Beijing TV Upgrades Audio Monitoring with TSL’s PAM2 MK2 for All-Digital Broadcast Future

Beijing TV (BTV), the Chinese government-owned and operated television station, serves over 20,500,000 residents in the greater Beijing area, delivering programming covering everything from arts, sciences, lifestyle and finance to sports, youth, and news across more than 10 primary channels. Broadcasting exclusively in Chinese, the station also produces the BTV International Channel (distributed globally through Dish Network), the BTV Theater Channel featuring TV drama productions, and the Loving Home Shopping Channel.

BTV is in the process of updating all aspects of its facility as it migrates into all-digital production, including upgrading the entire audio infrastructure.

Challenge

With the avalanche of programming production, including live sports and news, critical confidence monitoring of incoming signals for continuity, production decisions, and loudness compliance became impossible with the ageing equipment. A new system needed to be identified and installed to take on modern confidence monitoring tasks.

Solution

The TSL Products’ PAM2 MK2 units give BTV advanced loudness and confidence monitoring capabilities, including Dolby E, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Digital Plus decoding from HD, SDI, and AES signal sources. These capabilities were not available in the older units, which only provided level metering. The PAM2 MK2 also offers a software upgrade path to stay compatible with evolving international loudness standards.

“Our older equipment was severely limited in performance scope, so we decided it was time to upgrade all our confidence monitoring systems. The TSL Products’ PAM2 MK2 gives us the power to monitor loudness for compliance with new broadcast standards, accurately meter audio from many sources, and provide phase information. In addition to full implementation of current Dolby standards and the capability to interface with multi-layered confidence monitoring systems to ensure signal integrity and quality, the units offer free software upgrades as new features are added. We are very pleased with the performance of the PAM2 MK2 units.”
— Mr. Chu Cun, Head of Technical Operations at BTV.

Project Description

The multi-story Beijing TV headquarters, a 36,000-square-meter (387,500 sq ft) corporate and production facility complex, offers 197,000 square meters of multifunctional production studio, control room, and office space. The facility needed an upgrade to all its audio confidence monitoring equipment. The original systems could not address new Dolby and loudness compliance standards, so BTV searched for systems that would take the production facility into the HD future.

The equipment chosen was the TSL Products’ flagship PAM2 MK2 Precision Audio Monitoring unit. The PAM2 MK2 is equipped with an SDI output that exports bargraph, data, and Loudness Histogram displays to an external monitor (such as a multiviewer or video display) for at-a-glance review of mission-critical audio information. This helps non-technical personnel make critical decisions about audio streams during production.

With PAM2 MK2 units in place, Beijing TV’s facility can now handle all modern monitoring situations, with the additional benefit of a sophisticated alarm system for extended confidence monitoring. The PAM2 MK2 completely replaced the ageing systems, providing Beijing TV operators with a powerful tool for today’s all-digital production needs and future standards.

PAM2-MK2 — Innovative Audio Monitoring

The PAM2 MK2 is one of the first audio monitoring solutions to feature Dolby’s CAT1100 module (optional), a platform for comprehensive decoding and monitoring of Dolby audio formats used across the HD broadcast chain (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital, and Dolby E). This module enables:

• Dolby E decoding and external speaker monitoring
• Dolby Digital Plus with surround descriptive audio and stream mixing (evolving to 7.1 surround)
• Dialogue Intelligence
• Loudness Measurement
• Simultaneous Multichannel and Stereo outputs
• Selectable error concealment

This ensures that the PAM2 MK2 maintains its reputation as the world’s leading Dolby-capable audio monitoring unit.

Key Features

• 8 AES (8 pairs/16 channel) inputs – 110 Ohm balanced or 75 Ohm unbalanced via optional CAB-D25-BNC cable
• 6 analogue stereo inputs
• User-programmable presets — 8 hardware buttons, GPI, and 24 internal presets accessible via menu
• Factory preset recall — 5 presets selecting SDI1, SDI2, AES, Analogue, and Optical Inputs
• Fixed or variable AES multichannel outputs for external loudspeakers and system integration (8 pairs/16 channels)
• Compact and lightweight (5.1 kg), 2RU case, 320mm deep