Turner Sports to Implement Fast Forward Video Omega Deck™ DVRs for New College Football Package
IRVINE, Calif. - August 15, 2002 - Fast Forward Video, Inc. (FFV), a recognized innovator of digital video recorder (DVR) technology for industrial, military, presentation, and professional broadcast applications, today announced that Turner Sports will be implementing the company's Omega Deck™ DVRs for a new college football package this fall.
Installed in the company's mobile production units, Turner's Omega Decks will be used primarily for replay transitions, commercial bumps, and transition wipes during coverage of Saturday PAC 10 and Big 12 football games. In video key mode, they will be running a dual deck and video key controlled through a Lance controller or straight machine control.
"Our programming tends to incorporate a lot of animated keys leading from one element to another, and as a result we will really depend on our Omega Decks," said Tom Sahara, Senior Director of Remote Operations and Information Technology at Turner Sports. "They have been easy to set up, they work, and we can count on them to perform reliably, which is especially important with the number of games we'll be covering."
In addition to the new football package, Turner Sports will continue to use its Omega Decks for NBA coverage, Braves games, and Thrashers hockey over the course of the year.
"Using the Omega Deck, we've gotten a rack of equipment down to a few units," said Sahara. "The small size is great, and we can still load up everything we need. The Omegas can accommodate not only the graphics for one sport, but for two. When we get to a game site, we simply call up the clips we need. It's very easy."
The Omega Deck features the familiar controls, inputs, and outputs of standard analog tape decks while providing clean digital video and non-linear random access. Enhanced networking and playback functions give operators greater control in a variety of environments and configurations, making it easy to implement the Omega Deck in a broad range of broadcast applications.
In addition to Ethernet networking and chase lock, the Omega Deck features a convenient LCD touch-screen menu and front-panel control over compression levels, recording options, playback looping, genlock timing, and playlist creation, as well as dynamic tracking, slow motion, instant cueing, and jog/shuttle functions. The Omega Deck features component and composite video input/output, switchable component and RGB outputs for NTSC and PAL, Motion-JPEG compression ratios as low as 2:1, and data storage in industry-standard CCIR-601 4:2:2 digital format, regardless of input type (analog or digital). The Omega Deck features RS-422 machine control on Sony/SMPTE protocol with Odetics Broadcast extensions, as well as SMPTE/EBU longitudinal time code (LTC).
The Omega Deck is available from Fast Forward Video's worldwide network of distributors.
# # #
About Fast Forward Video
Fast Forward Video, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets digital video recorders and time-code systems for professional broadcast, presentation, industrial, and military applications worldwide. Founded in 1985, the company was the first to incorporate digital computer technology, including random access disk storage and data compression capabilities, into professional video products. Today the company provides video technology solutions into a wide range of applications in broadcast, presentation, security, and graphics and animation markets. Additional information is available at http://www.ffv.com/.