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BY
STUART LOGIE
PHOTOS: JERRY HART
HDTV’s BIGGEST FAN
PAUL ALLEN COMBINES
HIS PASSION FOR SPORTS
WITH CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY
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On September 14, 2001, a 53-foot-long,
high-definition television (HDTV) production truck called “Columbia”
was wheeled into position to broadcast a very special event on the Oregon
public
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network: a live memorial concert by the Oregon Symphony Orchestra to honor
the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks. It was a somber event
in which the state-of-the-art technology of the new millennium played
a role in commemorating the first major human tragedy of the 21st century.
It was an occasion that the people at Action Sports and Entertainment
Mobile (ASEM) television, operators of the mobile HDTV facility, won’t
soon forget. |
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“This
event was arranged very much at the last minute,” says Mike and the mobile
truck’s principle designer. “It was a very emotional Janes, Director of
Engineering and Broadcast Technology for ASEM moment for everyone, and
we were glad to have been part of it. I just hope we never have to do
something like that again.” Indeed, the $10-million truck had been designed
by Janes and his team to produce taped productions of something quite
different |
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professional sporting events for the Paul Allen Sports Group. Delivered
to ASEM by Sony Electronics’ Systems Integration Company (SIC) last July,
the truck has already traveled to sporting events in Seattle, San Francisco,
and Indianapolis, and is proving that one can build a street-legal 79,500-pound
HDTV production facility and take it on the road.
The driving force behind the idea of a
mobile, state-of-the-art HDTV facility came from Paul Allen, who, with
a friend named Bill Gates, envisioned the day when a miniature version
of a mainframe computer would sit on every desktop. As Microsoft’s head
of research and new product development, Allen helped engineer many
of the company’s most successful products, including MS-DOS®, Microsoft®
Word, and Windows®. Allen left Microsoft in 1983 after a serious illness
led him to re-evaluate his priorities. Allen retains his seat on the
Microsoft board and remains, after Gates, its second largest stockholder.
But while Microsoft plays its part in the wired world, Allen has created
a different role for himself, pursuing his wideranging vision through
a variety of handpicked cable, internet, and technology companies, each
with its own special culture and capabilities. And two of the things
Allen likes most are professional sports and cutting-edge technology.
HIGH-DEFINITION DREAMS
In 1988 Allen acted on his long-time
passion for basketball when he bought the Portland Trail Blazers. Since
then, the value of the franchise has doubled, and its biggest fan has
helped introduce high technology to the NBA. Allen formed a public-private
partnership, seeded with his own investment, to build The Rose Garden,
a stunning new arena that opened in time for the 1995 professional basketball
season. The Rose Garden, which has been nominated as Arena of the Year
and Best New Major Concert Venue, features multimedia kiosks, fiber-optic
wiring, movable acoustic “clouds” that can be adjusted for different
types of sporting events, and the most high-tech scoreboard in the world
of sports. Allen also embarked on an ambitious project to construct
a world-class sports stadium, built for football and soccer, and exhibition
center on the site of Seattle’s Kingdome.
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Allen’s sports
teams have been pioneers in the production of HDTV programming. In March
1999, the Trail Blazers became the first NBA team to have its home games
broadcast in HDTV. In June1997, Allen
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his option to purchase the Seattle Seahawks, an NFL franchise, thereby
securing the team’s long-term future in Seattle. In fall 2000, the Seahawks
were the first NFL team to produce a pre-season game in HDTV. Now, Allen’s
professional sports franchises, which include the Portland Fire, a soccer
team, will benefit from the use of ASEM’s HDTV truck.
“We had been
considering a mobile HDTV facility for several years, but when we looked
at the physical requirements of supporting a mobile HDTV facility we
saw that it couldn’t be done, at least not yet given the state of the
technology,” says Janes. “When Sony began delivering switching platforms
with much more horsepower, that tilted the balance in favor making a
mobile HDTV facility a real possibility.”
Now, thanks
to Allen’s passion for sports and his determination to use high-definition
television technology, the broadcast and television production industry
has a full-fledged mobile HDTV service provider. Allen’s ASEM and Action
Sports Cable Network (ASCN) and were created to provide comprehensive
fixed and mobile HDTV production facilities and services to the Paul
Allen family of sports companies, which includes The Sporting News,
a weekly newspaper, and Action Sports Media, which develops and markets
sponsorship opportunities in collegiate athletic venues across America.
Action Sports
Cable Network is a high-definition cable TV sports channel that was
launched by Allen’s group in July 2001. Programming on the 24-hour,
365-day sports channel includes Portland Fire games, Seahawks pre-season
games, and approximately 25 Trail Blazers games. In addition to the
anchor programming of Paul Allen’s professional sports franchises, ASCN
will present extensive coverage of Oregon and Southwest Washington community,
high school, and collegiate athletics. ASCN is also pursuing broadcasting
agreements with major colleges and universities across the country.
A STREET-LEGAL NETWORK-GRADE
FACILITY
Action Sport and Entertainment Mobile Television was created to design
and operate the mobile HDTV facility. ASEM rolled out its new state-of-the-art
1080i HDTV truck in July, just seven months after the project got the
green light.
“When we designed
the mobile facility we had two primary goals,” says Janes. “First, it
had to replicate in high-definition everything we could do in standard
definition. Second, we had to make it street legal; that is, less than
80,000 pounds gross weight. The result is a mobile facility that just
borders on a network-grade facility in terms of the number of cameras,
replays, and so forth.
“We pushed
the limits when we designed this mobile facility,” says Janes. “We used
aluminum for the racks instead of steel, and designed the platform to
have one expansion side instead of the usual three. And we still managed
to fit everything inside!”
The truck,
one of the most comprehensive mobile HDTV production facilities in the
industry, features a fully expandable side, 12 HDTV cameras, 11 HD tape
machines, and a Sony Oxford 144-input digital audio mixing console.
The centerpiece of the truck is Sony’s new MVS8000 video switcher, providing
80 HD digital inputs, four mix/effects buses with four keys per M/E,
four digital mix effects, frame stores, and 48 programmable outputs.
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In
fact, the truck’s monitor wall features more than 100 displays, 55 HD
monitors, and three 42-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) plasma
displays, providing producers and directors with unprecedented quality,
and an additional 40 HD monitors to provide high-quality images to audio,
tape, and graphic personnel. Two 128-by-128 routing matrices allow the
truck to be instantly configured to |
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any layout, suiting production needs for almost any event in any venue.
The
HDTV truck had been developed with the end user in mind, involving its
customers early in the design process. ASEM included the Trail Blazer’s
production team early in the development of the HD truck. Because the
designers involved end users right from the beginning, they’ve been
able to make sure that the truck’s equipment is flexible and user-friendly.
The
on-air HD studios and mobile digital facilities, and the soon-to-be
delivered HD Satellite Uplink Truck, were designed and built by Sony
Electronics’ SIC team based in San Jose, CA. The facilities feature
the first installations of the Sony MVS 8000 video production switcher.
The production control room features Sony BVMD-24 high-definition monitors
and a BVE-9100 linear editor. Sony PFM510AWU plasma displays show the
facility’s output, allowing many configurations of source monitoring
for editing or live productions.
THE
LEARNING CURVE
“Our
relationship with Sony goes back to the early years of Blazer Broadcasting
in the late 80s when we purchased our first ENG camera, the BVW-300A,”
says Dick Vardanega, Vice President of Broadcasting and Production for
the Portland Trail Blazers. “That camera
is still being used in the field. We continued to purchase Sony products
as the broadcast division grew. When the decision was made to simultaneously
build a remote truck and launch our own regional sports network, with
both facilities using Sony high-definition products, expanding our relationship
with Sony was the best approach for achieving our goals.”
Indeed,
with the amount of integration that would occur between the Paul Allen
Sports Group and the truck manufacturer, coupled with the tight time-frame
for completion of the studio and launching of the sports network service,
it was critical for the Paul Allen Sports Group to team with a company
that understood its broadcasting goals and objectives.
“Our
mandate was to launch the Action Sports Cable Network on July 1, 2001,
and have the truck online for the start of the Seattle Seahawk pre-season
which began in early August,” says Vardanega. “Final approval for the
projects came in December 2000. Mike Janes, our Director of Engineering
and Broadcast Technology, felt that Sony would be the best fit for us
in this situation. With Sony’s diligence and our continual prodding,
both deadlines were met.”
One
of the unending challenges of producing live sports events is that broadcast
people usually need equipment and service yesterday, so high-quality
technical support and customer service are critical. According to Vardanega,
Sony was very responsive to the Paul Allen Sports Group’s needs.
“As
with any new technology or equipment there is always a learning curve,”
says Vardanega. “In this case, with high definition, it was a very steep
one. So far, our initial response on the products’ performance has been
very positive. “Because of the success of these two projects, we will
continue to look to Sony in our future expansion plans,” says Vardanega.
“We truly feel that we have developed a strong and unique relationship
with Sony that will only continue to grow.”
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THE
MOBILE HDTV TRUCK CHALLENGE
During the last decade, Sony Electronics’ Systems Integration Company
(SIC), based in San Jose, has set up more than 450 Business Solutions & Systems
production and postproduction facilities around the world. Included
in this total are at least a dozen production trucks, ranging from 30
to more than 50 feet in length, as well as the industry’s first serial
digital high-definition trucks. Yet, when SIC was contacted by the Paul
Allen Sports Group to build a mobile, state-of-art HDTV truck, at least
one person at SIC questioned whether the project was possible, even
for such an experienced group.
“When Mike Janes, Director of Engineering and
Broadcast Technology for the Paul Allen Sports Group, came to us with
his plan for a mobile HDTV production facility, I realized this would
be a very different layout than most 50-foot trucks,” says David Orr,
Vice President and General Manager of SIC. “The reality when integrating
a professional production facility into a mobile platform is that the
customer usually wants to put ten pounds of equipment into a five-pound
bag.”
The primary factors in designing a production
truck are weight and space, says Orr. For a truck to be street-legal,
it must be designed so that the truck’s total weight is correctly spread
over its axles. If it isn’t designed properly, the axle weight might
exceed the legal limits, and the truck would be restricted from driving
on highways, a fatal flaw for a mobile production facility. Fortunately,
Janes and the SIC team assigned to the HDTV truck project appreciated
the challenges that lay ahead of them.
“They did a fantastic job,” says Orr. “For
instance, Janes and the SIC team placed a separate graphics area toward
the front of the truck, which provides more versatility in being able
to easily switch from entertainment to sports productions.” For Orr,
working with the Paul Allen Sports Group was an especially satisfying
project because of the organization’s high caliber of technical expertise.
“It is a real pleasure for SIC to work with customers, like Mike Janes,
who know exactly what they want and demand the highest technical standards,”
says Orr. “When we’ve met the challenge and finished the project, the
final product is one on which we’re proud to hang the Sony SIC logo.”
—S.L.
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