Outside broadcaster 021 Television has installed a HD cue dot generator, specially engineered by Microvideo, to cope with ITV Sport’s move to cover UEFA Champions League, FA Cup and England Internationals in HD. ITV uses a cue dot to signal to its transmission centres when to take commercial breaks.
021 Television head of engineering Martin Ayshford explained: “021 Television has used MicroVideo SD cue dot generators for 10 years or more and we have always found them incredibly reliable. The problem that we faced with ITV Sports’ move to HD was that at the time nobody was producing a commercial HD product. MicroVideo offered a fast turnaround time in developing this product to meet our deadlines.”
The cue dot operation is controlled by the ITV production assistant in conjunction with transmission control at ITV’s London studios. The unit sits in the output of 021Television main transmission path and input can be switched between HD 1080/50i and SD 575/50i, depending on the operation of the scanner.
Ian Hudson, MicroVideo CEO, adds, “Because the HD cue dot generator is based on our Series 300 hardware we could achieve exactly what the customer wanted, within their timeline and budget.”
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