In Broadcast - October 2016 - 44


44

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 6 - Issue 10 | October 2016

InStudio

Echo Sports Network Chooses
PlayBox Technology

P

layBox Technology's AirBox Neo
has been deployed by the Echo
Sports Network (ESN) to power a
new channel dedicated to promoting
amateur sports.
Based in Canberra, Australia, ESN
offers sports teams and clubs the
opportunity to promote themselves via
innovative media streaming solutions.
ESN chose the PlayBox AirBox Neo
channel-in-a-box from Redwood's

Technology Solutions because of its
ease of use and maturity in the playout
market.
ESN is all about athletes and sports
in Australia. It is geared toward less
common or niche sports that do not
have access to the kind of media
attention and funding other sports
enjoy.
"We needed a software solution we
could use on our existing servers and

something that was cost-effective to
kick-off," said Lyle Cameron from ESN.
"We have ambitious growth plans and
PlayBox has CloudAir, the IP-based
remote management system that we
plan to introduce in the future."
Making innovative use of internet
based technology and PlayBox's
advanced IP playout server, ESN is
providing a mechanism for amateur
sports to reach out to its fans.
Whether regular season
Echo Sports Network
games, finals series, or elite
competition such as national
championships, fans can
watch all the action on their
platform of choice.
"The
industry
is
demanding faster channel
startup,
higher
quality
standards and scalable
metadata-based
content
management," adds Brad
Redwood, from Redwood's
Technology.
"PlayBox
Technology
has
years

of experience which enable our
customers to achieve this within a
sensible investment budget."
The PlayBox AirBox Neo content
playout system supports UHD, HD
and SD in a single server. Features
include streaming inputs HTTP, HTTP
Secure, UDP, RTMP, MMS, MMSH,
YouTube and RTMP streaming output
for easy web streaming. AirBox Neo
comes with a virtual output which now
supports multiple instances. AirBox
Neo is designed for 24/7 unattended
operation. It can also be operated
manually, including the ability to
handle live-to-air throughput.
Redwood's is the PlayBox Sales and
Support centre for Australia and New
Zealand.
With over 30 years in the broadcast
industry working with production,
television and new media, Redwood's
represents an impressive range of
innovative products from leading
manufacturers.
The company's services range from
business development, through to
design, sales, installation, training and
support of tailored solutions.

Reliable WinPlus Software
In Stark Rescue

F

or live broadcast, it's hard enough
staying on top of new content
on an hourly basis without having to
deal with equipment failures. And
when Dan Stark, Chief Engineer of
NBC station KTVH Helena, Montana,
took over a newly purchased news
station he experienced possibly the
worst equipment failure for live TV -
teleprompter software malfunction.
"I'm in charge of a couple of TV
stations and we purchased [KTVH]
six months ago," said Stark. "It had
old software and since we had initial
budget constraints after the station
purchase, we ended up taking the
built-in software that came as a freebie
with the Newsroom Computer System.
Unfortunately, we had a few issues
right off the bat; we had sluggish USB
controllers, the software didn't work
with many caption encoders, and it
would crash every time we needed it.
In the end, we didn't have prompting
or captioning for a week."

For more accurate and reliable
software, Stark chose to use
Autoscript's
versatile
WinPlus
Newsroom Prompting software to
prompt and provide data for closed
captioning. The WinPlus News package
is a teleprompting application that is
both Unicode compliant - supporting
any foreign language that works
with Windows - and
compatible
with
all
leading
Newsroom
systems including Ross
Inception, AP ENPS, and
Avid i-News, to name a
few.
"I needed something
I knew would work. Our
other station, KRTV, has
had Autoscript for as long
as I can remember, so we
knew WinPlus would work
and had good controllers.
At KTVH, the talent
prompts
themselves,

primarily with a foot pedal. Once the
show starts, they are on their own - it
either works or it's a wreck. Some of
KRTV's talent use Autoscript's wireless
hand controller, but the prompting
options that came with the NRCS didn't
even have a wireless hand controller
available," said Stark.
Autoscript was able to ship
WinPlus urgently to get KTVH back
up and running. With WinPlus now
incorporated into his workflow, the

NRCS creates the on-air rundowns
and then activates them into WinPlus
when they're ready. From there, the
prompt feed from WinPlus goes to
three on-camera units in the studio
and the data content gets delivered to
the Link Electronics caption encoder
for the closed captioning. With the
great reliability that WinPlus provides,
Stark can focus on the bigger picture
without worrying about software
malfunctions."

Live broadcasts need a dependable teleprompting system
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://playboxtechnology.com/ http://www.autoscript.tv/
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