Presteigne Charter Gets World Cup Kicks As BBC, ITV, and Sky Production Partner

With this year’s English Premiership season drawing to a close, it’s now only a matter of weeks before the FIFA World Cup 2010 presents itself to televisions around the globe. Stadiums throughout South Africa are preparing themselves for the onslaught of international football fans, teams are warming up and intercontinental broadcasters are getting ready for one of the most important and high profile world broadcasting jobs of the decade.

Presteigne Charter will provide technical facilities and broadcast solutions for the UK rights broadcast holders, BBC and ITV, in addition to Input Media for Sky Sports and also for German rights broadcast holders Sky GmbH and RTL for coverage of the FIFA World Cup.

Presteigne Charter’s London operation has responsibility for providing post production, interactive production and facilities for feeding mixes of live coverage to the main London productions for both BBC and ITV. Prestigne is also supplying semi-permanent, fully integrated studio set up installations for locations in Cape Town and in the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Johannesburg, incorporating Soccer City. The IBC site is to be both BBC and ITV’s technical hub and mixing point for World Cup production, linking together the stadium venues, studios, outside broadcasts and UK television centers. Production control rooms, post production and edit suites, audio control rooms, remote studios and stand up positions will all receive Presteigne Charter’s equipment to enable the rights holders to deliver a seamless, consistent and unsurpassed standard of broadcasting excellence.

Sky Sports is also acquiring its own Cape Town studio for the World Cup close to the new Green Point Stadium. Despite having no live rights to the event, Sky, in collaboration with Input Media, will deliver live studio discussions and overviews of the matches and will also feature interviews in and around the area. Presteigne Charter will be supplying facilities, cameras and server systems to Input Media for Sky’s use.

Presteigne Charter’s German operation will provide broadcast technology and technical staff to Sky GmbH and RTL’s technical centres. RTL and Sky, together with ARD and ZDF, hold the German broadcasting rights to the World Cup 2010.

Presteigne Charter will be outfitting Sky and RTL’s studio and equipment rooms in the IBC in Johannesburg with a variety of broadcasting equipment. Pay TV channel, Sky GmbH is to broadcast all 64 matches live and in HD with RTL broadcasting nine of the matches as part of its free service.

With shipping already underway, the substantial amount of equipment that Presteigne Charter is providing is mostly from its own vast inventory. These include EVS Server Systems running in different Codecs and integrated with Avid and Final Cut Pro and, fresh from the English Premiership League, Presteigne Charter’s red mini-cams are also to be provided in addition to Sony HDC 1500 cameras in studios and JIX jibs.

On the audio side, Lawo mc2 audio mixers, working in conjunction with Grass Valley and Harris routers to provide embedded audio solutions are to be supplied. A new product in Presteigne Charter’s inventory, the 4HM Sam64 will also be provided, to work in tandem with the Lawo and routers providing a reliable and cost-effective solution to the issues of interfacing SDI to audio equipment such as routers, consoles, intercoms and workstations. The SAM64 de-embeds 16 audio channels from each of the unit’s four SDI inputs to provide a total of 64 audio channels in both MADI and AES3 formats.