Hewlett-Packard Co has a contract to supply South Africa’s largest private television network, Electronic Media Network, with seven HP Broadcast Video Servers as part of a digital broadcasting system. The television network, which currently has 950,000 subscribers, said it expected the system to be up and running by January of next year. The company claims that it will be the first television broadcaster in Africa to use digital technology for commercials and promotions. The Hewlett-Packard system to be installed will automatically insert a total of 3,000 commercials, promotions, station identifications and short announcements into 600 daily commercial breaks to be broadcast over 18 South African channels. M-Net plans to add international programming to its network with the addition of an Entertainment and Sports Programming Network and British Broadcasting Corp World. The programming will be offered through an affiliation with Multi-Choice, a broadcasting and signal-distribution company operating in South Africa and Europe. The programmes are to be distributed via the Pan American Satellite Inc PAS 4 MPEG-2 satellite service that M-Net and Multi-Choice plan to launch in October. M-Net said the digital system would enable it to triple its programme output without any major increases in personnel. The video servers will be networked to supply four input channels and 14 output channels to support 18 M-NET and Multi-Choice channels, and three output channels dedicated to previews and back-ups. Each will store 10 to 19 hours of MPEG-2-compressed video.
