Arena TV used Snell upconverter for BBC’s coverage of rugby tournament
The Quasar Ph.C HDTV upconverter from Snell & Wilcox, with its motion compensation technology, was used by Arena TV, one of the UK’s largest privately owned supplier of outdoor broadcast (OB) services, to provide an HD feed of the RBS 6 Nations Championship for BBC Outside Broadcasts. In its first use for a UK sports event, the Quasar Ph.C was installed in Arena’s HD7 OB unit at Twickenham to upconvert the output of the Red Bee Media Piero graphics system so its 3-D models of play meshed smoothly with feeds from the 23 HD cameras at the stadium.
The RBS 6 Nations Championship took place during seven weekends from Feb. 3 through March 17, featuring matches among rugby teams from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy. The 2007 tournament was the first to be broadcast in HD as part of the BBC’s HD trial on cable, satellite and DTT. All home matches for England, Scotland and Wales were broadcast in HD. When play concluded on Saturday, March 17, France was the overall winner.
For more information, visit www.snellwilcox.com.
ESPN and Verizon Wireless team for mobile sports content
Verizon Wireless has been named exclusive wireless service provider for ESPN MVP, the sports network’s mobile, on-demand service that offers news, scores and more.
The service also offers features exclusive to Verizon Wireless V Cast subscribers, including fantasy team management; select ESPN Insider content; and ESPN Bottomline. V Cast subscribers can also customize the service on their wireless handset based on favorite teams, players and columnists.
For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com/espn.
Front Porch Digital supports Dutch soccer coverage
UBF, one of the largest broadcast post operations in the Netherlands, is using a DIVArchive content storage management system from Front Porch Digital in its facility in Hilversum. The DIVArchive system supports a new production workflow created by UBF to support industry-leading production standards in the sports broadcast field.
UBF provides a wide range of services to the Dutch broadcast market and supplies content to most major European countries. Using Front Porch Digital technology, the goal was to develop an all-tapeless operation and a powerful content storage management system. The company’s workflow for soccer coverage is based on Quantel Qserver production systems and a Dalet MAM layer, with DIVArchive managing the content storage.
The company will also expand the use of the DIVArchive to its Avid ISIS-Interplay production platform.
For more information, visit www.fpdigital.com.
