For 2007, the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) brought its annual film festival and awards show to England. To insure that viewers back in India could see all the action, satcaster STAR worked with Broadcast Networks to get its signals to Asia.
The film festival included events in Sheffield, Hull, and Bradford, as well as the IIFA Awards show on 9 June in Leeds.
STAR filmed the awards in DigiBeta then spent a week editing the programme for broadcast. Over the weekend of 16 June, Broadcast Networks provided an SNG vehicle and technical staff to transmit the finished programme from England to Asia.
"The project involved linking up with two different satellites to bounce the signal from one side of the globe to the other," said Broadcast Networks Managing Director Tom Haye.
The signal was sent first to the Eutelsat Atlantic Bird 1 satellite above the Atlantic Ocean, from which it was downloaded to an earth station in the Middle East. From there, it was sent to the AsiaSat 2 satellite and then downloaded at an earth station in Hong Kong for onward delivery to the various STAR TV channels. "Throughout this process the signal was encrypted to guarantee security of content," Haye said.
