GlobeCast has installed a new fibre link for the delivery of live Premier League football into Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The MPEG-4 upgrades at two of its UK sites follows the renewal of its contract with IMG Sports Media Production to provide up to six English Premier League (EPL) football matches per week and a highlights package to rightsholders. The contract, originally signed in 2007, has been extended for a further three years.
GlobeCast says the “significant investment” has strengthened its position as one of the most HD capable ad hoc providers in the world.
Ahead of the 2010/11 season, GlobeCast installed dual dark fibres, channelised to take 16 HDSDI feeds, between IMG and its Technical Operations Center (TOC) in Central London. This new link, which is capable of receiving up to eight simultaneous redundant feeds, has enabled GlobeCast to take all matches in uncompressed high definition before multiplexing them with MPEG-4 compression through an Ericsson nCompass 6 multiplexer for delivery to satellite.
For broadcast across Asia and Europe all six feeds are uplinked to the Intelsat IS904 (60 degrees East) and Eutelsat W2A (10 degrees East) satellites respectively for downlink by rightsholders across the region. For the Americas, all feeds are converted using Snell HD Alchemist frame-rate converters, before being uplinked to Intelsat’s IS9 (58 degrees West) satellite. Several match feeds are also being sent via the GlobeCast Backbone Network (GCBN) for playout in Hong Kong.
This dynamic MPEG-4 multiplex solution allows GlobeCast to easily uplink the feeds directly out of its central London facility or from its teleport in Brookman’s Park.
