Verizon Media has announced a series of new Media Platform enhancements designed to evolve the live streaming experience. These include several new capabilities that provide deeper fan engagement for live sports and services that address every streaming need. Additionally, the company has launched Smartplay Prebid’s first integration with the Verizon Media Ad Platforms’ OTT Smart Auction.

The Switch, a leading provider of production services and global delivery of live video, announces that it has been chosen by J SPORTS, Japan’s largest sports broadcaster, to deliver live telecasts of major US sports directly from American stadiums and arenas to Japanese screens. The Switch, which is working with J SPORTS for the first time, has installed a permanent transmit path from its New York Network Operations Center (NOC) to the broadcaster’s Tokyo facility to bring all the anticipation and action of Major League Baseball, PGA golf and WWE wrestling to Japanese fans.

For the first time in its history,IBC will present its highest award, the International Honour for Excellence, not to a single individual or organisation, but to the news broadcasters of the world. The award comes in recognition for the key role journalists have played in educating and informing audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, while operating under extremely challenging conditions. The award will be presented in a livestream on Friday, 11 September at 13:00 BST, with access available viathe

The Switch, the platform for the production and global delivery of live video, has been chosen by Brazilian pay-TV market leader Globo to deliver live coverage of the 2020 US Open to its growing audience of tennis fans across Brazil. Capitalizing on The Switch’s extensive video distribution network, Globo is able to ensure that uninterrupted, high-quality live feeds from the Grand Slam tennis tournament reach its 45 million subscribers while enjoying unprecedented flexibility and control over the delivery and production values.

When Home Becomes Studio in the Days of COVID

It takes more than a pandemic to keep cinematographer Timur Civan down. When work started going sideways Civan (www.timurcivan.com) created a new niche that would help him use his best assets: his creativity, his family and next door neighbors (actors), his ranch style home, a full scale production equipment package, and a little help from his friends and pets. He put together a Home Studio Production Package with his pitch and impressive portfolio. His agent booked jobs.

Arti, developers of the first cloud-based augmented reality (AR) platform for broadcasters and video producers, and Mediability, the largest professional equipment, SaaS, and systems integration provider for broadcast media and media production companies in Scandinavia, today announced a partnership agreement naming Mediability an Arti reseller in the Nordic region.

Imagine Communications has taken a leading role in Al Wousta, a new television channel owned by Sharjah Broadcasting Authority (SBA) and broadcast from Al Dhaid, the capital of the Emirate of Sharjah. A completely greenfield installation set in a striking state-of-the-art new building, the station is entirely reliant on IP connectivity using the SMPTE ST 2110 family of standards. The technology platform was collaboratively developed by engineers from Al Wousta and Sharjah Broadcasting Authority, and supported by Imagine Communications, in association with UAE systems integrator Tek Signals.

A freelance audio engineer (A1) for Dome Productions in Canada, John Hunterfirst discovered his passion for audio with live music. Eventually, his path led him to sports and he (in normal times) mixes every Toronto Raptors home game on TSN and Sportsnet and has travelled with the production team to work every playoff game, including the 2019 NBA Finals. He worked as an A1 for the famous 2018 NBA Raptors/Pelicans game in 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos surround sound, which was the first to be produced in these formats and distributed live to North American households.

Top Rank has returned to television screens for the first time since the pandemic began, and to meet the challenges of live broadcasting in the world of COVID-19, the boxing promoter enlisted the help of PSSI Global Services. PSSI is providing a full complement of traditional and IP-based transmission services for Top Rank’s series of live fights from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and has accomplished several industry firsts in the process.

To facilitate a seamless broadcast despite the obstacles created by COVID-19, PSSI is providing both on-site engineering services and off-site monitoring and management. The company is leveraging Nextologies equipment to deliver the primary pathways via IP transport.

This collaboration between PSSI and Top Rank marks not only the first all-IP origination for a major boxing event, but also the first IP live international distribution to several countries. To help minimize the overall on-site presence of talent and staff, PSSI, in close partnership with Nextologies, also engineered a solution to integrate ringside commentary remotely over a customized IP network.

Saudi Broadcasting Authority (SBA), part of the Ministry of Media in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is replacing the playout technology for its main channels with an integrated solution from Imagine Communications. SBA, one of the most prestigious broadcasters in the Gulf region, is seeking to boost daily operational efficiency and eliminate human error for reliable and professional broadcasting.

To meet the requirements of SBA, Imagine Communications was able to propose a coherent end-to-end system covering network infrastructure, routing, monitoring, ingest, asset management and playout under ADC™ automation control, to replace the current system based on hardware from multiple vendors. The Imagine Communications proposal is largely based on software solutions running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, using industry-standard workstations from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). It includes a Platinum™ IP3 router to switch SD, HD and 3G signals, with the capability of adding real-time IP switching to support SBA’s development plans. Additionally, the IP3 router provides integrated multiviewer functionality to ensure all monitoring is handled in a space-saving frame.

The Switch, the platform for the production and global delivery of live video, has launched MIMiC, an on-demand cloud-based production-as-a-service offering that gives broadcasters, streaming services, rights holders and enterprises access to remote production capabilities for live and virtual events of all sizes. Content producers can now leverage The Switch’s unique combination of agile cloud production capability and global network reach to cost-effectively meet increasing demand for efficient and flexible broadcast quality production and for social media engagement for any live event. 

Responding to the growing demand for further education, the Department of Interpreting Studies and Audio-visual Translation (ISAT), as part of the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Applied Linguistics -  selected SubtitleNEXT for their subtitling courses.

ukasz Dutka is a lecturer at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, and a consultant for streaming and broadcasting companies in the field of accessibility and AVT quality. He is a member of the University of Warsaw’s Audio-visual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), Polish Association of Audio-visual Translators (STAW), European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST).

Dejero, an innovator in cloud-managed solutions that provide Emmy® award winning video transport and Internet connectivity while mobile or in remote locations, has provided British teleshopping channel The Jewellery Channel (TJC) with EnGo mobile transmitters, a WayPoint receiver, a CuePoint return feed server and complimentary LivePlus mobile apps, that have formed a key part of the broadcaster's business continuity plan during the COVID-19 pandemic. TJC has also been using this Dejero equipment to lead a significant change in how live teleshopping is produced and broadcast.

"While we intend to continue broadcasting from our main studio in Surrey house, London, for as long as possible, we are all dependent on government policy during this extraordinary time and TJC wanted to be ready to broadcast from home if this was required," said Martin Willingham, technical director at TJC. "Dejero's technology has been a great comfort blanket for us in that scenario. As one of the main TV shopping channels in the UK, we broadcast 24/7, 365 days a year and our reputation depends on us not having technical problems. The reliability and sturdiness of the Dejero workflow has really impressed us."

Digital Nirvana, a provider of leading-edge media-monitoring and metadata generation services, today announced the 7th generation release of its uniquely robust MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform. Refined by experts including architects of the original Volicon Observer product, the MonitorIQ 7.0 design includes an updated and intuitive web interface, core feature improvements, and new cutting-edge capabilities, all of which combine to make everyday tasks effortless.

"Migration to MonitorIQ 7.0 gives broadcasters all the key features of Volicon's beloved Observer product, and it improves upon each one to provide unparalleled broadcast monitoring and compliance capabilities," said Keith DesRosiers, director of sales solutions at Digital Nirvana. "We've updated the platform with uniquely advanced capabilities and — equally or more important — we have leveraged our extensive experience in design engineering for monitoring systems to redesign the user interface so that users of all technical abilities can complete key tasks with just a few clicks."

The industry's most reliable, secure, and easy-to-use broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform, Digital Nirvana's MonitorIQ allows operators to record, store, monitor, analyze, and repurpose content quickly and efficiently with a minimum of clicks. Natively recording content from any point in the video delivery chain, from production (SDI) to consumption (OTT), MonitorIQ enables broadcasters to collect and use knowledge about their broadcast content to meet a wide range of regulatory and compliance requirements. Version 7 of the Digital Nirvana platform also gives broadcasters access to valuable next-generation content processing and analysis tools.

Riot Games’ 2019 League of Legends World Championship final in Paris relied on Calrec’s RP1 remote production technology for the English language feed for viewers in North America, Europe and Oceania.

Dave Talavera, Audio Engineer with Riot Games, said, “When it came to building our new European facility in Berlin two years ago, we knew, given our experience with remote production, that was the path that we wanted to continue down. Calrec was the only company that had come up with a remote production solution for IFB and they are still very much at the forefront of this. This was essential for the remote production of the English language feed for the final in Paris.”