Link Research is to supply new wireless camera systems, transmitters, receivers, encoders and decoders to Australia’s Nine Network in a significant contract which will upgrade the broadcaster’s ENG trucks to the very latest digital newsgathering equipment. The order was placed through Link’s Australian agent, COMSYST.
The news trucks are to be equipped with four-input diversity wireless camera systems and direct satellite uplinks which will be able to transmit live TV pictures with no perceptible delay from outside broadcast locations.
Channel 9 has worked with equipment from Link Research for some time and has invested in Link’s wireless camera transmitters for newsgathering and flyaways. “The equipment from Link Research gives us three key functions that we need for our news teams: Flyaway, wireless camera transmitters and satellite uplinks. This makes it a very attractive choice,” said Ian Wyles, Head of OperationsAssistant Chief Engineer at Nine Network.
The Nine Network is Australia’s most highly rated television network, broadcasting right across Australia with companies in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. As such, it is Australia’s leading news service and owns the rights to many of Australia’s foremost sporting events, including the cricket, the National Rugby League and the Australian Football league. It is committed to broadcasting superior quality programming in digital and well as analogue signals.
The LinkXP wireless camera system is recognised as an outstanding product internationally and won the coveted International Association of Broadcast Manufacturer’s Peter Wayne Award in 2002. In April this year, Link Research won the British Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation in technology. Sales of LinkXP wireless camera systems are now in the hundreds, with companies such as Sky News, ABC, and NBC choosing LinkXP as they change over to digital ENG.
TV Globo of Brazil is one of the first broadcasters to order LinkXP wireless camera systems with the new wide-band transmitter and has placed an order for eight systems. Link Research’s new wide-band transmitter was first announced at NAB in April 2004 and is launched into Europe at IBC 2004. It allows the wireless camera system to operate at any frequency between 1.95 Ghz and 2.7 Ghz, to give the greatest operational flexibility. It will be useful at events where there are many broadcasters on site, making the frequencies crowded, or for working internationally, since the RF frequencies available vary from country to country.