One of Canadas largest communications companies, Rogers Media, has chosen a Quantel Enterprise sQ server-based production system for its Canadian cable television sports specialty channel, Rogers Sportsnet. System integration will be provided by Applied Electronics.
The Rogers Media system comprises eight sQ servers with 1000 hours of HD storage. Eighty-four sQ Views, 14 sQ edit software and six sQ edit plus systems, two sQ records and four sQ plays round out the news production system. Rogers Sportsnet is seen by 174,000 people a day.
Quantel is a company that understands broadcasting, said Frank Bruno, Vice President, TV Engineering for Rogers Media. They specialize in it and arent trying to be all things to all people. We opted for the sQ for many reasons–the main being that we needed to go HD and we loved Quantels easy to use interface.
In addition, the system they ultimately went with had to be proven technology. Bruno said they werent in the position nor did we want to be in a position to be the first company to use an untested product.
One of our prerequisites was the system had to support 120 users at all times, said Bruno. It had to be robust and possess built-in back up mechanisms and it had to have the toolsets for all these applications to be simple to use. Quantel met all of our criteria.
Rogers Media plans to start rehearsing with the system the first of November.
Enterprise sQ is specifically designed for live broadcasting, providing a true one-stop, no-copy production environment, with ingest, editing and playout all being achieved in the same box.