19 June 2006
Reporters Without Borders yesterday reiterated its condemnation of the arbitrary detention of Sudanese assistant cameraman Sami Al-Haj of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera, who on Monday completed his fourth year in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001, Al-Haj was handed over on 7 January 2002 to the US military, who initially held him in Afghanistan. The fourth anniversary of his transfer to Guantanamo on 13 June 2002 comes as the controversy about the detention centre has been revived by the suicides of three prisoners on 10 June.
According to his British lawyer, Clive A. Stafford-Smith, he has been questioned more than 130 times during the past four years in Guantanamo, in the course of which his interrogators have voiced threats against his family, especially his daughter. The interrogations have for the most part aimed at getting him to say there is link between Al-Jazeera and Al-Qaeda. His detention is targeted at Al-Jazeera and is an expression of the US governments open hostility towards the Qatar-based satellite news station.
19 June 2006
Germany’s broadcaster Deutsche Welle is offering a special Internet service for the duration of the Football World Cup.
The service covers all matches from the opening match to the final.
Relevant links are:
http://www.dw-world.de/wm2006 (German)
http://www.dw-world.de/worldcup (English)
http://www.dw-world.de/mundial2006 (Spanish)
http://www.dw-world.de/copa2006 (Portuguese for Brazil)
http://www.dw-world.de/championship2006 (Arabic)
http://www.dw-world.de/cup (Russian)
http://www.tor.cn (Chinese)
19 June 2006
SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company, announces today that its new satellite ASTRA 1KR has been deployed at the companys prime orbital 19.2° East and is now operational. The satellite was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral on 20 April onboard an Atlas V rocket and has now completed extensive testings of its hardware and broadcasting functionalities.
ASTRA 1KR has 32 active transponders and provides distribution of Direct-to-Home (DTH) broadcast services for SES ASTRA customers across Europe, with an extended reach into Eastern Europe. The new satellite allows SES ASTRA to replace its satellites ASTRA 1B and ASTRA 1C at the same orbital position. ASTRA 1B has reached the end of its life after 15 years of service and will be deorbited within the coming weeks.
We are very pleased that our ASTRA 1KR mission has been completed and that we can welcome a new member in the ASTRA satellite fleet, says Ferdinand Kayser, President and CEO of SES ASTRA. ASTRA 1KR will further strengthen the ASTRA fleet at our prime orbital position 19.2° East and will allow us to maintain the best possible service and quality for our customers across Europe.
19 June 2006
Harris Corporation announced that VSC Design Ltd., a leading UK-based systems integrator, has completed the installation of a turnkey project for the new HD video duplication and encoding facility at the world-renowned Abbey Road Studios in London using Harris infrastructure and test and measurement products. The contract includes an SD/HD-compliant Leitch Integrator® Gold router, a vast range of Leitch 6800+ series modular products and two Videotek® TVM-950 test and measurement instruments.
“We chose VSC Design to design, build and install the equipment layout and cabling because of their proven track record in the market compounded by the excellent support we have always received from the company,” said Tom Williams, video services manager, Abbey Road Studios. “Our choice of products was based on the fact that the Harris equipment is all SD/HD-compliant and able to seamlessly integrate into our existing infrastructure.” Martyn Hales, managing director at VSC Design, said, “We worked very closely with Harris to select products that integrated the new system into the existing infrastructure at Abbey Road. This project was commissioned, designed and installed within eight weeks and was planned to allow Abbey Road Studios a seamless transition to the new facility with minimal impact to their ongoing business.”
“We are delighted to have secured an order from such a prestigious and well-respected business as Abbey Road Studios and are pleased to collaborate with VSC Design on this project,” said Dave Dougall, vice president of sales, Europe, Africa and Middle East, Harris Broadcast Communications Division. “Abbey Road is well-known for having a technically advanced facility, and this contract is a testament to the high-quality, scalability and performance of the Harris product portfolio.”
With 100 percent digital signal processing technology, the Videotek® TVM-950 provides accurate, stable display of single or multiple Waveform, Vector, Gamut, Audio, Picture, Timing and Data Analyser functions in quadrant or full-screen views for HD/SD-SDI. The TVM-950 is capable of monitoring and displaying up to four input sources simultaneously. This precision test instrument includes advanced analysis tools, an extensive alarm set with peak level reporting, metadata, EIA-608, 708 closed caption, Teletext and XDS displays. It also monitors eight channels of analog, AES/EBU and embedded audio, with CineSound® Surround display, Dolby Digital® and Dolby® E decoding. Remote interfaces include 10/100 BaseT Ethernet and USB ports, supporting frame-capture transfer and mouse control. The TVM-950 is the flagship of the TVM series, which features a user-friendly interface with illuminated front-panel controls, a streamlined, context-sensitive pop-up menu structure and an ultra-quiet cooling system, with a modular platform design for easy field upgrades.
The 6800+ is a high-quality processing platform that provides all core processing and distribution functions in analog, SD, HD, and optical formats. Products are designed with a “core function per module” concept that ensures straightforward system designs with lower costs and higher performance. Based on the renowned 6800 platform, the 6800+ platform has been redesigned to offer integrated control and monitoring and is SNMP-friendly. The 6800+ offers a modern, future-proofed solution for any core processing infrastructure requirements.
The Integrator® Gold wideband digital multi-rate router has the capability of routing signals from 3 Mb/s to 1.5 Gb/s and offers a clear growth path from lower bit rate AES, SDI and ASI to high-bandwidth, high-definition format signals. The 8RU Integrator® Gold can easily scale from 8×8 to 128×128 in multiples of 8 I/O, and features include redundant power supplies, redundant logic cards and easy-to-use, front-loading, hot-swap capability. Integrator® Gold provides complete digital format support: HD, SDI, AES, ASI and common Telco rates and an option for SDI only. Additionally, new Integrator® Gold encoder and decoder modules support analog video via high-quality 10-bit conversion.
12 June 2006
The German public radio broadcaster (DLR) has decided to deploy NorCom’s NCPower news distribution system. By supplying this web-based news distribution system based on NCPower, NorCom will be providing Deutschlandradio with a cost-efficient solution allowing it to cut the cost of remote access by external correspondents.
Thanks to its flexible XML bus, NorCom’s NCPower WebClient ensures remote access to a whole range of content from anywhere in the world and at any time and is thus particularly suitable for use by external correspondents and in-house newsroom staff, no matter whether they are working in a hotel room, at home or in an Internet café. Access is via a normal Internet browser, meaning that no special software is required on the client computer. This simplifies administration and helps to reduce costs.
The XML bus utilized by NCPower ensures investment security as it can be integrated in many different kinds of legacy and future applications and data sources. As well as this, the open and flexible XML bus ensures swift adaptation to changes and customizing activities, accommodates enhancements and can be integrated seamlessly in existing and future IT broadcasting systems. The end-to-end web-based architecture facilitates flexible release policies. As a result, Deutschlandradio is ideally positioned to respond to future scenarios and requirements.
A further feature is the single-sign-on (SSO) system using a preregistered user ID and password. Acceptance by newsroom staff is encouraged by efficient and user-friendly applications. With its intuitive user interface, NCPower is easy to use and learn, meaning that training is hardly necessary, thus minimizing familiarization times.
NCPower WebClient: @Home, @Work, On the Move: Information anywhere, anytime. The NCPower WebClient is NorCom’s answer to market requirements for a fully web-based news distribution system reflecting the needs of the new future-proof, flexible and open IT era.
NCPower is the newsroom system within the NorCom Suite for Rich Media Content Production & Management Systems, offering customers a modern platform for uniform and transparent management of multimedia content. NCPower answers these requirements and provides a basis for innovation.
