26 January 2006
GlobeCast, a global content management and delivery company, was chosen by France Telecoms IPTV arm MaLigne TV for technical management of the French operators newest IPTV bouquet, Le Bouquet TV, beginning with its launch on February 1st.
From its technical operations center in central Paris, GlobeCast will be responsible for aggregating and managing Le Bouquet TV, which will offer thirty general and thematic channels. GlobeCasts solution for France Telecom includes satellite downlink of the channels, MPEG-4 encoding, multiplexing, IP encapsulation and 24×7 supervision. GlobeCast will also create two mosaic index screens to provide viewers with an overview of all channels simultaneously. The finished bouquet will be distributed by MaLigne TV to its subscribers via France Telecoms broadband Internet network.
The MaLigne TV service, which delivers television content over the subscribers broadband Internet connection directly to the TV set, also offers premium bouquets through TPS and Canal+ Group, as well as Video-on-Demand.
GlobeCast, a France Telecom subsidiary, has been working on projects with MaLigne TV since the service launched in 2003. Most recently, GlobeCast collaborated with the IPTV provider to aggregate and manage an interactive TV bouquet during the French Tennis Open in the Spring of 2005.
26 January 2006
Al Jazeera International, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel, headquartered in Doha, has appointed Felicity Barr as presenter and Lauren Taylor as correspondent for their London broadcast centre.
Felicity will be the female presenter of Al Jazeera International’s London based broadcast centre and will co-present the news with Stephen Cole, former senior presenter for BBC World. She joins the channel from ITN where she presented various flagship programmes including the ITV Evening News and the sport on the ITV News at Ten Thirty. Felicity brings to the job nearly fifteen years of presenting and reporting experience. Felicity joined ITV News in 2001 and for the past 3 years she presented three hours of rolling news on the ITV News Channel every day. She has dealt with major breaking news stories from across the globe including the Iraq war, last year’s Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Felicity is also an experienced “on location” presenter, covering stories such as the London terror attacks in July 2005 and the Athens Olympics under hugely challenging circumstances with great authority and insight. “I am thrilled to be joining Al Jazeera International at its inception and am really looking forward to being part of this very exciting project – to bring to the English speaking world a fresh perspective on world news and current affairs,” Felicity said.
Lauren Taylor meanwhile joins the channel as correspondent in the London broadcast centre alongside Alan Fisher, formerly Chief Correspondent at GMTV. Lauren was previously Economics Correspondent for ITV News. Prior to that she worked as a News Correspondent for ITV News. Recent assignments have included covering the UK 2005 election and reporting live on the night of the US 2004 Presidential Election from the Bush headquarters.
Speaking on the appointments from the channels headquarters in Doha, Director of News Steve Clark said, I have long admired both of these journalists and am delighted to finally have them on board. They will add a new dimension to our European news coverage.
As we gear up for launch in the Spring of this year well be revealing more details of our on-screen line-up and will be announcing further presenters for our other broadcast centres, strategically placed around the world in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington D.C., continued Steve Clark.
26 January 2006
Arqivas Satellite Media Solutions division supplied production facilities for the live ESA TV transmission of the launch of Giove-A, the first European Galileo system satellite to rival the USAs GPS, for the European Space Agencys production company World Wide Pictures. The footage involved handling multiple feeds: inbound from World Wides team at the Baikonur Cosmodrome as well as live telemetry data from the Soyuz rocket; and outbound full programme from the ground station at Guildfords Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and also via videoconference link to Paris.
Coverage was extensive ESA monitoring indicated 100 million viewers on 28 December alone.
We needed news-scale trucks with OB-style control, including comprehensive camera racking, matrix switchers and vision mixers, said World Wide Pictures MD and producer Chris Courtenay Taylor. Arqiva had such vehicles and its flexibility and technical expertise helped us ensure that a complex, multi-path production achieved the client news objectives for the launch of an extremely important European project.
The Galileo launch had international significance says Arqivas ad-hoc sales manager Nigel Crow. It was especially important to demonstrate SSTLs role and we were delighted to be transmitting live from there with footage that achieved significant coverage not just on BBC, ITV, C4, Sky and CNN but actually across most of continental Europe.
26 January 2006
Harris Corporation announced that Paxson Communications Corporation, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, will standardize on the Leitch DTP turnaround processor throughout its nationwide broadcast television distribution system. Paxson has ordered 56 DTP-220 systems to support its group of television stations, 52 of which are currently on air in digital.
The DTP is an all-MPEG-2 compressed stream processor that allows broadcasters to overlay graphics/logos on pre-compressed high-definition and standard-definition streams inexpensively and with superior video quality. Working entirely in the compressed domain, the DTP enables broadcasters to decrease storage requirements, lower distribution costs and streamline operations as a result of having smaller files and narrower pipes to manage.
With 52 of our stations already broadcasting in digital, we were looking to acquire flexible equipment that is essentially ready to go out of the box equipment we can install across the board in all our stations, no matter what the size of the operation or the level of technical expertise on-site, said Dave Glenn, vice president of engineering for Paxson Communications. We wanted a system that would enable multicasting, bit-stream splicing, Emergency Alert System (EAS) insertion and control via IP, and the Leitch DTP was the only system that could do it all. We evaluated the market for several months before making the final decision, and the DTP out-performed all the top competitors.
The DTP provides MPEG-2 switching and stat mux for one HD program combined with two SD programs, or up to six SD programs, and offers broadcasters many unique benefits. Complete control of the DTP is possible via IP connections. Its flexible software architecture allows new features to be rolled out quickly and efficiently in most cases by doing software-only updates to units in the field. The DTP allows a remotely encoded DTV signal to be localized with such applications as logo overlays, crawls, time and temperature, stock information, and local weather and news, enabling content owners to derive additional revenue from their national content by making it more relevant to local audiences. In addition, by avoiding artifact-inducing MPEG decode/re-encode concatenation, the original MPEG stream picture quality is preserved to the greatest extent possible.
We are very pleased that Paxson has once again chosen Leitch equipment to support its transition to digital, said Tim Thorsteinson, president of Leitch, which is part of the Broadcast Communications Division of Harris Corporation. Paxson has relied on our Videotek® Signal Quality Manager® for remote monitoring and quality assurance for several years, so the companys decision to standardize on our DTP not only represents a significant sale for our company, but also reinforces our continuing relationship with the largest television station group owner in the U.S.
24 January 2006
WRN, the London-based international transmission service company, today announced the launch of its online Interactive Forums, which will help to create a roadmap for the future development and strengthening of international radio.
Each of the five online Interactive Forums will be hosted by a WRN member of staff with delegate participation via the Internet and instant messaging. The Forums will cover a range of topics specifically relevant to international radio including new technology (DRM and DVB), Broadcast and Platform Solutions, pan-European co-productions and how to develop deeper interaction with listeners. The first Interactive Forum is on Tuesday 14th February at 1000 UTC (1100 CET). A full schedule for the Forums can be found at www.wrn.org/clientforum
WRN has developed its Interactive Forums to offer a neutral space that brings together practitioners in international radio, and others, to grapple with the challenges of the digital age where the nature of radio is rapidly changing: the ways to broadcast, the ways to listen, the platforms, the content, how listeners interact with stations, the choice of stations. The WRN Forums provide the opportunity for practitioners to come together and share their ideas and opinions, experiences and lessons, their successes, case studies and best practice and to take back practical ideas and solutions for input into their own organisations.
WRNs Sophie Wilson, who is project managing this initiative says: These Interactive Forums follow on from our successful inaugural event held in Bratislava, Slovakia where more than twenty international radio practitioners came together to initiate discussions about our industry. These next five Interactive Forums offer all those working in international radio the chance to join in this stimulating and timely debate.
