UNESCO Iraq chooses Sony's SD studio solution

Funded by the European Union, Iraqi Edu went live at 17:00 (05:00 pm) Baghdad Time on October 20 2008 via NileSat.

Iraqi teachers and educational specialists will now have the resources and support to access and provide quality education to Iraqi students inside and outside Iraq.

Beneficiaries of this programme will include refugees, IDPs, children who are out of school and in school and students with special needs.

The educational TV programs are based on the Iraqi school curricula and will be broadcast through satellite overcoming time, space and the deteriorating security and economical conditions that prevent students from receiving a proper education.

Led by UNESCO Iraq in association with the Ministry of Education - Iraq, Sony's channel partner and authorised reseller, ITECO in Jordan was awarded the contract to supply, deliver and install a complete SD studio solution. ITECO as official site engineers carried out a complete process cycle followed by operational training modules.

"We're proud to have been selected by UNESCO to design and implement a working solution for such an important initiative in Iraq," said Vivian Saldanha, Head of Broadcast Sales, Sony PSE ME.

"As part of our regional operations, we have dedicated active resources and attention to the ME and EWA (East and West Africa) markets. Our focus is to give our customers the freedom to work on their objectives without worrying about the technicalities - that's our job," he said.

The SD solution designed by the Sony professional services team includes:

• DXC-D55 camera chain
• DFS-800 switcher
• Professional LMD monitors
• DSR-1500P DVCAM VTRs

"Education is an integral part of our active support initiatives in Iraq. Sony's integrated solution will not only help in building the capacity of teachers and educational specialists, but also allow easy and continuous access to developed curricula. This is what makes this project such an amazing effort; it responds to the humanitarian and urgent needs of Iraqi students as well as the development needs of the system to provide Iraqi youth with a chance to start / resume their education and a chance to a better future,"

said Riyad Minawi, Project Manager - UNESCO Iraq (Amman)

UNESCO plans to use the technology to enable and build a strong bank of educational programmes; which include producing 1000 educational programme episodes and 47 TV spots (animation).

Presently, 140 episodes have been produced with 16 TV spots currently under production.

Recording and post-production of the educational programmes will be done at the Iraqi Media Network Studios in Baghdad.

"To be able to deliver, build and install a complete system in Iraq is considered to be a very difficult and challenging task at present. Our advantage is the ability to combine technical solution capability from Sony with local expertise in project deployment by our team in Baghdad. UNESCO's objective is an important one and we're happy to have been ready and capable to help bring this amazing project to life," said Nameer Bader, Project Manager - ITECO, Sony's authorised reseller for Jordan and Iraq.