Technical background

NAVA's objectives are selection, recording, processing and providing availability of the Hungary-related audiovisual content broadcast by Hungarian radio and television broadcasting companies to the public. For financial, technical and organizational reasons, the objectives can only be accomplished gradually. At first, we have to put the following restraints on the scope of collection:

 public service televisions (MTV1, MTV2, Duna TV),
 national terrestrial broadcasting commercial television channels (TV2, RTL Klub),
 a period following a given moment.

The catalogue of the archives is accessible for internet users without limitations, the content can be viewed through the dedicated network of NAVA endpoints. Concerning media streamings, with regard to the technical conditions at the endpoints and NAVA's financial opportunities, we restricted the number of endpoints in the first phase. The members of the dedicated network (NAVA points) are:

 libraries providing public services,
 institutions serving the aim of school education,
 museum institutions,
 record offices,
 picture and sound archives.

In point of the technical system, the following requirements arise from these border conditions (based on the programme structure and the preliminary analysis of consumers' reception facilities):

 recording 5 input video channels,
 storing video recordings of 25,000 hours a year (38 hours a day),
 generating and storing descriptive data of 100,000 programme items a year.

NAVA is a completely digital system, even the media storage is carried out in a data format.
While choosing the formats, our concept is that the accessible quality should follow the broadcasting quality provided by the given broadcasting company and it should provide extended services at the band width largely offered by internet service providers. Storing at a reutilizable quality is not a primary objective.

NAVA’s storage quality (open standard): MPEG2, MP@ML (720x576, 25 fps), CBR 8MBps.

NAVA’s service quality (free player): RealMedia, 384x288, 25fps, 512 kbps, RV10 + RA8.

NAVA's servicing interface, practically just as its internal structure, entirely complies with international (where applicable, open) standards, recommendations and initiatives, thus providing an opportunity for easy connection to other archives. The most important connecting points are:

 Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG),
 Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), 
 European Broadcasting Union (EBU), 
 Open Archives Initiative (OAI).