, EVP, video network, Synamedia.