Bury St Edmunds, U.K.: Sky Deutschland has launched its new channel, Sky Sport News HD, using Vitec’s Videocom gear for production automation. Vitec’s contribution includes Autoscript prompting, low energy LED lighting from Litepanels and Vinten Radamec broadcast camera robotics.
Rather than isolate the channel presentation and programming in a separate studio, Sky Deutschland has elected to build a 360-degree studio space in the center of the newsroom it has built for the launch of the channel. The challenge for the designers was to maintain very high production values in the confined space, not least the limited headroom of approximately 4 meters.
Central to the design was the use of a camera robotic system featuring six Vinten Radamec Fusion FP-188 robotic pedestals with FH-100 heads. These, along with two Telemetrics cameras, are controlled by the Vinten Radamec HDVRC.
A large number of pre-set positions are programmed into the controller in advance, and during transmission camera angles are selected by the Mosart production automation system. This means that, during normal programming, the studio needs no operator for cameras, with the floor manager providing any manual adjustments necessary to accommodate guests.
Sky Deutschland considered energy reduction important, and the limited ceiling height would have caused problems of excessive heating using conventional fixtures, hence the selection of Litepanels’ LEDs.
The Sky Sports News HD channel launched on the Sky Deutschland platform on Dec. 1, 2011.
