Technology brief
Australian commercial television broadcaster The Seven Network has
confirmed orders for Quantel’s generationQ integrated news/sport
production technology for its stations in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.
ThegenerationQsystemsarereplacingexistingtape-based lineartechnology
at each of the state capital television stations. In addition, generationQ
orders have alsobeenplaced for theSevenNetwork’s broadcast Centre in
Melbourne, providing additional news andproduction services.
Officially announced at SMPTE
2003 (Society of Motion Picture
and Television Engineers)
Conference and Exhibition in
Darling Harbour, Sydney, the
generationQ orders follow the
success of the Seven Network’s
broadcast Centre in Melbourne
which utilised Quantel server
technology to re-equip and
centralise its entire broadcast
operation.
The sQServer technology at the
heart of generationQ for News
has been embracedglobally over
the past twelve months.
sQServer is a completely new
architecture for news and live
production, offering complete
scalability, industry standard
compression schemes, withboth
broadcast quality and browse
images heldon the same storage
and controlled by a single database. These unique attributes made it a
key choice for the Seven Network.
The generationQ editing products for news and live production including
QView, QCut and QEdit Pro have also been ordered by the broadcaster.
IntegratedwiththesQServer,theyformacomplete,totally integratedsolution
for newsproductionandsportsbroadcasting. They areall PC-basedwitha
consistent timeline interface. Thismeans training is simple and users once
confident can easilymigrate across the different production tasks.
David Aspinall, Chief Operating Officer, Seven Network, said, “The
replacement of our linear facilities in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane
completes Seven’s digital rollout in those markets. The Quantel
generationQ system matches our requirements and gives Seven an
unparalleled competitive edge in each of the cities.”
Quantel is a member of the AIB.
Singapore’s only cable TV operator, StarHub, has chosen Thomson as
the key technology partner in the launch of StarHub’s digital cable
services and the continued expansion of Singapore’s largest video
distribution facility. Thomson is to provide professional equipment and
integration services to enable StarHub to convert its 400,000 cable TV
subscribers to digital in the year ahead.
The $16 million deal includes the installation of a full range of Grass
Valley router, router control andmodular products fromThomson as well
asNextreamencoders andmultiplexing technology. Additionally, StarHub
has appointed Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions as the prime
contractor and overall systems integrator of its digital cable Services
facility, which will augment StarHub’s $600 million broadband network.
Other services currently offered on the StarHub network include cable
TV, MaxOnline high-speed cable modem and digital voice services.
“We selected Thomson based on its established engineering expertise in
digitalacquisition,production,compressionandtransmission,”saidThomas
Ee, StarHub’sSenior VicePresident, OnlineServices. “When considering a
project of this size, it was important to us that the system integrator has a
strong local sales and support presence and the technical knowledge to
make it all work. Thomson alsodistinguished itself because of its extensive
product range, representingan important single technology source for us.”
StarHubcurrentlyoperatesananalogue facilitywhichwill remain inoperation
for several years. StarHubwill progressively phaseout its analogue facilities,
as subscriber demand for digital cable services increases.
Galaxy Satellite Broadcasting based in Hong Kong has awarded a
contract for provision of its transmission system to Tandberg Television.
It will see the company provide a complete compression and broadcast
delivery system, as well as deploying its professional services expertise
to manage the integration of third-party solutions such as conditional
access, subscriber management, middleware and set-top-boxes.
“As Asia’s newest pay-TV systemwe received a lot of interest to help us
build our delivery network from the major compression and broadcast
solutions manufacturers,” said Stanley Tang, COO of Galaxy Satellite
Broadcasting Limited (Galaxy). “We selected TANDBERG Television
because of the company’s strong presence in Asia and its unrivalled
expertise and experience gained frombuildingmany of the world’smajor
DTH satellite systems. The company’s products are recognised as being
industry leading in terms of efficiency and operational cost-effectiveness.”
Tandberg Television will provide a multi-channel transmission solution
with built-in expandability based on its evolution 5000 satellite delivery
solutions including award-winning MPEG-2 compression, modulation,
multiplexing and decoding. The company’s engineering and systems
integration teams will work closely with Galaxy’s own technical experts
to manage the integration of the entire system.
“This is one of themost exciting newbroadcast projects in Asia for some
time and we are delighted that Galaxy has chosen Tandberg Television
to play such an integral technology and systems integration role. I am
confident that the strength of our products and our engineering
experience will enable us to make a significant contribution towards
Galaxy’s plans for an innovative pay-TV service in Hong Kong,” says
GrahamCradock, General Manager of Tandberg Television Asia Pacific.
Galaxy is an all-digital multi-channel service, jointly owned by Intelsat and
Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB). The service will feature a range of
premiumCantoneseandotherChinese-languageprogrammingexclusively
supplied by TVB, including a 24-hour news channel. The Cantonese-
language programming is targeted at the more than 90 percent of the
Hong Kong population that speak the language. Galaxy subscribers will
also receive international news, documentary, information, movie and
other entertainment channels. The Galaxy service will be uplinked from
Galaxy’s teleport in Hong Kong over an Intelsat VII series satellite.
BBC Post Production - Design Bristol has created all of the content
design in Smart Sharks, a BBC Natural History Unit/Discovery co-
production which gets its first UK airing at the end of July.
The programme which is introduced and narrated by renowned natural
history expert Sir David Attenborough uses a specially designed robotic
shark to filmand capture shark behaviour and to explode themyth of the
shark as a purely killing machine.
‘Roboshark’, the latest technological breakthrough in wildlife filming,
has been sent into the depths of the ocean to observe the behaviour of
the most dangerous sharks in the world including the bull, the tiger and
the great white. Operated via remote control, the team has been able to
Quantel’s sQServer
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