Starwinder, the BBC Technology Group's project to move to tapeless HD production by 2010, is to trial the Grass Valley Infinity digital media camcorder.

BBC boss admits it had "wasted a huge amount of license fee payers' money." Troubled and over-ambitious project to build a tapeless production platform rather than purchasing from a technology vendor is finally abandoned. The BBC CTO has been suspended.

"Starwinder," BBC Technology Group's project to move to tapeless HD production by 2010, has chosen the Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media Camcorder and related products from Thomson to test out. Grass Valley is one of two manufacturers undergoing intensive trials over the next year in the initial phase of the Starwi

The Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media Camcorder will join the Panasonic P2-based DVCPRO HD in a yearlong test of HD acquisition and tapeless media

With the help of BBC Technology, ESPN is well on the way to transforming its tape-based operations to a nonlinear editing and acquisition environment. The sports network is planning to begin physical construction of a pilot implementation of this type of workflow, for which it is employing BBC Technology's Colledia for Sports and Colledia Control asset management solutions, at its Bristol, CT, facility this month. According to BBC Technology's Kevin Ivey, the BBC Technology/ESPN project comprises two phases: the pilot implementation mentioned above, and the full-blown implementation at ESPN's new all-digital facility (estimated to be ready to launch in mid-2004).

Starting next month, all HD programs will use the AJ-HDX900 DVCPRO HD camcorder as the standard acquisition product.