CRI: on air worldwide with zirkons and Nova73 HD.
Central control room in China equipped with Lawo systems.
To satisfy the broadcasting requirements of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, China Radio International (CRI), one of the world’s leading broadcasters in terms of area covered, is investing heavily in new equipment: Both its central control room and the control rooms of the individual studios have been thoroughly renovated and equipped with state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment. The centrepiece of the radio control rooms in the broadcasting centre in Beijing is made up of systems from Lawo, with ten zirkon radio mixing consoles and two redundant Nova73 HD routers guaranteeing flawless, reliable and user-friendly on-air operation.
The decision makers at CRI opted for a total of ten zirkon consoles for their control rooms: five with twenty faders each and five with twelve.
The two Lawo Nova73 HD routers boast a capacity of 3,000 crosspoints each, a scalable routing capacity of up to 8192 mono channels in a single frame, Dolby E compatibility, clock-synchronized switching to set crosspoints to video frames, and integrated signal processing. Nova73 HD routers are known for their exceptional reliability.
Not only will the project, which is being realized jointly with the client, represent Lawo’s largest central control room installation to date in the radio sector in China; it will also be the first time Lawo hardware has been combined with Chinese control software, the latter consisting of a scheduler for time-controlled switching and a breakdown management system, whereby in the event of a failure in one control room, its tasks will be reassigned to another. This software was developed by Lawo’s Chinese partner InfoMedia, a leader in the development of broadcasting automation systems, especially for this project but will soon be in use in other installations within China and throughout Asia.
The software-hardware compatibility realized through this collaboration will considerably facilitate the day-to-day work of CRI employees as well as drastically reducing the susceptibility of the overall system to breakdown. Thanks to the open routing protocol, the CRI technicians responsible for transmission will be able to supervise – and, if need be, intervene in – the functioning of the system from a position of comfort, using software tailored to their needs.
The Lawo equipment is perfectly adapted to the practical requirements of studio life and is constantly being enhanced in the light of the company’s vast and growing pool of experience in all areas of broadcasting. Among the most significant features of the zirkon consoles, for example, in addition to their touchscreen interfaces, are their freely configurable control elements and multi-layer structures as well as their outstanding degree of user-friendliness and modularity.
China Radio International
China Radio International (CRI), which went on air for the first time in 1941, is one of the most listened to and influential radio broadcasters in the world. Today, CRI transmits programmes worldwide in 38 different foreign languages as well as Standard Mandarin and four other Chinese dialects. The range of programmes includes more than 400 series supplied by 33 different content providers and 27 bureaus on 5 continents. In terms of number of languages offered, hours of programming daily, and sets capable of picking up its transmissions, as well as of technological sophistication, CRI ranks among the leading broadcasters in the world. It is to consolidate and enhance this status that the enterprise is investing now in new equipment from Lawo for its broadcasting centre in Beijing.
