Grass Valley®, the leading innovator for live production solutions, announces that French National Public TV Broadcaster France Télévisions, rebranded as france tv, has selected its next-generation Kaleido KIP-X240 IP (Multiviewer as part of an enterprise wide transition from SDI to SMPTE-2110 (ST-2110).

The france tv group, which includes five national, 24 regional channels and 9 overseas channels, has taken immediate delivery of 12 KIP-X240’s as part of a three-year contract Grass Valley won in response to an RFP. With two of its channels—France 2 and France 3—already broadcasting in UHD, france tv anticipates acquiring more units over the course of the contract to eventually replace their SDI-based Grass Valley Kaleido-X and Kaleido-MX multiviewers in use company-wide. The new KIP-X240 IP Multiviewers will be configured with Mellanox 2110 cards that enable ST-2110 UHD and HD/3G video monitoring.

“We are thrilled to support France Télévisions as they continue to enhance their broadcast capabilities, using the latest high-quality products and services from Grass Valley enabling them to deliver efficient productions that will benefit their media production workflows,” said Mark Gardner, VP of Sales for EMEA at Grass Valley. “The integration of our KIP-X240 multiviewers into their SMPTE-2110 workflow is pivotal for dynamic, real-time video monitoring and we are proud to be part of this visionary project.”

“The French broadcast TV market is moving rapidly to ST-2110 for its exceptional quality and operational efficiency,” said Yannick Olivier, Solution Architect 2110 for france tv. “Our ST-2110 transition is intended to lay the groundwork for higher quality live UHD-HDR and 3GHD production, particularly for premiere sporting events, such as the major international competitions this summer. We know that the KIP-X240s will integrate seamlessly within our control rooms, while preserving the X-Edit functionality we’ve come to rely on with our SDI-based Kaleidos.”

X-Edit enables operators to design the layout and configuration of multiple live video images on a single large display. As an open standards-based platform that is also NMOS-compliant, the KIP-X240 leads the industry in offering the highest number of simultaneous video and audio signals monitoring in a 1-RU frame. Its support for a wide range of I/O formats includes up to four simultaneous IP streaming outputs in a mix of compressed and uncompressed signals. The KIP-X240 also supports a wide range of video codecs and transport streams.

“In making our choice, we factored in our trust in Grass Valley and the Kaleido reputation. We also appreciate the KIP-X240’s ease of integration and configuration within our existing workflow,” Olivier added. “We are delighted to work with Grass Valley on this project and to continue deploying the new generation of the Kaleido family.”