Liverpool Football Club TV (FC.TV) has expanded its Internet streaming capabilities with the purchase of a ViewCast Niagara 6116 SDI encoder, with which the Internet broadcaster will provide live coverage of soccer matches.
FC.TV owns the exclusive rights to webcast most of the preseason games, and the company said it will use the Niagra encoder to provide live broadcasts, online news, interviews, features and documentaries from its recently completed LFC TV broadcast studio.
FC.TV has been using Viewcast Osprey cards since 2001 as the engine for its webcasting service. The new Niagara 6116 enables FC.TV to stream live matches at high quality directly from the incoming SDI signal.
The first game streamed by Liverpool using its new encoder was during a match with the Glasgow Rangers Aug. 2. The event was not available as an on-air broadcast but was available online and accessible to viewers throughout the world.
The ViewCast Niagara 6116 provides single-channel analog and digital processing. It joins a family of preconfigured encoding solutions that enable webcasters to capture and stream high-quality audio and video. Applications include video capture to file for archiving as well as repurposing video for Internet distribution.
Originally a joint venture between Liverpool Football Club and ITV established in 2000, Liverpool FC.TV is the media arm of the club and has pioneered the use of media technologies. The official LFC Web site (http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/) is one of the most visited football club Web sites in the world.
Veteran systems integrator ATG Broadcast supplied the order.
For more information, visit http://www.atgbroadcast.co.uk/.
