UK broadcast rental equipment firm Presteigne Charter has been awarded the contract to provide technical facilities for UK broadcasters ITV and BBC for the World Cup.
With responsibility for providing post production, interactive production and facilities for feeding mixes of live coverage to the main London production centers, Presteigne Charter is supplying semipermanent studio installations in the international broadcast center, which incorporates Soccer City, in Johannesburg, and various locations in Cape Town.
Presteigne Charter will provide most equipment from its own vast inventory including EVS XT[2] servers integrated with Avid and Final Cut Pro and Sony HDC1500 cameras for studio work. It will also supply JIX cranes and MiniCam HD cameras, which feature pan, tilt and zoom mechanisms and are regularly used to cover English Premier League soccer matches. On the audio side, Lawo mc2 audio mixers will be supplied. These will work in conjunction with Grass Valley and Harris routers to provide embedded audio solutions. A new SDI audio interface product, called Sam64, co-developed by 4HM and Presteigne Charter, will also be provided and will work in tandem with the routers and Lawo mixers. The majority of its clients work in HD with Dolby 5.1 capability.
For ITV, it is supplying Sony HDW 750 HD cameras. The BBC is supplying its own Panasonic P2’s for ENG work. Apart from the BBC and ITV, Presteigne Charter is also providing facilities and 40 personnel for Input Media (including stand-alone cameras in two RF standup positions at Cape Town), Sky GmbH and RTL. “Some of the smaller projects will be built as fly packs,” said company chief executive Mike Ransome. “However, ITV and the BBC have more of a semipermanent integrated solution. Most of the kit will be sent via air and sea, with sea freight travel beginning April 13.”
Over the same period as the World Cup, Presteigne Charter is also providing facilities for regular clients at events such as the French Open Tennis, Wimbledon and Formula One.
