Penn State Athletics has installed 36 channels of Abekas Mira multichannel servers in three HD production control rooms on its University Park campus.
The Mira servers are used for both live instant replay and for clip playback of graphics packages, interstitials and other packaged media throughout the more than 150 live events the broadcast group covers annually.
Rec Hall, originally completed in 1928, has recently undergone several major renovations, with the latest being the addition of the Steve Jones Student Sports Broadcasting Complex, which officially was dedicated on April 19. Home to men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s volleyball, and men’s wrestling, the venue also hosts special events throughout the year.
Rec Hall houses two new control rooms with 24 channels of Mira shared between them. One is used to produce the video-board production displayed on the two large video screens installed last year. The other can provide a live signal to the Big Ten Network headquarters in Chicago. There they can air an event in HD, on the linear network, or stream it on the Big Ten Digital Network. The upgraded facilities in Rec Hall enable the athletics department to make every event available to network air, where previously budgetary considerations would have limited the number to between seven and 10 truck events annually.
