Qvest Media delivers all-ID infrastructure for Asharq News

Saudi Arabia:

A new 24/7 multiplatform news service has gone online in Saudi Arabia with the aid of Qvest Media. Headquartered in Riyadh, Asharq News will provide the Arabic-speaking world with live news focused on the economy and finance and will be broadcast online, on social media, and via TV and radio channels. The channel’s new all-IP infrastructure is of a scope that is said be unique in the MENA region to date and encompasses a hybrid architecture of virtualised on-premises systems and cloud applications to support content aggregation, production and distribution.

The use of technology at Asharq News permits the broadcaster to engage in location-independent collaboration, meaning it can more easily produce high-quality news and analyses live on the spot and with a global network of journalists.

"With Asharq News, we have launched one of the world's most advanced live news platforms together with Qvest Media as our master systems integrator,” commented Omran Abdallah, CTO of Asharq News. “The wide range in collaboration and news research allows us to report live and on the pulse of the action quickly, which is crucial to our success. We are very pleased about the outstanding and positive international response that we have received since our launch on November 11 2020.”

With an end-to-end all-IP infrastructure, Asharq News benefits from adaptability and scalability of its production platform. The 100GBit/s-capable media infrastructure designed and implemented by Qvest Media supports the SMPTE ST 2110, NMOS IS-04 and IS-05 standards and reportedly offers sufficient bandwidth for a UHD/4K upgrade of the production infrastructure in the future. The audio-over-IP implementation supports IEEE, IETF and AES67. Since the network consists of customary IT components, it forms the basis for both the redundant broadcast network design and the seamlessly integrated corporate IT network.

“I am very pleased that Asharq News successfully managed to go on air despite the aggravated pandemic conditions,” said Ahmad Hadi Al Kayal, general manager and CSO of Qvest Media Dubai. “We owe this mostly to the close and trusting cooperation between Asharq News and our well-coordinated team as well as our streamlined project delivery."

Aside from the media infrastructure, the broadcaster also sets new benchmarks in studio design, with video walls and floor displays totalling an area of more than 300m². The LED walls can be divided into several segments and have a movable, motorised ceiling suspension that allows them to be moved silently in on-air mode. In addition to the design and installation of these systems, Qvest Media also integrated the necessary technology for the visualisation of graphic and video material, which is used for the interactive display of programme-accompanying content on the LED walls.