Skyline Communications secures RTBF Master Control project 

Skyline Communications is proud to announce that RTBF, Belgium’s French-speaking public broadcaster, has selected DataMiner as the service orchestration and assurance platform for their Master Control Room (MCR) and Network Operations Center (NOC) teams operating in RTBF’s brand-new media-over-IP broadcast Media Square building. Both teams will use DataMiner at the center of their desks, 24/7, to schedule and orchestrate contribution feeds and playout signals, and monitor the services and infrastructure. This strategic decision marks a major milestone in RTBF’s digital transformation journey.

The DataMiner team visits RTBF's Master Control Room (MCR). Download image in high resolution.

As part of their relocation to the Media Square building in 2026, RTBF is executing a comprehensive technology refresh, transitioning from SDI to an ST2110 infrastructure. Alongside this shift, RTBF has selected DataMiner to automate their business planning and operational and technical workflows, enabling more efficient and highly automated management of their infrastructure and signal operations, which goes along with a tight integration of EVS’s Cerebrum control and ST2110 routing system.

“With Skyline Communications, we’ve found the ideal partner to support RTBF in this next phase of our digital transformation,” said Gilles Schmitz, Project Manager at RTBF. “Our teams in the MCR/NOC require a solution that automates and orchestrates the complete life cycle of events and operations. DataMiner offers us a comprehensive platform to manage all our feeds: from fiber and satellite to increasingly popular public internet protocols like SRT. In addition, the ability to route any ST2110 signal via the integration with our Cerebrum control system and to deeply monitor our ST2110 network and all media flows across RTBF’s entire network has become indispensable. With DataMiner, we are creating a single stack, and we have one single user interface for just about everyone in our MCR/NOC.”

He continued, “DataMiner bridges the gap between event scheduling and real-time operations in an ideal way. Operators can plan events ahead of time, automatically allocate resources, and eliminate the risk of overbooking. As an event approaches, DataMiner automatically configures the allocated resources, establishes connectivity, and continuously monitors resources in a service-aware manner. In the event of last-minute changes, DataMiner allows operators to perform real-time adjustments with ease, using its parameter control and XY software routing panels.”

Thomas Gunkel, Market Director Broadcast at Skyline Communications added, “Our award-winning dataminer.MediaOps solution is the backbone and 24/7 control surface of RTBF’s MCR and NOC staff. It provides a suite of ready-made applications, such as those for managing RTBF’s online and offline resources, scheduling events, and enabling real-time signal switching. But we also recognize that every media company has unique workflows, and that’s where our customized applications come in. For example, RTBF will leverage a highly tailored MCR Cockpit app to seamlessly stitch together signal chains across multiple processing units – quickly and easily. More importantly, RTBF’s teams will be able to evolve these low-code apps over time in a true DevOps manner.”

“In choosing DataMiner, we’re making a long-term investment in an innovative and future-proof platform,” added Gilles. “This ensures that we can continuously evolve and adapt to new infrastructure and workflows, while also expanding DataMiner’s reach across other operational areas. For instance, our studio teams in the flexible control rooms, will use a self-service portal powered by DataMiner to request feeds from the MCR. This is just one example of how DataMiner will help us digitize operations, making them more data-driven, efficient, and responsive to bring our long-term trusted partnership with Skyline to the next level.” 

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