ATEME Lands First Satellite Deal in Japan

Ward, Inc., a provider of satellite services in Nara, Japan has selected ATEME’s Kyrion CM5000 making it the first satellite provider in Japan to adopt ATEME’s contribution technology to support the worldwide broadcast of sporting and other events.

“We are pleased to be the first satellite provider in Japan to adopt ATEME’s Kyrion products,” says David Shimamoto, chief engineer, Ward, Inc. “Our projects require feeds to be sent via satellite to broadcasters in varying regions that work with a variety of systems. We are proud to say that we have not had any compatibility or other issues and the CM5000 has proven to be a solid choice for our team and our customers.”

Ward provides satellite coordination, Satellite News Gathering (SNG) and earth station services. The company delivers satellite feeds at international conferences and sporting events such as the G8 summit, the 2014 Worldwide Table Tennis Championship and the IAAF World Challenge, a global circuit of athletic competitions.

Ward works primarily with foreign broadcasters so it is critical that it uses encoders that support a variety of frame rates, resolution and compression formats. The CM5000 addresses all use cases of IP and Satellite Contribution within a unique platform and delivers support for all MPEG-2/MPEG-4 video compression standards and profiles.

Ward’s SNG vehicles have limited rack space and the company uses multiple encoders to uplink to two or more satellite paths simultaneously, all of them redundant. Ward considered the built-in DVB-S2 modulator in the same 1U space a bonus when choosing the Kyrion CM5000.

Ward SNG operators preferoperating from the front panel of the device within the vehicle and found the Kyrion CM5000 menu operations to be highly intuitive. The company was also impressed with ATEME¹s strategy of incorporating customer feedback in the development of its products.