CBS deploys DVB-S2 for HD distribution of NCAA tournament

Last night’s NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship game between the Michigan State Spartans and the North Carolina Tar Heels not only was the culmination of a long, arduous path for the players and coaches but also for CBS Sports, which was responsible for production and distribution of the tournament.

Making CBS’s burden a little lighter this year, however, was the deployment of DVB-S2, which helped to provide greater bandwidth efficiency for outbound satellite distribution to CBS affiliates of the network’s HD tournament coverage. This DVB-S2 implementation relied on technology from Harris.

Harris, in its fourth year as a sponsor of CBS’s HD tournament coverage, supplied the network with its NetVX video networking system, which was used for signal backhaul from all the NCAA venues to the CBS Television Network in New York City, as well as for satellite distribution of the network’s coverage of the games to CBS affiliates nationwide.

According to John Mailhot, general manager of the Harris video networking group, the Harris NetVX and NetPlus 300 HD receiver/decoder helped CBS realize those greater DVB-S2 efficiencies.

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Phil Kurz

Phil Kurz is a contributing editor to TV Tech. He has written about TV and video technology for more than 30 years and served as editor of three leading industry magazines. He earned a Bachelor of Journalism and a Master’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.