Tuesday 16th March
FOX
Sports chooses RRsat for distribution to Europe, Middle East & North
Africa
RRsat Global Communications, a rapidly growing provider of comprehensive
content management and global distribution services to the television
and radio broadcasting industries, has signed a distribution agreement
with FOX Sports, a leading sports channel and a division of the FOX Broadcasting
Company. FOX Sports, the flagship network of the FOX Sports Television
Group, is America’s top-rated network for sports for 13 straight
years (1997-2009), FOX Sports boasts rights agreements with each of the
United States’s highest-rated sports.
Distribution of FOX Sports via the Eurobird-9 satellite in MPEG-4 format
provides the FOX Sports Television Group with increased, yet cost-effective,
coverage within Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and with the
possibility to add HD format in the future.
"We are proud that a major and leading sports channel, such as FOX
Sports, chose RRsat to expand its distribution of leading US sports into
Europe and the Middle East,” commented Lior Rival, Vice President,
Sales and Marketing of RRsat. “We believe the fact that FOX Sport's
decision to expand their relationship with us, testifies their satisfaction
with our existing services. We believe our expanding relationship with
FOX could lead to significant additional business with FOX in the future.
In addition, with this agreement, RRsat will be increasing the highly
successful SD feed already being distributed to Israeli television operators
with a parallel HD feed.”
“As one of the leading providers of sports coverage in the United
States, we have a global audience and distribution is a key and an uncompromising
undertaking for us,” commented Julio R. Sobral, SVP Broadcast Operations
of Fox International Channels. “In RRsat, we have found a partner
that is more than capable, and our work with them so far has met and even
exceeded our expectations. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship
with RRsat, as we continually build our global audience of sports enthusiasts
through them.”
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Newtec multistream implementation meets challenge set by
Italian TV giant
Newtec, the first company in the market to fully implement DVB-S2 Multistream
technology in its product range, announces the successful completion of
the first deployment phase of its solution enabling primary distribution
of digital terrestrial TV in Italy.
Telecom Italia Media Broadcasting (TIMB), which has become the leading terrestrial
television network operator in Italy, has over a million subscribers and
first started broadcasting in the DVB-T format in 2005. The TV content was
initially distributed to the transmission towers via satellite using DVB-S
technology. TIMB needed to make its network much more efficient by reducing
both operational costs (OPEX) and capital investment (CAPEX) and by implementing
a solution that was SFN (Single Frequency Network) compliant, in order to
reduce the number of terrestrial frequencies it used.
Newtec, together with its local Italian distributor CVE (Comteck Video Enterprise),
was able to meet this challenge with its DVB-S2 Multistream solution, which
allowed TIMB to limit CAPEX, by using only one demodulator to receive four
signals in each tower and reduce OPEX by increasing bandwidth efficiency
over satellite. Newtec’s solution at the same time is fully compliant
to both SFN and DVB-S2 standards.
“During the analogue switch off activities, Newtec’s solution
represents not only a faster and more cost efficient way to manage remote
site connections but is also a great way to reduce costs in satellite transponder
renting,” said TIMB CTO Crescenzo Micheli.
“The Newtec system was extremely simple to deploy and offers excellent
performance and stability – benefits which were critical to our introduction
of an additional transport stream over existing satellite links, and in
preparation for a future rollout of high definition video services”,
Micheli added.
The Newtec equipment used in the new Multistream network is the AZ810 Stream
Aggregator, along with the AZ110 Broadcast modulator both in the head-end
and the HZ914 Multistream receiver in the transmitter towers across Italy.
“Newtec has a long-standing commitment and a proven track record in
Multistream with multiple deployments worldwide, and we were proud to work
with our partners CVE to deliver this important solution to such a high
profile client in Italy,” said Newtec CEO Serge Van Herck. .
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