Point.360 has introduced a commercially available HD-SD global satellite transmission service for spot distribution, syndicated programming and special live events. Point.360's newest service, it said, is currently used to deliver several of this season's American TV series in HD to CTV of Canada. The HD satellite transmission service is based on the GlobeCast satellite and fiber network, based in Los Angeles.
Point.360's HD content submission service is located in its Highland Hollywood facility in Los Angeles, which has begun to allow 24-hour submission access to production studios and ad agencies. Customers can purchase 1080i or 720p delivery service by either a show or episode, or in 15-minute increments, with GlobeCast's 270 MB SDI facility-to-facility circuits.
Fiber facilities link GlobeCast's Los Angeles digital media teleport and Point.360's Highland facility for real-time transmission of live broadcast video. A typical operation entails Point.360 receiving a D-5 or HDCAM tape, 5.1 audio and optional closed captioning from the submitter, which, in turn, is transmitted in real-time and received at GlobeCast as an SDTI-compressed HD signal via its SDI circuit.
The signal is then decompressed to full bandwidth HD and routed to the company's satellite HD encoder system where it is up-linked to a GlobeCast satellite transponder and the uplink and encoding chains are redundantly configured. The downlinked video-audio signals are received by the customer, decompressed and either stored for later broadcast or integrated with commercials and/or station logos and fed to the play-out server for on-air broadcast. Got that? They'll be a test.
