For-A FRC -7000 HD frame rate converter
LOS ANGELES
Broadcast television has truly become a global business. Every day, syndicated American shows air in different countries. Hollywood celebrities appear on live news shows worldwide and sports fans watch games being played on the other side of the world.
While international broadcasters share the need for reliable transmission of shows delivered with pristine video and audio quality, they don't all share the same television standards. Today, we regularly deal with a wide array of popular HD/SD formats and frame rates.
To facilitate high quality backhaul or transmission of high-profile sports and entertainment events, such as "The MTV Video Music Awards" or Premier League football (soccer) games from the UK—as well as live satellite media tours, voiceovers, breaking news feeds, and other live shots—we've invested in three For-A FRC-7000 HD frame rate converters to accommodate our format conversion demands.
As an example of how this technology works, when we backhauled the Commonwealth Games from Delhi, India to CBC in Canada, we needed to provide real-time conversion between the 1080/50i signal coming from India and 1080/60i HDTV signal being aired in Canada. The FRC-7000 enabled us to do the conversion in real-time for 10 straight days flawlessly.
With facilities in Los Angeles, New York, and London, PacTV transmits live signals via our own high-speed fiber-optic network, as well as fiber networks run by our strategic global partners, to virtually every major city in the world. Our Los Angeles facility also hosts a number of strategic carriers including Level 3/Vyvx, SingTel, Intelsat, SES World Skies, British Telecom, Nexion and XO Communications.
The For-A converters are especially good for HD sports video, as they can distinguish between motion in the foreground versus that in the background without compromising detail.
With advanced features like vector motion compensation and automatic scene cut detection, the FRC-7000 handles technically complex compression without introducing artifacts at a very affordable price.
AUDIO OPTION VERY USEFUL
We also ordered For-A's optional audio card for one of the units. This provides for up to 16 channels of audio, and supports Dolby E encoding and decoding, as well as an adjustable delay circuit. Such features are ideal for backhaul or transmission of televised specials like music or award shows.
We decided to purchase the For-A FRC-7000 after evaluating it against another leading manufacturer's converter product at the 2009 NAB Show.
While both converters offered the advanced motion compensation analysis and processing required, we ultimately decided to buy the FRC-7000 because it met our requirements at a lower price. This lowered acquisition cost enabled us to buy additional units, which was extremely beneficial to us, considering how fast our conversion requirements have been expanding.
Jakob Nielsen is project coordinator for Pacific Television Center in Los Angeles. He may be contacted at jakob@pactv.com.
For additional information, contact For-A Corp. of America at 201-944-1120 or visit www.for-a.com.
