ETSA-PCE organized a one day Industrial Visit to Doordarshan Sahayadri Kendra, Worli, Mumbai on 8th of October, 2018 for Electronics & Telecommunication engineering students. The visit was organized with prior permission and guidance of the Principal, Dr. Sandeep Joshi. It was supported by the HOD of EXTC, Dr. Avinash Vaidya, the ETSA Coordinator, Prof. Apeksha Chavan, and along with Department Faculty, Prof. Yogesh Kene. A total of 40 students, 6 committee members and 2 staff visited the company. 

The first session was conducted for almost two and a half hours, which covered the following details-

1. Line shooting and live news studio ‘C1’:

The studio ‘C1’ is on the 4th floor of the Sahyadri building where Mr. D.G.S introduced to everyone how Doordarshan works and briefed about the control room, including all the points from master switching to routing. This studio is used for live news shooting. An explaination was given about how the cameras are used in the process. All of the studios, except ‘A1’, uses SD (standard definition) cameras and gadgets. The students also became aware of how luminance cancellation is done and the green background is replaced by graphics. The news desk has a front recording camera which has a reader screen infused so that the reporter sees into the camera behind the screen and reads the content on the screen. The recording room has a set of three main FHD cameras and two side supporting cameras.

2. Playback Studio:

This is the studio where the video and audio mixing takes place of the contents recorded in the live news room. In the case of live recording real time video and audio, mixing is done and the broadcasting content is sent for the transmission and the signal from the server is sent or received and broadcasted.

3. A-1 FHD room:

This room has a 5.1 dolby surround sound setup with all around acoustic padding and a control setup for live programs performed on stage area below this control room which has a full equalizer and sound mixing production setup where the sound engineer Mr. Ashok Bhidwani with the producer, produces the optimum equalization of the performance carried on the stage studio. The students learned about acoustic concepts, the sound panning and information about different types of microphones like ribbon, condense and dynamic type. Demonstration of the sound equalization was shown and the students saw how the syncing is done between the control room and the stage microphones and how the master sound is processed.

• Session 2:

After the break we got ready for the transmission tower tour, where we were taken to the server room which consisted of the channel setup of Doordarshan and besides the transmission tower line room, we could see the SD channels and their specifications and the HD channels and their specifications as HDTV DTT CH#27 Freq-522MHz and SDTV DTT CH#21 Freq-474MHz. Then we visited the power control room which had the cooling system around broad transmission and reception signal coils connected to the power supply which was sidely supported by dummy load for the case if one line is to be maintained then the dummy load is used to direct and control the power flow of the Tower. Mr. Rajendra explained about the DTT and ATT (Analog TT) where he explained about DSNG – direct satellite news gathering which is accomplished through OB- outdoor broadcasting setup which is an outdoor coverage package in a broadcasting van consisting of IRD monitoring right and 2 encoders 2 power amplifiers and waveguide switches having 2- C band and 1 K band specification. We then advanced to the transmission tower and radar systems of Doordarshan. The transmission tower is about 1000 feet tall which is being maintained twice or thrice a year. We saw radars such as GSAT10 and others of C-band and K band explained by Rajendra sir in full.

This industrial visit was conducted for the T.E. EXTC students. We were done with our visit by 4.30pm. This report is concluded by the fact that it was a very important and informational visit to Doordarshan where everyone had a great experience and gained practical knowledge about broadcasting, transmission, production, processing and reception of audio & video signal and television concepts. The event was organised under ETSA Coordinator, Prof. Apeksha Chavan, Department faculty, Prof. Yogesh Kene and the HOD of EXTC, Dr. Avinash Vaidya’s guidance.