OAKLAND, CA - As director of multimedia services for the Oakland Athletics, David Don is responsible for the in-stadium video display presentation for all 81 of the A's home games. Don knows that high-quality, top-of-the-line equipment is essential in order to put on the best show possible which is why he turned to RF Central's RFX-CMT-II transmitter and RMR-X6-II receiver.
"It became more and more apparent to me that the quality of the system we were using was not as good as we wanted," comments Don on the system prior to the purchase of his new RF Central Equipment. "The frequency spectrum was getting more and more crowded and it was difficult to get quality shots consistently throughout the game. The decision was made to replace our existing equipment and we began looking around for a system that could meet our requirements both from a production stand point as well as a financial one."
Don had settled on a competitor's product that promised foul pole to foul pole coverage until he met RF Extreme Vice President - Sports & Entertainment Group's Anthony Sangiovanni at the IDEA Conference this past winter in Scottsdale, AZ.
"In talking with Anthony, he asked me for five minutes to explain everything about the RF Central CMT-II and X6-II," adds Don. "Pressed for time, I reluctantly agreed to listen to Anthony and I'm glad I did. In five minutes he showed off the equipment and I was immediately impressed. It was pretty simple to operate, capable of providing much greater coverage than what we were going to purchase and so I asked Anthony to come out to Oakland to give us a full demonstration."
In preparation for the demo, Sangiovanni had all of the equipment shipped out to Oakland. "The demo was great," continues Don. "It didn't take long to set-up the equipment. We started walking around the stadium and shooting video. We went to parts of the stadium where we had previously had some problems and we were immediately successful in producing good stable images. The quality of the picture was excellent and we were pleased with what we saw."
Eager to show the Athletics just how far the CMT-II's signal coverage was capable of reaching, Sangiovanni and Don walked outside of the stadium and were shooting pictures from over half a
mile away and were still able to project on the stadium's video display. "We were all blown away by the ability of the CMT-II to maintain its signal in areas and distances we never thought possible," adds Don. "We knew we had to have this system and so we purchased one prior to the start of this season. It has far exceeded our expectations."
The license-free 5.8 GHz CMT-II unit is ideal for sports and remote production applications, offering superb signal coverage and reliability. The CMT-II is offered in either HD/SD or SD models, each featuring the latest in high-quality, low latency encoding technology. The units are also available in licensed 2 GHz and 6.4 GHz versions. All versions feature inputs of HD or SD-SDI, ASI and composite video signals.
The CMT-II family of transmitters are available in either HD/SD or SD only versions and interface with all standard full-sized broadcast cameras as well as most smaller format camcorders, via the user specific mounting adapters.
Representing the latest in maximum ratio combining technology, the X6-II family offers superior diversity reception with new cutting-edge features, including On Screen Display of stream data, Ethernet monitoring for remote control access and IP encapsulation for Internet streaming broadcasts. The X6-II is available either as a stand alone COFDM receiver with ASI output or with an integral HD/SD decoder making local decode and control available.
