Australia’s PMG Purchases Quantel Enterprise sQ for Fox Sports News Programming

Australian sports broadcaster Premier Media Group (PMG) has purchased a Quantel Enterprise sQ system.

Fox Sports News has been produced using Quantel server-based production technology for a number of years. “While our existing Quantel system has served us well over the years, production imperatives have changed and we now need to be able to handle a range of formats including HD, in addition to speeding material to air, ” says Tony Scanlan, PMG Chief Technology Officer.

The new system at PMG FOX Sports News will be built around four Quantel sQ servers, offering approximately 1000 hours of SD storage (or 280 hours of HD). This will support 18 sQ Cut desktop editors and four sQ Edit Plus craft editors; a Quantel sQ Load application will look after ingest operations.

“We of course reviewed all the broadcast manufacturers’ systems very carefully before making our choice,” Scanlan says. “In the end though, it was a very straightforward decision – Quantel has by far the fastest flight time from ingest to air, produces great looking pictures, and has comfortably the most versatile and easy to use editing tools. It also allows us to mix HD and SD material on the same server – or indeed, on the same timeline – without having even to think about it.”