Voice of America Selects Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 Switcher for Live Broadcasts

July 23, 2008 - PRLog -- Billerica, Massachusetts - Broadcast Pix™, the company that redefined the production switcher as a live integrated production system, announces the sale of its Slate™ 2100 switcher to the Voice of America(VOA) in Washington, D.C. A second Slate 2100 is also in place at VOA’s London facility.

VOA is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.

The Slate 2100 switcher is being used to produce newsbreaks and remote inserts to enrich news of national, international and regional import for inclusion in VOA’s recently expanded Persian TV broadcasts. VOA’s round-the-clock operations already fully utilized staff and production resources necessitated a supplemental studio. The Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 manned with a single operator fulfilled those specific operational needs efficiently.  

According to Steve Hocker, Senior Broadcast Engineer at VOA, “The ability to broadcast a newscast complete with clips and have the same unit drive an audio board, clip store, and lower thirds, while being controlled by a single operator, was a very important operational benefit.”  

The Broadcast Pix Slate 2100 system integrates a production switcher, production control panel, Inscriber CG, clip store, and multi-view monitoring, among other functions, in a single workstation-based system.  The multi-function system  and single operator design of the Slate 2100 simplifies engineering and allows ease of installation and operation, compared to the complex integration requirements of a conventional control room that involves many pieces of equipment.

VOA plans to expand production of daily news inserts for Spanish language broadcasts to Latin America.

Every Slate switcher is a complete integrated live video production system, including production switcher, multi-view monitoring, Inscriber® CG, clips stores, and aspect and format conversion, with optional control of robotic cameras, audio mixers and other studio devices.  Slate HD models are priced from just $14,400, and support HD-SDI 1080i and 720p formats as well as SD-SDI and analog.  Optional I/O includes DVI and VGA for computers and projectors, HD analog component inputs such as from a Blu-Ray, and 1080p output via HDMI. Unlike conventional production switchers that only accept video inputs, Slate systems also accept clips and graphic inputs as files, including QuickTime (DV, DVCPRO, and H.264-Mpeg4) and MPEG2 as well as animations from all popular animation packages.  This file-based architecture streamlines live production workflow by seamlessly integrating the live production system with edit bays.  

Broadcast Pix is the leader in combining technologies from the computer and live television equipment industries to create an innovative family of live video production systems. Broadcast Pix systems are a fraction of the cost of conventional live video production solutions; yet retain a switcher’s fast action control and non-stop, on-air robustness.  They can be run by a single operator instead of requiring a team. Customers include over 800 leading broadcasters (including CBS, NBC and ESPN), webcasters, cable stations, stadiums, corporate, education, religious and government studios in over 50 countries. Broadcast Pix is based at 3 Federal Street, Billerica, Massachusetts, with offices throughout North America and in Europe. See www.broadcastpix.com.  

Editor’s Note: Color product photographs are available upon request.

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Pipeline Communications is a full service public relations agency, serving clients in the high-technology sector for a variety of markets. The firm is based in Montclair, New Jersey and has been in business since 1995.