Snell & Wilcox Kahuna Serves Up Champions League in Germany

By Kevin Hilton

SVG Europe editor

ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, the production and play-out division of pan-Europe broadcast group ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, has upgraded its Munich facility for high definition mastering of programmes. This includes the installation of a Snell & Wilcox Kahuna switcher with the IMPAKT 3-D DVE option.

The new equipment will be used for fast turnaround HD work on two leading German channels, ProSieben and Sat.1, which carries coverage of Champions League football. The Kahuna is able to work simultaneously in SD and HD while being operated from the same control surface. Technicians at ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion have created an online editing chain in both formats that links the Kahuna with linear editing systems.

Jiri Srb, in charge of special projects for ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, comments, “Most of today’s nonlinear editors are very slow, especially when working with uncompressed HD content. We found we could do the job much faster with a switcher, DVE, and a classic linear suite, especially since the Kahuna enables us to run HD and SD content in parallel without requiring time-consuming conversion copies.” The IMPAKT DVE component gives a total of four twin-channels of 3D digital video effects, which are applied either as four video/key pairs or eight video-only tiles.

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG owns 26 commercial TV stations, 24 premium pay TV services, and 22 radio networks across Europe, with a presence in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as Germany. The company recently issued a profit warning, expecting its free-to-air business in Germany to perform below projections for the second half of 2008, with group earnings to be in the region of only €670 million to €700 million. This is attributed to the poor performance of the German TV advertising sector and a severe drop in the country’s economy.