• Arqiva is delivering Southern Africa Direct onto the Sky Digital platform
• Uplinking via the Eurobird satellite
• Playout delivers a range of additional services

Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division announced today that it is supporting the delivery of Southern Africa Direct, a new free-to-air lifestyle and culture television channel, onto the UK Sky Digital platform channel 283 from 26 November 2007. Southern Africa Direct is the UK's first ‘Destination TV' channel, providing an authentic and engaging information source for anyone interested in visiting or building commercial links with Southern Africa. The channel's content includes lifestyle & culture, travel & tourism and commerce programming related to the Southern Africa region.

To deliver the channel, Arqiva is providing Southern Africa Direct with 3.5Mb/s of space on the Eurobird satellite. Playout of the channel is from Arqiva's Chalfont Grove facility where it is encoded, multiplexed and uplinked to the Eurobird satellite.

The fully managed playout service provides Southern Africa Direct with digital archive storage which increases the accessibility of content while reducing the need for tape-based re-ingest. Southern Africa Direct will be ingesting two hours of new content each day. The contract also provides for a downstream graphical package to allow scheduled graphics to be placed over the video content. These graphics can contain multiple layers which allow complex effects to be created for additional on-screen information and branding.

Clare Bramley, Chief Operating Officer, Southern Africa Direct, said: "Having approached a number of service providers we were initially attracted to Arqiva by its longstanding industry reputation. The company's extensive international infrastructure and ability to provide the exact services we required, both for the launch and looking ahead to the future, pushed Arqiva ahead of the competition when it came to signing the contract."

John Bozza, director of sales at Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division, added: "We're delighted to have won the opportunity to launch this innovative and high profile channel. Arqiva now has extensive satellite space segment, unrivalled international connectivity and a comprehensive range of broadcast services. Working together with our state-of-the-art playout systems we are making it easier and more cost effective than ever to launch a technologically sophisticated TV channel."

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