Leitch provides X75 video processing solution to Bow Tie Television for historic Live8 concert

Leitch Technology has announced that leading UK Outside Broadcast provider Bow Tie Television has purchased five X75 multiple path converter/synchronizers for their newly refurbished HD truck, which was recently used to broadcast the Live8 concert in Hyde Park, London.
Based in Kent in southern England, Bow Tie Television is an established UK-based HD Outside Broadcast facility with over two years of practical experience recording major events in Europe in HD. The company has been involved with televising Parliament from Westminster, and since 1995 it has been retained by Formula One Management to supply camera, engineering and other operational personnel for Grand Prix races at circuits around the world. In the autumn of 2004, Bow Tie Television won the contract to facilitate the Court TV pilot for BBC, ITN and Sky.
For the Live8 concert, Bow Tie Television's Unit 2 SD/HD truck was assigned to BBC Events to cover the production of this 19-camera event and their Unit 1 SD/HD truck to Creative Technology for the screen coverage. This involved a mammoth engineering challenge on the ground to set up the infrastructure, cable runs and routers to handle all the different live feeds.
"We have used Leitch equipment in our OB trucks for many years and were very excited about the new X75, particularly after hearing the positive reviews earlier in the year," said John Knopp, Managing Director, Bow Tie Television.
"The X75 delivered outstanding results at the Live8 concert. It was able to handle the different feeds from all the external sources, including an HD Radio Cam unseen by the engineers prior to the concert.
"The system also handled all feeds to and from the large on-stage screens where up/down conversion was essential for this part of the production. The compact size, fast operator control and automatic input selections made the X75 a perfect option for such a mission-critical production environment."
The uniquely versatile X75 combines SD to HD upgradeability with up/down/cross conversion, SD/HD frame sync and extensive video and audio processing capabilities all in a space-saving 1RU package, allowing broadcasters to do much more with less equipment. Video processing features include simultaneous up-conversion and down-conversion with aspect ratio conversion for hybrid standard- and high-definition facilities; level/colour proc amp control; optional 3D adaptive colour decoding with time base correction; and optional noise reduction.
The X75's 16 channels of internal audio processing include timing with video for lip sync corrections; level control; A/D and D/A conversion; embedded processing for both SDI and HD-SDI serial digital signals and integrated Dolby decompression.
(SP)