SHOWTIME ARABIA SCORES WITH POINT-HD

Dual-language sports coverage of English Premiere League soccer games

Showtime Arabia has deployed two POINT-HD Telestrator systems from leading innovator and pioneer in TV graphics illustration solutions, e-mediavision.com, for sports analysis.  e-mediavision.com provided onsite installation, commissioning and training for the POINT-HD Telestrator in Dubai as part of its extended service.

Showtime Arabia holds the rights to broadcast to the Middle East & Africa the world famous English Premiere League soccer games, which entails over 380 live matches, with up to 3 live games per day. To cater for both Arabic and English speaking audiences, Showtime has implemented two studios running in tandem to cater for dual language transmission.

Each studio is home to an Anchor, Analyst & Guest. For the English studio Derek Whyte ex Celtic, Middlesborough & Scotland player and for the Arabic studio, Abdul Rahman Mohammed, Captain of the UAE 1990 world cup team, provide the technical analysis with the help of the Point-HD Telestrator. Both presenters quickly grasped the intuitive POINT-HD interface (which can be customized to each presenter’s preference) within a few minutes of training, enabling them to go on-air with confidence.

Each POINT-HD system (mirrored in both studios) is configured to provide multiple user support, allowing the producer in the production control gallery to setup and control the POINT-HD if required, with additional control for the analyst in the studio, comprised of a desk mounted 19” LCD touch screen monitor and large screen display touch screen interface for occasions when a guest and side-by-side shot is required.

The POINT-HD frame is installed in the engineering rack with touch screens extended to the studio and production gallery via CAT5e IT cabling and regular KVM extenders. POINT-HD is able to work in HD or SD formats, and production configuration set up for either format can be selected in an instant from the set up menu. The Telestrator receives a SDI video input from the vision mixers auxiliary bus, allowing any background source to be supplied as required under the control of the vision mixer; the Telestrator provides Key & Fill outputs which are available on the down stream keyer of the vision mixer.  The POINT-HD can lock to incoming SDI video timing or via external analogue black & burst, therefore eliminating any requirements for external frame stores or TBC’s which would add delay into the signal path.

Each POINT-HD unit is connected to the graphics network, allowing customized graphics such as team / roster graphics to be used in pre-game formation analysis. Point-HD provides animation control of the VizRT CG systems. With POINT-HD, external items such as CGs and slow motion VTR’s (EVS) can be triggered and controlled by the presenter directly from the touch screen. When replaying a video clip from the EVS VTR, the presenter is able to move the video frame by frame or at a chosen replay speed directly from the POINT-HD touch screen VTR control tool.

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