Astel Weaves Christie Spyder Web Around TV8

Two Christie Spyder X20 processors are helping to optimise the displays in TV8 television's three new studios in Istanbul.
In the largest of these - which is used for news, sport, weather and discussions and other shows - five major PDP seamless plasma displays receive their feeds from the X20's.
Yilmaz Kayabas, Director of Technical Services, Astel Elektronik, the Christie territorial distributors who carried out the installation, said: "The Spyder X20's were chosen to meet the different resolution requirements as well as for multiple window management signal routing and scaling input channels."
With unmatched 20 megapixel video processing, matrix switching and integrated source monitoring the versatile X20 combines advanced video processing with the flexibility of a universal routing switcher.
At TV8, the first X20 is deployed to control Screens 1, 4 and 5. Six outputs of the Spyder drive the 54 tiles from which the giant display in Screen 1 is constructed; each output is configured to have a resolution of 1366 x 768 and drives 3 x 3 panels to provide a total screen resolution of 4098 x 2304. Meanwhile, the two remaining outputs on the X20 drive Screens 4 and 5 respectively, with a resolution of 1366 x 768.
The second X20 is assigned to Screens 2 and 3. Each is addressed by four outputs, configured with a 1366 x 768 resolution, to provide a total resolution of 2732 x 1536 for both screens.
Both hd-sdi and DVI-D signal sources are fed into the Christie processors, with the DVI signals transported with DVI-CAT6 extenders. Kayabas explained: "Thanks to the seamless switching and matrix capability of the X20, each input can be directed to any display portion. With the powerful scaling and multiple layers of Window management throughout the total pixel space, any source can be displayed in any portion of the giant screens."
The fact that the X20's integrated source monitoring enables simultaneous real-time, full frame-rate monitoring of all inputs were all vital features, which impressed the technical team, he confirmed.
Equally important were the 20 megapixel bandwidth to blend, window, mix and scale any source format before routing/distribution. Since the display format is different throughout each screen, scaling was another vitally important attribute. Astel's Technical Service Director summarised: "Window management is a key to success and in some cases TV8 use the X20 to mix layers, as well as using the transparency feature."
(KMcA)