NBC News to deploy new digital satellite technology in the Middle East

NBC News has announced the purchase of a new digital satellite technology developed by Tandberg Television in cooperation with Raytheon Company. The system, a fully integrated 2U digital flyaway, is designed for two-way audio, video, data and communications from a remote transmission site to NBC Studios via its MSNBC Secaucus teleport. NBC News is deploying several of the units to support its network and cable television coverage from across the region.“The latest step in news distribution is the new SNG solution from Tandberg Television and Raytheon which enables high-quality pictures to be transmitted from wherever the news is breaking, however isolated and arduous the conditions,” says Stacy Brady, vice president, NBC News, Field Operations. “Due to Tandberg Television and Raytheon’s unparalleled cooperation on this system, I’m confident that NBC News will be able to provide viewers with quality pictures of breaking news coverage from around the globe. No one else will have a system as powerful and unique as this.”Employing a Tandberg E5740 DSNG encoder, miniaturised antenna technology from Raytheon, and V100 versatile multiplexer from Vocality International, the mobile transmission system is compact and provides real-time broadcast of remote news coverage with easy integration to uplink terminals for a simplified dish alignment.“The Tandberg Television DSNG system, coupled with the antenna system provided by Raytheon, offers significant improvement for our NBC News field operations,” continues Brady. “Whereas previously, we would have used a 2U SNG encoder with a separate monitor, separate telephone connection, and separate uplink, the new system is a major technological step forward and integrates all of the major field news gathering requirements into a single unit. It increases our speed and ease of coverage and vastly improves the picture quality we’re able to transmit using low symbol rate modulation.”“This is breakthrough technology at a time when the need for news information by networks throughout the world is at its highest,” adds Eric Cooney, COO, Tandberg Television. “This new system will be able to document news from across the globe with a speed-to-air and transportability that we’ve never seen before. Recent advances in compression and modulation converged at exactly the right time to make this product a reality. We see a bright future for this system, with applications ranging from worldwide broadcasters to government organisations.”