situp.tv installs Pharos Playtime

One of Britain's most successful interactive television broadcasters, situp.tv, has chosen the Pharos Playtime presentation control system for its innovative public-auction channel, price-drop.tv.
Six Pharos workstations have been installed, with playlists, off-line scheduling, databases, hardware panels and Pharos Control Platform (PCP) interfaces. Traditional broadcast control systems rely on a playlist of video events as their main timing reference. Pharos Playtime uses a package with independent tracks for each event sequence. Each track is displayed on the Playtime control screen as a separate timeline, typically representing main video, backup video, discrete voice-over languages, GPIs, mixer effects, logo and subtitles. Playtime enables individual schedulers to create dynamic and exciting presentation effects that could otherwise only be achieved using extensive post-production facilities.
sit-up.tv's Technical Manager, David Upton, said: "Pharos systems proved more exciting, more flexible and more open than other solutions we studied. Playtime will be used on both price-drop.tv and our 24/7 infomercial channel, Screenshop. Operational and engineering training was quite straightforward. We were particularly impressed by Pharos' responsive attitude to our requirements and their ability to handle our very tight timescale - two months from purchase decision to completion."
Launched last summer, price-drop.tv was the world's first broadcast auction channel in which the price continues falling until each group of products is sold. Watched by more than three million viewers every month, price-drop.tv and its companion channels - bid-up.tv and Screenshop - are broadcast from sit-up.tv's multi-million pound studios and call centre in West London.
All three channels are available in over 12 million homes in Britain via Freeview terrestrial digital television.
(GB)