www.atgbroadcast.co.uk

WorkflowDesign

SystemsSupport

SystemsInstallation

Consultancy

ProjectPlanning

Commissioning

Training

Documentation

15 YEARS OF WORLDWIDE

SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

The evolving business of broadcast systems integrationFive years ago, my colleague Alan Pimm celebrated the tenth anniversary of ATG Broadcast in a paper which looked back at broadcastsystem integration over the previous decade. Rather than celebrate our 15th birthday by reviewing the company's continued progress,I have chosen instead to look ahead over the coming five years.

Fifteen years ago, a typical household had one television receiver, one VCR and a total of four accessible channels arriving from aterrestrial analogue transmitter or repeater. Today, the majority of television viewers have a wide choice of free and pay-per-viewbroadcast channels transmitted via terrestrial antenna or satellite. They also possess DVD players and have internet connectivity. Onthe delivery side, transmission schedules were essentially linear apart from occasional regional opt-outs for commercials or localisedprogrammes. Most broadcasters retained responsibility for their own playout procedures and employed generously large teams ofcamera crews, programme production staff, system integration and maintenance engineers, plus the inevitable overhead of supervisorsand administrators.

The Channel Four UK modelIn Europe, Channel Four UK proved a source of inspiration for many other networks, concentrating on the publishing element oftelevision broadcasting and contracting out programme production to third-party individuals or companies. The result was both cost-efficient and time-efficient, enabling the channel to respond to changing viewing habits and in many cases to steer audiences in directionsthey might not otherwise have experienced. Television broadcasters certainly needed to experiment, faced as they were with directcompetition from activities such as online and offline computer games which have become very popular. ATG Broadcast staff workedon the design of Channel 4's new Westminster HQ which was one of the world’s first SDI facilities. In Scandinavia and elsewhere, ATGBroadcast was closely involved in the transition from traditional tape-based video and audio media to server-based data archiving andnetworking. 1995 saw the first large-scale implementation of servers under automated control at TV4, Stockholm. Highly innovative inits day, this set the pattern for what is now established practice in broadcast news and sports coverage: ingesting from tape or line feedsto a central disk system from which content can be delivered in various forms and at various times until replaced by newer contentand transferred to tape-based archive. In 2001, BBC Technology Ltd (subsequently renamed Red Bee Media) chose ATG Broadcast todesign and construct a new Multi-Channel Transmission Area at BBC Television Centre. This installation took automation to a higherlevel than ever. A custom-designed ATG Broadcast control panel interfaced directly with the automation system to allow rapid manualintervention on any channel. Expandability was a major feature, allowing extra transmission channels to be installed cost-efficientlywhen additional capacity is required. The system developed for the Multi-Channel Transmission Area allowed an extra channel to beadded in just two weeks.

Content remains king Technology apart, the old television adage ‘Content is king’ remains as true as ever.What is changing is the increasing number of routeswhich can be taken to deliver content to the viewer. This is a highly positive development. The great weakness of broadcasting in itsformative decades was the delivery bottleneck instead the limited number of channels that could be accommodated within theterrestrial transmission spectrum. Sure, that meant a healthy monopoly for a tiny number of state broadcasters and commercialfranchise-holders and was ideally suited to advertisers of non-specialist products such as clothing, motor-cars, soap-powder andtoothpaste. The future shape of broadcasting was visible 20 years ago for all to see on the shelves of every high-street newsagent:subject-specific publishing. Multichannel satellite delivery came a lot nearer that concept though has in turn been restricted by high per-channel transmission costs and inherently expensive delivery infrastructure. At IBC a few years ago, one of the major Japanesemanufacturers seriously proposed the internet as a potential medium for delivering High-Definition (as distinct from Hard-Drive)content directly to viewers. This raised many eyebrows and the inevitable question as to which universe the manufacturer concernedwas actually living in. But the model is no longer absurd. The BBC’s recently-launched iPlayer frees audiences from the restriction oftime-specific single-shot broadcasting. The iPlayer service is one of the healthiest developments in the entire history of broadcastingand is so powerful that one could easily imagine such a service operating entirely standalone without need for any form of terrestrialor satellite-based delivery. Of course, the service currently only works when network traffic and demand for a specific programme areboth reasonably low but iPlayer is a model for the future rather than the perfect broadcast solution for today. From a commercialviewpoint, the one weakness of iPlayer is that it is free so it was perhaps inevitable that a major state broadcaster would lead the way.The majority of broadcasters don’t have a state behind them and have to survive from paid advertisement income. The commercialsector is extremely adaptive and resilient, however, and I have no doubt that the market will evolve viable revenue streams to supportsimilar services. The internet market research company comScore claimed recently that online video views had reached 11.5 billionduring March 2008, 13 per cent up on the previous month and 64 per cent up on the figure for March 2007. This activity looks set tobecome just as popular as online music downloading for the perfectly good reason that it sits more conveniently with modern livingthan having to conform to a see-it-or-miss-it one-shot broadcast schedule. Of course there are security issues as have already beenexperienced in the music sector. But, like print, video content presents much greater opportunities for advertisers than music wherethe only saleable commodity is the performance itself.

Copy once, play everywhere (COPE) Manufacturers of media-asset-management equipment talk incessantly about ‘repurposing’ on the basis that mobile television, for example, requires a different signal package from a traditionally delivered programme. That is certainly not the case with iPlayer whichhas demonstrated that internet television can be, in terms of content, essentially the same as any other form of programming. There are technical issues to keep the bit-rate to a minimum and these will be equally true of delivering television via mobile cellularnetworks. Of more importance is the way minority-interest channels will be funded and the answer looks obvious: today’s printed-papermagazines, in whatever area you care to name, look set to become tomorrow’s internet-based television channels. The transition willbe to a combination of easily-scanned text and still images (like iPlayer itself) with optional ‘now-see-the-movie’ links. Advertisers willlove it. And, as every magazine publisher knows, advertising will be one of the two spurs that carry them across into purely electronic

Guy Elliot, Managing Director

ATG Broadcast

operation.The second spur is the ongoing development of portable(mobile) viewing devices based on direct-view technology whicheliminates the need for high-current-drain back-lighting. Thesubscription model will also work effectively for part-text/part-video online ‘magazines’ as people buy into their chosen hobbies,business interests, educational subjects and so on. It will be anadvertisers’ dream, specific channels for tightly profiled audiences,unless Google manages to monopolise the lot. Advertisersthemselves are already transitioning their own websites into text-plus-video channels but, the greater their investment in this,the greater will be their desire to pull audience traffic to thesesites. Cross-media awareness is already increasing in anticipation ofthis development.An example is energy drink giant Red Bull whichrecently expanded into television with the takeover of Austrianregional channel Salzburg TV. Red Bull owns a growing number ofsports assets, including Formula One teams Red Bull Racing andScuderia Toro Rosso as well as the Red Bull Air Race World Seriesevent. This is serious spending by a global player determined toremain at the head of its market.

Routine commodities Broadcast equipment manufacturing looks set to becomeincreasingly routine commodity supply rather than high-markuprestricted-market activity. The role and responsibility of thebroadcast system integrator will increase. Broadcast system designwill no longer be limited to technical evaluation and interfacing butto how the system it fits within the customer’s entire businessstructure. Business drivers will include maximising profit oncontent, low cost of ownership and low carbon footprint. Solutionswill need to be fully process-driven to handle workflow throughthe entire company rather than just the broadcast infrastructure.Copyright monitoring will also be a major issue. The SI marketitself will become increasingly global, supported by onlinemaintenance procedures from wherever the engineering talent is located. System integrators will need staff who are fully IT-conversant and who understand the media business pressures aswell the technicalities of broadcast infrastructures. Systemarchitects will have to design solutions that not only are stable butensure easy expandability of the system once installed. System nowmust be able to expand on a monthly basis as the market demandsrather than - as in the past - be installed with a five-yeardepreciation and never upgraded. The shift to so-called openstandards makes this support more rather than less necessary. As every PC owner knows, the lifetime of a typical open operatingplatform is only a couple of years!

The long-term viewThe long-term outlook for broadcast the industry is multi-channelon a vast scale and high-definition way beyond the 1080-linescurrently promoted as ‘state-of-the-art’. Screen sizes and screendefinition are in the hands of the LCD manufacturers who (in caseit has escaped your notice) include mainstream broadcasthardware manufacturers such as Sony, Panasonic. Digital-signagewill become an increasingly important and valuable market sectorboth in its own right and as a catalyst to encourage developmentand mass-production of very large direct-view screens. Newtransaction methods such as pushbutton response from mobilephones to digital-signage advertising can also be expected. ATGBroadcast fully understands the new opportunities, demands andchallenges facing the media industry over the next few years. Bygradually expanding our management and staff structure and byinvesting in ongoing training for our engineers, we have the skillsetsto be a partner of choice rather than simply a traditional rack-and-stack equipment installer.

ATG Broadcast commences the first large-scaleimplementation of server-based data archiving andnetworking under automated control on behalf of TV4at its headquarters in Stockholm. This sets the patternfor what eventually becomes established practice inbroadcast news and sports coverage: ingesting fromtape or line feeds to a central disk system from whichcontent can be delivered in various forms and atvarious times until replaced by newer content andtransferred to tape-based archive.

ATG Broadcast completes a major project forMaidstone Studios - the digitisation of their largestproduction studio. The 600 square metres Studio 2 isfully digitised and equipped for widescreen as well as4:3 programme production. It becomes one of the few facility houses outside London with full digitalcapability from camera channels to recording media.ATG Broadcast also rebuilds the production and visionlighting galleries, central apparatus room, and providesnew monitor stacks and production consoles, all withina tight schedule.

ATG Broadcast completes the refurbishment of BBCStudio 5 at Television Centre, West London. Two wide-screen production control rooms areequipped, both rooms sharing serial digital visionresources and one studio floor.

ATG Broadcast designs and installs a new NewsGraphics area at BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff. The system is up and running in time for the new Welsh Assembly session and provides graphics for thecomplete range of Welsh national news output.

ATG Broadcast completes refurbishment of Studio Aat the BBC Centre for Broadcast Skills Training (CBST),Wood Norton, Evesham. ATG Broadcast was requiredto design the studio control suite to match existing BBCinstallations throughout the country, giving delegates the experience of working in a modern broadcasttelevision studio.

An ATG Broadcast chronology – 15 years of successful broadcast innovation

1995

1996

1997

Celebrating its 15th anniversary in November 2008, ATG Broadcast was established in 1993 by key staff from the Systems Division of Drake Electronics. ATG Broadcast soon expands froman initial headcount of three to its current 16 full-time staff. That same year, ATG Broadcastbegins work on the design of Channel 4’s Horseferry Road facility, one the world's first SDI-based broadcast facilities.

ATG Broadcast completes extensive technicalrefurbishment of BBC Birmingham’s Studio A, tocreate a modern digital widescreen televisionstudio. The six camera studio is fitted with a 36channel digital vision mixer and vision effectssystem. For the first time in a BBC NetworkStudio, production monitoring is directly fromthe digital bit-stream.

ATG Broadcast installs a powerful matrix-basedmachine control centre for Lip Sync, enabling theproduction house to make its move from westLondon to central Soho in record time. Basedaround Quartz 32 x32 digital video and stereoaudio matrices, the CAR allows data to be fed allover the building, including the presentation suiteon the top floor. Lip Sync’s three Avid suites, 3DSilicon Graphics suite and digital on-line suite areall able to access the variety of storage mediaheld in the CAR, including Digibeta, D5, D3, BetaSP, Quick Frame and Diskus hard-disk systems aswell as VHS and low-band formats.

Sit-up.com chooses ATG Broadcast as itspartner for the design and installation of anew broadcast facility in Acton. The firstchannel to be broadcast, bid-up.tv has a fast-paced auction theme. It is initially available inall Sky Digital homes and via the Internet.

ATG Broadcast completes a contract for BBCResources’ Post Production & Graphic DesignDepartment at Television Centre, London.This involves the digitisation of an existinganalogue system and the construction ofeight general-purpose editing suites based ona combination of linear and non-linear AvidMedia Composers and Grass Valley Profiles.The project is carried out over a three-month period with only two suites out ofservice at any one time, minimising downtime in this high-pressure area.

A major installation for BBC Presentation is completed in collaboration with BBC Resources. BBC Presentation is primarily a large scale monitoring and control area and is the editorial nerve centre for allthe BBC public service and commercial channels being output from Television Centre in London.

ATG Broadcast designs and installs a number of the technical areas inside the Millennium Dome in London. The contract includes two radio presentation studios, an audio editing suite and the International BroadcastCentre (IBC). New Year’s Eve 1999 see a successful first night of operations for the IBC where it forms thecentral routing facility for the host broadcaster (BBC Television) and all the other international broadcasterspresent. ATG Broadcast is also contracted to design and install the control room for the 6,000 person centraltheatre plus a sound monitoring room, which controls the Dome’s audio infrastructure.

1998

1999

ATG Broadcast is awarded a contract from IcelandicNational Broadcaster RUV in Reykjavik. The projectincludes a transmission suite, continuity, VT acquisition andediting area, multi-format dubbing area and a newsroomcomputer system complete with three integrated non-linear editing suites. Large prefabricated sections of thesystem are shipped out to Iceland ready for the installationteam. Site work starts at the end of April 2000 and iscompleted by the end of June. The system is a hybrid ofGrass Valley Profile servers with tape-based storage andplay-out. Playout is built around Pro-Bel Compassautomation and the newsroom around an Avstar systemunder BCS control.

ATG Broadcast designs a three-camera studio for BT in London. Forming part of BT’s new Auditorium, the newresource comprises TV studio, postproduction facility and 175-seat auditorium. The studio includes an Avid suiteand graphics production area based around a digital video and analogue infrastructure.

Alan Pimm joins ATG Broadcast as proposals manager. He began his broadcast career in 1982 as a graduateengineer at BBC Television Centre, progressing to Visions in 1985, Virgin Television in 1987 and in 1989 to Soho-based independent production facility Network One. In 1991 he joined the design team at UK national televisionbroadcaster Channel 4.

ATG Broadcast is chosen to design and construct a newmulti-channel transmission area at BBC Television Centre.This installation takes automation to a higher level thanever, including Omnibus Systems’ Colossus, one of the firstOmneon video area network servers, Eyeheight PresTXpresentation mixers and BNCS control. Expandability is akey requirement. The system allows a simple extra channelto be added in just two weeks.

ATG Broadcast wins a contract to supply new vision,audio and communication facilities for the BBC’s TC3studio, together with a new control room suite. Theproject includes the first digital audio system for a BBC TVCentre studio, based around a 96-channel 128-inputCalrec Alpha 100 digital console and options for a 48-track Tascam DA98/DA88 multitrack recorder.

ATG Broadcast installs an additional four disk-based videoedit suites at the BBC’s Stage V post-production facility inLondon’s Television Centre. The four suites (one online,three offline) increase to 12 the total number of editsuites in Stage V’s ‘nonlinear village’. A fibre-channelnetworked Avid Media Composer audio/videoworkstation forms the basis of each suite.

Alan Pimm is promoted to Sales Director and Dave Whitaker appointed as Manager of Projects..

2000

2001

The Dutch Broadcasting Organisation, NOB selects ATGBroadcast to design and build a new multi-channeltransmission area for SBS in Amsterdam. Installationcommences in June and the first channel is on air by theend of July. The new facility allows concurrent transmissionand monitoring of three separate channels: Net5, SBS6and V8. The project encompasses the installation of amaster control room and apparatus area together withequipping of the first broadcast chain. Following the startof transmission, ATG Broadcast relocates equipmentfrom the former site to provide the full complement offacilities.

ATG Broadcast is awarded a prestigious contract by the BBC to design and build a new Interactive Production Areaat BBC Television Centre, London. The new resource allows concurrent production of multiple interactive streamsfor sports events, enabling programme audiences to choose between a variety of viewing angles.

ATG Broadcast begins work on a contract from TV4 Sweden to install and commission a sport channel. This includes provision of comprehensive new routing and output chain infrastructure in preparation for full multi-channel delivery. The new installation centres on an Omnibus Colossus Multichannel transmission system interlinkedwith TV4’s existing Omnibus automation equipment.

ATG Broadcast is contracted by BBC Technology to double the capacity of the BBC Multi-Streaming Area (MSA).The expanded facilities raise the number of MSA programme output streams from six to 14, increasing the BBC’sinteractive capacity. Six of the additional streams are configured to handle major sports events.

ATG Broadcast completes a contract to re-equip BBC Elstree Studios A, B and C which are being used to originatefour weekly episodes of EastEnders. The contract also includes enhancements to Studio D where EastEnders wasformerly produced and which is now being equipped for a children’s magazine programme.

ATG Broadcast completes a development of London-based Fusion Post Productions. The new installation includesthe supply and commissioning of two Avid Symphony nonlinear video editing workstations and four Avid MediaComposer offline editors, Avid Pro-Tools and Digidesign audio processors.

ATG Broadcast is chosen to upgrade and relocate BBCNews’ Multi-Format Dubbing Area. The expanded facilityis to be shared and integrated with the corporation’sPhoto-Imaging department. Over 40 tape transports in awide range of 525-line and 625-line analogue and digitalVT formats are re-sited as part of the contract. These areused for ingest of new material and pre-edit processing ofarchived content. Six workstations are installed for thevideo transfer process.

The Farm Group, London’s leading independent post-production group, chooses ATG Broadcast as systemsintegrator for Uncle, a major new facility adjacent to BBC

Television Centre. Uncle comprises 10 Avid off-line suites, two online suites, two Avid Pro-Tools audio dubbing suitesand a grading area. Six levels of Pro-Bel routing (SDI, PAL, 625/525 reference, digital audio, time code and RS-422data) are controlled by Pharos Pilot-RT.

ATG Broadcast is selected to design and build a fully digital production village within BBC Broadcast’s new BroadcastCentre. The village will enable the creative team to post-produce high quality television graphics and on-airpromotions on-site quickly and cost-effectively. The integrated digital production village, due to open in January 2004,will consist of 35 browse stations, six self-operating edit suites, six craft edit suites, a captioning suite, two dubbingsuites and two voice-over booths

2002

2003

ATG Broadcast expands into double-size premises near itsformer headquarters in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Thenew facility at 1 Iceni Court, Icknield Way, provides thecompany with greatly enlarged pre-assembly and testingfacilities. Planning rooms and open-plan offices are locatedon the upper floor.

ATG Broadcast was selected by BBC Broadcast as systemsintegrator for the Central Storage and Archive system tobe installed in Broadcast Centre, West London. In the initialphase of implementation, D10 format files created usingOmneon Servers under Omnibus control will betransferred to a 50 TB SGI disk array from where they canbe accessed by the Quantel Digital Production Villagerecently installed by ATG, and used to create trails andinterstitial material. The 50 TB of storage will representseveral weeks of programming.

A 200 TB ADIC Scalar 10K Archive Library controlled byFront Porch Digital’s DIVArchive Hierarchical StorageManager allows files to be archived either as a manualprocess or according to archive rules set within DIVArchive.It will be possible to archive files from multiple PlayoutServers to the Library, enabling programmes requiringrepeat broadcasts to be ingested once only.

ATG Broadcast upgrades the BBC’s Newsround Digitalstudio and relocates it from Studio 2 at Television Centreto the East Tower. Located within the Children’s PostProduction Village on the first floor, the new studioproduces content for digital transmission on the CBBCchannel.The project window is just five weeks from start tocompletion, including the design of purpose-built furniture.The result gives BBC Newsround Digital substantiallyimproved technical resources.

TV4 Sweden commissions ATG Broadcast to provide facilities for a new movie channel: TV4 Film.This projectcentres on the expansion of routing and output chain infrastructure installed for TV4 Sport, which went on airin January 2003. TV4’s main studio is a showpiece in itself, being open to public view from the reception areaat the network’s Stockholm headquarters.

ATG Broadcast modernises two video dubbing suites for BBC Post Production.This contract encompasses VT17and VT18 on the second floor of Stage 5 at Television Centre in Wood Lane. Both suites are used for tape-to-tape copying between a variety of formats and are equipped to operate in or between 625 and 525-linestandards.

In October, ATG Broadcast commences a major new project for ITV Central including the installation of twonew studios in Birmingham and a greenfield-site newsroom in Nottingham. The objective is to provide studiofacilities for both East and West Midlands regions in Birmingham.

2004

2006

2005Alastair MacDonald joins ATG Broadcast as ProposalsManager. He brings 35 years of broadcast industryexperience, having joined BBC Television in Glasgowduring 1970 as a direct-entry engineer. In 1979 hejoined the Cambridge headquarters of Pye TVT as acustomer training engineer, progressing in 1986 to SonyBroadcast where he worked as a lecturer and was laterpromoted to senior proposals engineer.

ATG Broadcast’s first major contract during 2005 is todigitise the entire production and transmission of

television services for Services Sound & Vision Corporation. SSVC delivers two television streams for UKarmed forces. British Forces Broadcasting Services 1 and 2 provide a lifeline to UK military personnel stationedaround the world, enabling them to watch highlights from the major UK broadcast xelevision channels.Programmes are ingested off-air or via line feeds into two Quantel sQ Servers under IBIS automation. A 120terabyte ADIC Scalar 2K Archive Library allows files to be archived either as a manual process or according toarchive rules set within IBIS ServerBase. The SSVC system includes seven Quantel QCut workstations, threeof these used in preparing material for the BFBS News programme BFBS Reports. Quantel’s Frame Magictechnology enables files to be streamed at very high speed between servers.

National Geographic Channel chooses ATG Broadcast to relocate its European Post Production resources.Previously sited near the main Sky building in Brentford, the channel moves to new facilities at Shepherds Bush.The contract includes a completely new audio suite with an Avid Digidesign Pro-Tools 6.9 editor running onan Apple Macintosh G5.The new installation dramatically accelerates the channel’s workflow and demonstratesthe improvements in operational flexibility and productivity made possible by integrating fast and flexible IT-based solutions alongside a proven broadcast infrastructure.

Red Bee Media (formerly BBC Technology) commissions ATG Broadcast to equip a Signing Studio for theBroadcast Centre in London’s White City. This enables programme subtitling for deaf viewers to be recordedor produced for live transmission. The Signing Studio will replace a leased facility located at the BBC TelevisionCentre.

ATG Broadcast designs, installs and commissions a broadcast management system for Astro All Asia Networks’new 65 channel Broadcast Centre in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The system comprises satellite down linking andincoming lines area; Tape ingest, compliance editing and versioning area; Multi-channel transmission area; Reactivetransmission suites and voice-over booths; Master control room. ATG Broadcast also hosts and manages apilot project in Britain for the file-based media management system integral to the Cyberjaya Broadcast Centreproject.

TV4 Sweden chooses ATG Broadcast to provide new facilities allowing the origination, post-production andplayout of two new channels. Restructured layout of existing studios and technical resources within the sameproject will deliver the added benefit of a major increase in overall operating efficiency as well as moreeconomical use of floor space.TV4 Sweden was one of the earliest broadcasters to adopt disk-based playout.Two additional transmission chains, an additional automation channel and extra monitoring facilities have alsobeen installed.

ATG Broadcast also equips the second of two signingstudios for Red Bee Media. Located in the BroadcastCentre at White City, London, Signing Studio 2 providesadditional capacity for the creation of live or recordedin-vision sign-language captioning and extends thefacility into HD.

ATG Broadcast Ltd becomes a wholly-owned subsidiaryof Scandinavia’s leading broadcast systems specialist,Danmon Systems Group A/S, a division of Copenhagen-based Dan Technologies A/S. ATG Broadcast willcontinue to operate under its current name from itsestablished headquarters in Letchworth, Hertfordshire.

Søren Johansen joins ATG Broadcast as Deputy Director, working alongside Managing Director GrahamBuchanan and Sales Director Alan Pimm. Søren Johansen began his career in 1968, gaining experience as anelectronics engineer active in television and telecommunications. In 1985 he was appointed Managing Directorof Dansk Video-Tec, an A/V installation specialist based in Svendborg. When Danmon Group acquired thecompany in 1988, he was appointed Regional Manager of the Odense office and in 1997 became Sales Managerresponsible for sales and marketing in Denmark.

ATG Broadcast expands its team of Project Engineers with the appointment of Erik Olafsen. Erik Olafsenformerly worked for Siemens IT Solutions & Services, working as a Project Engineer handling technical designand project management including designing, budgeting and quoting for projects outside and within the BBC.

National Geographic Channel selects ATG Broadcast to provide expanded HD resources at the network’sEuropean postproduction centre in London. The project extends the capabilities of the HD postproductionand playout system installed by ATG Broadcast prior to the channel’s commencement of 1080i transmissionsin summer 2006. It includes additional Sony HDCAM-SR multi-format recording and playback facilities in theaudio postproduction suite. These are used in conjunction with an existing Avid Adrenalin video editing system.The Adrenaline itself has been enhanced with Dolby Audio Tools, Avid ProTools LE audio editing software,additional Dolby E multichannel sound encoding, decoding and monitoring and Rosendahl MIDI timecodeinterfaces. Tektronix HD signal analysers have been installed in the central apparatus room and master controlroom together with additional HD-interfaced Sony CRT picture monitors and a Trilogy Mentor referencegenerator with tri-state HD outputs. This latest contract provides supplementary equipment which will allowNational Geographic Channel to expand its HD output while still meeting the needs of SD audiences.

ATG Broadcast commences work on a contractfrom De Montfort University. The projectincludes installing, configuring and commissioninga large multidefinition video production facility,technical control room, dedicated video andaudio analysis laboratories, two sound studios,four self-op radio studios, a radio control room,plus a highly advanced virtual-reality and fused-media laboratory.The new installation forms thecore of the Creative Technology Studios at theLeicester City Campus, including three mediaproduction classrooms, one equipped with 21workstations to give students experience inusing the latest HD video and audio productionsoftware. Each of the other two media-production classrooms accommodates eightworkstations, one being dedicated to Mac-basedaudio and video production, and the otherdedicated to PC-based audio and videoproduction. A music studio and audio dubbingstudio are also installed. Each of these has twoindependent control rooms allocated to soundrecording and offline post productionrespectively. Equipment is varied betweenlocations, maximising student exposure tomultiple brands of hardware and software. A radio studio with four self-op presentation desks is equipped, feeding a control room linked in turn to anFM transmitter for campus-wide broadcasting. Technical measurement and QA tuition will be given in a newlaboratory specialising in video analysis plus a separate laboratory for audio analysis.

2007

2008 sees an expansion of ATG Broadcast’s management with several new appointments and the arrival ofGuy Elliott as Managing Director. His 30-year broadcast industry career commenced when he co-founded broadcast radio systems installation specialist Elliott Brothers (Audio Systems) Ltd in 1978.He later gained wider experience with Redifon SPT, Sennheiser UK, Kingston TLI and Encoda Systems beforejoining Leitch Europe in 2001. In 2005 Harris Corporation acquired Leitch and Guy Elliott was appointedDirector of Regional Sales Europe. During his career at Harris, he helped grow sales by more than 30 percentand successfully integrated new business acquisitions into the regional sales infrastructure.

Also in 2008, Jim Greaves joins ATG Broadcast as Business Development Manager. He will be actively involvedin expanding ATG Broadcast’s systems integration and support services, reporting to Alan Pimm, Sales Director.An electronics graduate, Jim began his career in broadcasting at the BBC, working in regional studios and R&D.His subsequent career has involved a number of technical and commercial roles with some of the industry’sleading names, most recently as Divisional Director, Media, with Sony Professional Solutions Europe.

2008 proves a particularly active year for ATG Broadcast,including a comprehensive rebuild of Astro’s All AsiaBroadcast Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A new suiteof operational areas is constructed and the stationarchitecture re-engineered to provide resilience pluseasy future expansion capabilities. The entire projecttakes place while the station is on-air, transmitting 100direct-to-home channels to subscribers in Malaysia andIndonesia. Each of the new technical areas mirrors thedesign by ATG Broadcast for Astro’s CyberjayaBroadcast Centre (CBC) completed in 2006. Theprovision of identical facilities and user interfacesreduces Astro’s training overhead and allows staff tooperate easily at either site.

ATG Broadcast installs two new edit suites for Red Bee Media, Britain’s largest playout and channel managementservice-provider. Largest of the two new facilities is an HD video edit suite on the second floor of Red BeeMedia’s headquarters, the Broadcast Centre at London’s White City.

ATG Broadcast completes the installation of an ingest suite for the BBC Post Production division of BBCResources Ltd. Located adjacent to the Entertainment Editing Village on the fourth floor of Television Centre,the new facility allows content arriving on video tape to be transferred to a 24-client 48 terabyte Avid UnityISIS disk server prior to editing.

ATG Broadcast has completed a major routing system upgradefor Sweden's largest independent television channel, TV4. The new installation is the latest in an ongoing technicalexpansion programme to equip the network for HD.

The upgrade centres on the installation of a 3 gigabit/s-native576 x 576 Pro-Bel Cygnus HD routing frame equipped as a324 x 312 matrix with dual redundant power supplies, dualredundant controllers and four monitoring outputs. One of thefirst applications of the Cygnus was to process HD feeds fromthe 2008 UEFA European Football Championship hosted byAustria and Switzerland.

2008

ATG Broadcast is a world-class supplier of broadcast systems planning, design, installation and commissioning services. Our client list includes some of the world’s largest broadcast networks and embraces the latest file-based digital networkingtechnology.

ATG Broadcast headquarters is located in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, easily accessible from the A1 motorway and only35 miles north of London.

Founded in 1993 and now part of the Danmon Systems Group, ATG Broadcast Limited is independent of any major videoequipment manufacturer and is free to source system components on the basis of fitness for purpose rather than anycommercial affinity.

A one-source guarantee of efficient and reliable broadcast systems integration with optional long-term engineering support,ATG Broadcast has the full resources needed to pre-build and test complete large-scale installations prior to delivery.Each project is supervised by a dedicated specialist who remains the client contact from project commencement tocompletion and beyond.

Central to the ATG Broadcast ethos is a careful study of client workflow followed by selection and optimisation of softwareand hardware. Our turnkey contract experience includes site structure, air-conditioning, acoustics, lighting, energyconservation, furniture, technical documentation and operator training.

We have the in-house resources to cover several projects simultaneously. We have a proven track record in themanagement, design, installation, and commissioning of broadcast projects in many countries. As our experience grows, weare building up a number of manufactured items, which we use as the building blocks of large systems. In-house seniormanagement staff supervises every project. This ensures the highest quality and fully consistent procedures. Contractengineers and wiremen are used only when workloads demand.

ATG Broadcast provides full post-installation support for 12 months following the completion of a system, in the form ofengineering visits or by telephone as required. Our project managers and systems engineers normally cover their ownprojects from initial project award through to the installation stage. Comprehensive manuals are supplied with everysystem.

Given the growing need for highly specialised technical management skills to handle complex IT-based systems, combinedwith the increasing power of online diagnostics, many system operators are now looking to also outsource maintenanceand support. ATG Broadcast maintains a dedicated systems support department, which can be deployed throughout theentire life of a project.

Unit 1 Iceni Court, Icknield Way, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England SG6 1TNTelephone: +44 (0)1462 485444 Facsimile: +44 (0)1462 485777

Email: info@atgbroadcast.co.uk Web: www.atgbroadcast.co.uk