MEMBER PROFILE
Harris strikes gold with Edmonton Oilers arena
By
Feb 14, 2007 - 9:21:16 AM

Aquila Productions in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has completely rebuilt the broadcast studio and control center at Rexall Place, home of the National Hockey League's Edmonton Oilers, with a suite of enterprise-class broadcast television technology from Harris Corporation and information technology company.

The 850-square-foot broadcast center serves as the hub for all Oilers broadcast operations and game-time video entertainment, including content for the arena's center-hung, 16:9 LED video screen and monitors located on the concourses and in luxury suites.

A key element of the $1.4 million (CAD) control center is a Harris dual-channel Inscriber® G1 SD graphics system. Working with Edmonton-based Harris dealer Matrix Video Communications, Aquila Productions selected the G1 for its ability to produce compelling and entertaining graphics for fans in attendance and those watching Oilers pay-per-view telecasts.

"The center scoreboard and video screens in Rexall Place play a big role during Oilers games, and the Inscriber® G1 has really improved the look of the content we put up on the board," said Keith Hough, technical producer at Aquila Productions and a chief designer of the new control room. "In addition to scoring summaries, countdown clocks and game statistics, we use the G1 to generate standard lower thirds, Oilers Fast Facts and graphics for interactive fan contests. We're very pleased with the image quality of these graphics, as well as with the ease in which our graphic artists can produce them. Many of our in-game entertainment segments are sponsor-driven, and with the G1 it's possible to display great-looking, full-screen images that really make our sponsor's logos shine."

Designed to meet the demands of fast-paced, live-to-air production environments, the G1 is a member of the Inscriber G-Series™ family of graphics systems, and features a complete suite of advanced design tools, including G-Scribe™ titling software, animation editor and paint tool. Aquila added the Strata Compositing option to enable real-time compositing of multiple, independently controllable and infinite virtual channels in a single physical channel.

Aquila Productions — a wholly owned subsidiary of Insight Sports, a leading sports media and entertainment company based in Toronto — has provided scoreboard services for the Oilers for 12 years. The previous control room at Rexall Place (originally named the Northlands Coliseum) featured a number of Harris infrastructure products, including several distribution amplifier frames. Based on this experience with Harris products, Hough designated a range of the company's infrastructure and test and measurement products for the rebuilt facility, including six Harris® X75™ SD converter/frame synchronizers; four 6800+™ modular core processing frames; an Integrator® 64x64 SDI router with 32x32 analog audio; a VSG-204D sync generator; and two Videotek® TVM-850 multiformat SD video and audio signal analyzers.

"The multiformat capabilities and up/down/cross conversion performed by the X75 synchronizers is crucial for us, since we have to interface with a wide variety of mobile units and don't always know what they'll be feeding us," said Hough. "The X75™ with HD option allows us to accept any signal type and convert it to SD 16:9 for output. No matter what we do to the signal, it always holds up well and looks great."

The new broadcast facility at Rexall Place made its debut with a preseason game between the Oilers and Florida Panthers. In addition to Oilers games, the control center is used for other select events at the arena, including Edmonton Oil Kings junior hockey games and the annual Canadian Finals Rodeo.

© Copyright 2006-2008 sportsvideogroup