Showtime Arabia in High Definition technology with Sony

EgyptDUDE

Showtime Arabia in High Definition with Sony





Sony Professional Solutions Middle East, one of the leading solution providers to the broadcasting industry, announced today the contract for an important project with Showtime Arabia.


Post the completion of the implementation by Sony Professional Solutions, Showtime Arabia will be equipped with a state of the art transmission (TX) facility specifically designed for sports programming. Under this deal, Showtime Arabia also obtains two 4-camera complete HD-capable Sports production studios designed and implemented by Sony Professional Solutions, to exclusively cover the English Premier League in both Arabic and English.

Showtime Arabia won the rights to cover and air the English Premier League one of the most popular sporting events in the Middle East, for the next three seasons. Starting with the coming season, which kicked off in August 2007, all English Premier League games are aired live in Arabic and English using industry leading technology platform containing both Sony and third party HD products and solutions.

Mike Whittaker, Director of Technology of Showtime Arabia commented, 'After an extensive search to find and implement the best technology, we are pleased to team up with Sony Professional Solutions who are working with us effectively to provide our customers with the very best in football coverage and analysis. Showtime is about providing the best in sporting, movie and entertainment and delivering a compelling viewing experience - we have a winning team!'


'We are delighted to again be partnering with Showtime for this landmark project. Showtime selected Sony, not only because of their confidence in our solution, design and integration capabilities, but also the value we are able to offer through our local office support and training. We are certainly all looking forward to kick-off in August,' said Karl Hijazi, Professional Services Manager, Sony Professional Solutions Middle East.

Sony has recently launched their new HD training centre located in their office in the Dubai Media City. This training centre will focus on providing HD technology and broadcast operational and technical product training for Sony's customers. The facility will include dedicated equipment and systems for this purpose and will be focused on delivering a wide range of high quality seminars and courses. Showtime Arabia will be benefiting from this new facility and as part of this project, Sony Professionals Solutions will locally deliver all the HD Technology, Camera and Switcher training.

The TX system features a tape-less solution which consists of three channels of play-out, master control/channel branding, server and edit seats, automation, archive and monitoring. With its extensive functionality, the TX system is both HD and Standard Definition capable. The solution will include the fit out of the master control room, transmission suites, edit suites, and the support of voice-over positions.

In line with the TX system, the two HD capable Sport Production studios will feature a variety of key components including the Sony HDC-1500 HD Fibre Broadcast Camera Chains, MVS-8000 Vision Switchers and Sony's new Full HD professional LCD Monitors. The TX system and the studios were recently completed and are in full operation.

EgyptDude

Turok

Hi!
sounds great,lets hope,that the picture quality,is then much better,then on the curent channels
why showtime not sending in dts/dolby souround?
thosiba,is also i pioneer in hd tv!

EgyptDUDE

i think Showtime picture and sound quality is not so bad comparing to rest of Arabic channels (you saw Nilesat channels ? )

do not forget that the package have good varity of channels (big expensive copyrights) with material as good as major European packages , with small amount of legal subscribers (last estimate was 250 000 subs) not to mention the deep sh!t they are in now (being hacked and all ) that they cant swap cards ! competition with Orbit is heating up .... can go on for hours but the btm line , they are losing money
so i think they are doing a good job considering

Turok

Good Evening
yes,no programm,of showtime,is okay,no questions,but i was thinking,in dubai,only living rich oil kings,in white dresses,and for that place,it could be better,you see it good on big screens 100 cm++ that,the nilesat fta channels has better quality my favorite is dream tv,looks very sharp,then showtime it self!
no dolby soround is not up to date,but orbit,i read on the net,is also not better,only espn good quality,all others very low resultion!
they say,the reason,because the must convert it from ntsc to pal,and ntsc has only 525 lines pal 768 or more in pal plus!

sooner,or later irdeto 3 cards on the way,and then,they,must swapp it!
when,the keys,comes from gamma card,i wondering,why the never any keys,for mc,and hellas avalible,both based on the same system!

the new irdeto 3 cards will coming,i feel it in the air,after 7 years now irdeto 2!

on premiere,movies are not so up to date,but picture quality is better,no operator is perfect,but is it good,to see the difrents !

EgyptDUDE

thnxs m8 for the interesting exchange of views

but M.E market hard to understand , unless you lived here for a decade
the problem is Arabs have never got used to the idea of Pay TV untill now , even though there have been packages like Orbit and ST running for more than 10 years now

ST is already the most expensive Pay TV in the M.E , only Creme de la creme have it @ their homes , sure "the rich oil kings in white dresses" (lol) would like to have better picture (so do foeigners who come to work here ) , but sure that is not the strategy of the company , already having "the oil kings" as subscribers , they should target middle class ppl , cannot achieve that unless they give affordable prices , but then , they cannot do that with paying a huge amount of money to give "the rich oil kings" for better picture quality at the same time , i dont think they can afford both , they have to sacrifice something .

and talking about Dream TV , check OTV and some Music channels , all those channels are Egyptian based/runned , due to the fact that there is much more experianced engeniers here (the oldest country in the M.E to have TV Broadcast) unlike the new Gulf channels , unforuntly , the Audio is usually sh!t would like to add MBC package to the equation , thats one of the oldest satellite channels (MBC ==> 15 years on air) so it all comes at the end to experiance lol , so when u look at Nilesat , you will only fine 10 channels with gppd pic quality that worth looking at , out of 600 channels

sure Irdeto3 will come , but when ? and sure more HD channels will be on air , but you have to know that boxes that does AU are very few here , and Arabs are not interested in going to internet forums to get new keys everyday (wats the precentage of ppl use internet here ? and for wat purpose ?) , so the hack on ST did not damage the package dramaticaly , they can still live