WHDH-TV, the NBC affiliate in Boston, is now using Harmonic’s Electra 8000 universal encoder technology to transport sports content in high definition via MPEG-2. The station relied on the Electra 8000 for content delivery of pre- and post-game shows from the 2010 NHL Bridgestone Winter Classic held at Boston’s Fenway Park, and plans to use it for local broadcasts from the Feb. 12-28 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
“We needed to get three camera feeds in high quality MPEG-2 HD from Fenway Park back to our studio for editing and broadcast,” said Jim Shultis, WHDH-TV’s director of engineering. “The Harmonic Electra 8000 provides the highest quality 1080i encoding in a compact, multi-channel design that was perfect for this application. And thanks to Electra’s flexibility, we are able to easily reconfigure it for broadcasting the Olympic Winter Games.”
The Electra 8000 and MPEG-2 technology has allowed the station to move away from much more costly baseband high-definition multi-camera content transport in covering these sporting events.
