Golf Channel Latin America (GCLA) has installed a new infrastructure to support the 24/7 airing of continuous Spanish-language golf programming daily to Latin America and Brazil. That includes up to 12 hours of regional programming in addition to Spanish-dubbed content from the USA Golf Channel.
The station called on Buenos Aires, Argentina, partner Hardata to develop the complete infrastructure, from transmission lines and satellite ground station to full digital video production facility. Most of the GCLA technical staff and the Hardata engineering team were former colleagues at América TV Channel 2 in Buenos Aires.
The Golf Channel’s 400sq-m broadcast center houses a 12-person production team along with four staff journalists for transmissions. The master control center is built on an optical fiber transmission backbone, and the heart of the all-digital production center is a pair of 360 Systems’ servers controlled by Hardata’s HDX automation platform.
The flow of content from satellite ingest to playout is fully automated. Because the Image Server is compatible with Final Cut Pro, the production team can import program files directly from the server, then assemble and sequence playlists with the server’s interface. Playout is fully automated by the Hardata HDX, controlling the Image Server’s SDI output channels.
