21 May 2005
To mark the French Open at Roland Garros from May 23rd to June 5th, the France Télécom Group is offering “Tennis Everywhere”, a multi-access audiovisual offer that will give the public the opportunity to follow the tournament, live or taped, whatever network they use. For this offer, MaLigne tv and GlobeCast, a subsidiary of France Télécom, have partnered to develop a package of television channels that will allow viewers to watch live broadcast of all matches on the seven main courts at Roland Garros.
With MaLigne tv, tennis fans will be able to watch the matches in digital quality, without interruption or commercial breaks. An optional commentary by France Télévisions sports journalists will be available. There is no additional subscription or surcharge for subscribers to MaLigne tv who have a pay-TV package.
GlobeCast will transmit the programs over fiber optics from the French Open to the MaLigne tv IP video headend. The audiovisual signals will travel through the GlobeCast technical center in Paris where they will be encoded in MPEG2, multiplexed, then encapsulated in an IP flow to create the program package.
In addition to seven television channels, the package will include a mosaic screen to allow simultaneous viewing of the seven programs. MaLigne tv will also offer an exclusive Video on Demand (VoD) service so that viewers can follow the tournament based on their own schedules. They will be able to view matches whenever they like. The day’s tape will be made available just a few hours after the end of the match. Viewers can then watch the parts of the tape they want whenever they choose.
This service, exclusively for MaLigne tv subscribers, will be provided via a fully secure pay-per-view system. And a schedule of legendary matches (a retrospective on the 2004 tournament, the 1983 Noah-Wilander final and more) is available as of May14th. Each match will cost between 1 and 3 euros to view.
21 May 2005
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) announced on 12 May a significant increase in satellite television news broadcast into Iran.
The Voice of America (VOA) programme News & Views, which for nearly two years has been a nightly 30-minute direct-to-home satellite TV broadcast, is doubling in length leading up to Irans June 17th presidential election. The hour-long Persian-language programme will now air five times a day: the original show live during Irans prime time, plus four repeats with updates as events warrant.
News & Views is covering the election, the reformist candidates, and the calls to boycott the election and for a new referendum. The expanded coverage, funded by the emergency spending bill just passed into law, will be in addition to News & Views regular news reporting, offering news from Iran along with world news round-ups, analyses of issues and events, and special interest and cultural features. The longer show will also feature a womens segment, business and medical reports, and reports from correspondents covering news from Washington, D.C.
Strong coverage of what’s happening in Iran and whats happening around the world is one of the most important things America can do for the Iranian people. These five hours will effectively cover prime time, said BBG chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson. By placing expansion of TV to Iran in the supplemental, the Bush White House and Congress demonstrated its support for what international broadcasting is doing in that part of the world.
The supplemental appropriation includes $7.3 million for the BBG to support expansion of programming to the broader Middle East, including expanding Arabic-language Alhurra satellite television to Europe. The BBG continues to blanket Iran with 24/7 radio broadcasting by VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
21 May 2005
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is set to make cinema history; not just in the box office but in its use of cutting edge DI technology. Most impressive is the thousands of hours of work put in by the ILM team to create a movie that sets a new benchmark in film.
Fred Myers, ILMs Principal Engineer, said, We built a very efficient digital pipeline for Episode III which allowed us to get Georges vision for the project up on the screen in an interactive way. The technical scope of Episode III meant we couldnt afford the delays of software/proxy based rendered color correction, given the scale of editorial and the reality of so many complicated CG shots delivering in the final weeks of the post production schedule.
Lucasfilm is all about innovation and pushing boundaries and the guys at Quantel share our vision. Myers continued, On Episode III, iQ played a key workflow role in mastering the movie and creating the digital intermediate. It was the final stop in building the reels to assemble the film out and record the digital cinema master. It was used to create the opticals the digital wipes and dissolve transitions between the scenes, as well as to slot in last minute updates. All the HD and 444 deliverables, the theatrical trailers and many screening reels were run through iQ.
We first used iQ on Episode II as a colour grading hub in its very early form. The thing we really liked was being able to work with the actual 10bit RGB frames up on the screen. If we made changes while on the system, we could export them and move on, knowing the image integrity was maintained. As the iQ toolset grew we used it on more and more projects including restoration of THX1138 and the original Star Wars Trilogy, concluded Myers.
“Having worked with Quantel so successfully on Episode II, the logical thing for us was to purchase an iQ specifically for Episode III,” said Star Wars Producer, Rick McCallum. Quantel is fantastic to work with, and they are there in an instant when you need support. With something as complex as Episode III we couldnt afford to screw around. Before we could get a call back from the competition, Quantel was in-house with something that actually worked. Their iQ is a liberating technology for film-makers.
Quantel Marketing Manager Mark Horton said, The more you watch of Episode III the more you appreciate what a ground breaking movie it is. The great thing about ILM has always been that they push the industry forward. Were proud to have played a part in helping them make yet more cinema history.
At NAB 2005, Quantel launched the Newsbox range of pre-packaged integrated news production systems. The pre-packaged approach of Newsbox ensures that server-based production need no longer be regarded as a major systems purchase. Newsbox is a convenient, self-contained unit that comes with all that is needed to ingest material, view rushes, choose shots, edit stories, review finished pieces and play them out to air. Its common progressive user interface and toolset are exactly the same as all the sQ systems from Quantel that are powering the news operations of some of the worlds greatest broadcasters. New ingest and playout automation from Quantel completes the Newsbox package, making it in effect the worlds first self-automating server. The Newsbox difference comes in the packaging of the server, which has been re-engineered to bring a new level of compactness and affordability a complete and very powerful, one-stop news shop from just $199K. Now every broadcaster, no matter what their market size, can benefit from the magic of the Quantel news workflow. A complete Newsbox system can fit into two 24 inch flightcases and can be up and running on location in a couple of minutes.
21 May 2005
Five Institutional and three new Affiliate members were approved for admission to the ABU by the Administrative Council at its half-yearly meeting in Islamabad.
The Institutional members are the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Prix Jeunesse, the World DAB Forum, the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Consortium and the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB).
These are the first Institutional members to be admitted to the ABU following the approval of changes to the ABU Statutes by the Almaty General Assembly last year.
The Institutional membership category is designed for organisations with which the ABU seeks closer relationships through reciprocal membership arrangements. Admission is by the invitation of the Administrative Council.
The three new Affiliate memberships approved were National Geographic Venture, USA; Multi Carrier (Mauritius) Ltd; and Network 1 Pvt Ltd, India.
The Administrative Council also agreed to have the applications from four broadcasters for Additional Full and Associate membership submitted to the Full members for balloting.
The ABU now has 148 members in 55 countries and special administrative regions.
The 78th Administrative Council meeting was hosted by PTV Pakistan. The Council accepted an invitation from Radio Television Maldives to hold next years half-yearly meeting in the Maldives.
21 May 2005
Harris Corporation announced that Siemens Business Services has purchased its NetVX high-speed integrated video transport networking system for BBC News following a successful test during coverage of the U.S. presidential election.
Towards the end of last year BBC News was in the process of digitizing its Washington Bureau so the election became the ideal event to test the capabilities of NetVX. Within two days NetVX was installed to enable the BBC to use parallel networks for contributions to and from Washington. Among other benefits, NetVX makes it easy to switch from one type of network to another – the easiest and most cost-effective technology available to do this today.
NetVX provides an infinitely flexible platform that can handle multiple packet-based architectures such as ATM and IP over multiple networks such as microwave and satellite, and provide the same, and often greater, level of functionality than would previously be found in a myriad of individual hardwired components. Further, NetVX can scale to meet the BBC’s future requirements. With NetVX, analogue or digital video, audio, and/or data can be transported over any combination of networks simultaneously. NetVX systems can support various contribution and/or distribution applications including point-to-point or point-to-multipoint, local or centralized, unidirectional or bi-directional.
Siemens Business Services has a 10-year partnership with the BBC to deliver technology services to the BBC; where relevant, the company works with third parties – such as Harris – to deliver specific services.
“The BBC is recognized as one of the most trusted sources for news worldwide,” said Jim Denny, vice president and general manager of Harris Broadcast Communications Division’s Networking and Government Solutions business unit. “We are pleased to be able to provide an integrated platform that helps to ensure the reliability of their broadcasts.”
