Singapore’s ESPN STAR Sports Upgrades to EVS XT3 Servers for London 2012

The Singapore-based broadcaster, which operates 25 branded television networks throughout Asia covering 24 countries, is gearing up for its first Olympic Games broadcast across 22 countries. It will rely on its upgraded EVS systems to process over 170 hours of footage a day and deliver more than 3,800 hours of comprehensive coverage of the Games across cable and satellite television platforms.

ESS has upgraded two XT2 servers to EVS’ new XT3 servers in a six-channel SD/HD configuration for recording and playout in its control room. The upgrade was prompted by ESS’ migration to Panasonic AVC-Intra as its primary studio production HD format, and in anticipation of supporting Sony XDCam HD422. With its flexible eight-channel SD/HD and six-channel 3D/1080p configuration, the XT3 enables complete media control from ingest to playout, including live editing, slow motion replays, multi-channel playback and media exchange with third-party systems such as craft editors, automation, archiving and storage.

The XT3 is the industry’s first server to natively support wide-ranging codecs without requiring hardware changes.“This is the first time that the IOC has awarded the rights to a pay TV platform across the region and it’s testament to ESPN STAR Sports’ commitment of providing the best coverage possible to sports fans across Asia,” said Colin Sheriff, vice president, operations & technology, ESPN STAR Sports. “As well as needing to upgrade our servers, we also needed to ensure we had the fastest and most reliable systems for the London 2012 Olympic Games. “EVS’ XT3 servers deliver the performance and reliability we need for covering global events while supporting our new HD production format.”

In addition to the two XT3 servers, two new EVS IPDirector suites of video production management applications will provide complete content control—from ingest and logging to playlist roll out—in conjunction with EVS remote controllers BePlay and MPlay. ESS has also invested in an EVS XF2 removable hard drive for back-up storage with support for both SATA and IDE connections, and XTAccess for media interchange with its existing HD and SD systems.

About EVS
EVS designs leading broadcast and media production systems for sports, news and TV entertainment. Its innovative Live Slow Motion system revolutionised live broadcasting and its reliable and integrative tapeless solutions are now widely used for non-linear editing and 3D HD productions across the globe.The company's dedicated systems offer a complete production platform: live slow motion (LSM), super and ultra slow motion, clips creation, fast turnaround editing, production and archive asset management, time delay, multi-camera and multi-feed recording, logging, live graphic analysis, digital transmission, multi-format ingest and play-back, second screen delivery. Main software applications like the IPDirector® or MulticamLSM® are designed to control the industry's most robust and flexible production platform, the XT series server. The world's leading broadcasters, such as NBC, BSkyB, FOX, RTBF, RTL, NHK, CANAL+, ABC, ESPN, TF1, CCTV, PBS, CBS, BBC, ZDF, Channel One, Channel7, RAI, TVE, NEP, MEDIAPRO, EUROMEDIA, BEXEL, ALFACAM and many others use EVS' solutions.