Amman, Jordan–Leading Jordanian television production facility, Jordan Media City (JMC), has completed a full technical upgrade, bringing its studio spaces up to date with the latest high performance, low-energy lighting systems from Strand. Specified, supplied and installed by Dubai-based Broadcast & Studio Solutions (BSS), the new system has reduced the lighting energy costs for these busy television studios by as much as 85%.
JMC, a satellite earth station facility, provides production studios and transmission services. Its two studios, each of 600sq.m, are let to client Roya TV, producer of a range of programs including morning shows, talk shows, news, documentaries and light entertainment. Having recently updated JMC’s facilities to High Definition technology throughout, BSS was consulted again for the next phase of JMC’s investment, the state-of-the-art lighting upgrade.
JMC’s brief called for a complete new lighting system to replace its tungsten-source lamps with high-performance, energy efficient LED fixtures. “Low-power LED lighting fixtures were an important factor for the client, as electricity prices have proliferatedin the last few years,” says project manager Laith Fraihat, who led the BSS team. “The biggest challenge facing our team was to work in parallel to install the new DMX network and power relay racks without disturbing the ongoing work of the studio.”
Reducing energy costs was not JMC’s only aim, however. It was essential that the lighting offered high-TLCI color output to ensure consistent high standards of picture quality, in line with the studios’ HD technology upgrade. And, of course, a move to LED sources could also be expected to reduce the studios’ maintenance costs, as expensive and time-consuming lamp replacements would become a thing of the past.
After assessing available fixtures based on power consumption, luminance and TLCI color rendering performance, Fraihat specified a total of 130 LED fixtures from Strand’s broadcast lighting range. These consisted of 60 Strand 400F and 10 200F broadcast-grade LED fresnels, and 50 Strand 300S and 10 150S LED slimline studio softlight panels. All the specified fixtures are 5600K color temperature models.
Fraihat comments, “The high luminance of the Strand fixtures is superior to competitors’ products. As expected from Strand, the high TLCI index means that pictures produced in the studio are of superior quality, matching the real image.”
The installation, seamlessly carried out through May and June 2019, has successfully delivered a major reduction in energy usage for JMC. “The power load of the new system is around 15% of the previous load,” says Fraihat.
As well as their significantly lower energy usage and the high TLCI performance of the luminaires, Fraihat also cited other attractive features of the Strand range in his equipment choice. These included the selectable fan cooling modes of the LED fresnels, as well as the silent operation and real-time intensity display of the LED softlight panels.
The client is delighted with the result. JMC’s CEO, Mr Radi Alkhas, himself an experienced broadcast engineeer, says, “We have state-of-the-art studios, and we have waited a long time for the development of high quality LED lighting. And we have chosen a high-quality company to do the job for us.”