[SatNews] By April 2015, Nilesat will launch its new regional digital platform, known as the The Nilesat Smart Digital Broadcasting System.

This major regional initiative will provide for the compression and multiplexing of 360 TV services and 120 radio services over 24 digital transport streams, with the ability to expand up to 480 TV Services and 30 transport streams. Nilesat currently broadcasts more than 730 TV channels, and over 140 digital radio channels, uplinked from Cairo, Dubai, Amman, Doha, Riyadh and Beirut. Over 75 percent of the TV channels are FTA and the Nilesat audience in the MENA region has shown steady growth, from 11 million households in 2003 to more than 60 million households in 2013. According to the most recent surveys in 2013, Nilesat has the largest audience share, with about 95 percent of the households in the MENA region.
 
Media Era Technologies (Mera-Tech) has been appointed as the integrator and consultancy partner to assist Nilesat in building the next generation platform with all its requirements. Mera-Tech provided the services that addressed all aspects of designing the architecture, planning, and testing, deploying, and optimizing the end-to-end solution. The selected vendors are all seen as the best within their fields, and that is paramount for a future-proof platform.
 
Cisco is continuing its long-standing relationship with Nilesat by introducing new technologies that will help to enhance the company’s customer offering in the Middle East region and even further. Cisco Media Production Solutions enable Nilesat to easily extend content to any business unit, partner, or customer device, anywhere in the world, as well as to reduce costs by consolidating and virtualizing media applications and infrastructures. Cisco's best in class solution based on D9036 encoder and  DCM platform, provides all the important features Nilesat needs in the digital headend, including acquisition, encoding and transcoding, video processing.
 
Bridge Technologies has been selected to provide the digital media measuring and analysis  technology for the Nilesat Smart Digital Video Broadcasting System. The company’s VB330 core probes, VB288 Content Extractor, VB272 Satellite RF S/S2 analysis, VB242 for ASI analysis, VB220 for IP analysis and VBC for probes full management will be deployed at the main production facility and headends to provide a comprehensive advanced monitoring capability for up to 900 services and 48 Transport streams over Nilesat's network during the first phase of the project, increasing to up to 1100 services and 60 Transport streams in the second phase.
 
Newtec delivered more than thirty M6100 Broadcast Satellite Modulators, including full automatic redundancy, tailored to Nilesat’s specifications. The provided solution can be upgraded to support DVB-S2X and Carrier ID insertion (DVB-CID), on top of other Newtec advanced satellite technologies that are compatible with the DVB-S2 standard, such as Automated Equalink®,a linear and non-linear pre-distortion technology. Additionally, Clean Channel Technology®, a combination of improved roll-offs for DVB-S2 and advanced filtering technologies, allows optimal bandwidth utilization. This results in even higher efficiency and a significant improvement in performance without changing any system parameters, making it possible to add more content (HD).