SVG Europe Correspondent Ascent Media Network Services has opened a new Media Centre at its London headquarters to provide facilities for coverage of major sports events, as well as for encoding and preparing material to be played out from the company's European Transmission Centre (ETC). With the ETC concentrating on transmitting 14 television channels across Europe, including Disney Cinemagic in French, the media giant's first branded HD service, and Sony Pictures Television International (SPTI), a facility was needed to ingest and transcode programmes and offer studio facilities for more occasional customers. The Media Centre features a Pro-Bel Morpheus Media Management (M3) automation system for ingest and transcoding, connected to a Harris Platinum 512x512 router, which directs material not just around the building but also over Ascent's company network to offices in New York, Los Angeles and Singapore. Both work in conjunction with Viia, a software, hardware and technical operations platform developed jointly by Ascent Media and Hewlett-Packard. The facility also houses two production suites, with voice booths and basic vision and audio mixers and graphics equipment. These can be hired by broadcasters covering big one-off events and recently have been used for presentation and commentary on European championship football matches. To bring in feeds and broadcast complete programmes Ascent has communication circuits to the BT Tower. Regular customers for these facilities include BSkyB and sports rights company Pitch International. © Copyright 2006-2009 sportsvideogroup |