Newtec (News - Alert) officials have announced that the company picked up a top honor at the Digital Studio awards evening at The Westin Hotel in Dubai.

 

Alongside partners ASBU and Arabsat, Newtec won the “Most Innovative Project of the Year” honor, with its Multimedia Exchange Network over Satellite content exchange network cited.

 

Digital Studio is a magazine for the TV production, film and broadcast industries in the Middle East.

The award was what Newtec officials characterized as “a highlight of the Digital Studio Industry Leadership ceremony,” now in its sixth year. Newtec was further honored when the company’s CTO and one of the company founders, Dirk Breynaert, was named as the recipient of the “Outstanding Industry Contribution Award.”

 

Breynaert was cited for his work with MENOS, as well as for “his key role in driving Broadband over satellite for consumers,” according to the citation.

 

“MENOS has achieved high industry acclaim but for me it is the way that all the partners in the project, ASBU, Arabsat and ourselves, have worked together that has made it such a success,” Serge Van Herck, CEO of Newtec, said in prepared remarks, adding “When such enthusiasm and commitment – allied to technological innovation – comes together it is always a powerful mix and to be acknowledged by winning such an important award means a great deal to all of us.”

 

MENOS is described by Newtec officials as an all-IP networking concept used to exchange multimedia content over satellite, allowing broadcasters to share video and audio material among scattered sites “in an automated, cost-efficient way.”

 

The MENOS system also provides tools to facilitate the coordination of tasks and provide additional IP services across the network. Advanced DVB-S2 modulation technology, combined with the statistical multiplexing of the data, voice, television and radio signals, is engineered to “ensure the optimum efficiency of the satellite bandwidth usage,” company officials added.

 

Slaheddine Maaoui, director general of the ASBU, said the award “represents another MENOS milestone for us, the Arab region and the broadcasting industry as a whole. Since its creation, ASBU has always supported leading edge technologies and MENOS is without doubt an outstanding example of what teamwork can achieve.”