An outline of the progress of Just Fabulous TV and its high definition TV complex in London.

1. , ,, ,
TVBEUROPE HD EUROPE
Just FabulousTV commits to HO complex
By Chris Forrester
The East End of London has
never been fashionable, but over
the past year or two it has devel-
oping into a centre of broadcast-
ing excellence. For example, a
nondescript factory site just
South of the River Thames pro-
vides the sound stages for some
of Kudos Productions' top-
flights drama productions such
as Hustle and Spooks.
Across the old factory court-
yard, now renamed the Tower
Bridge Business Complex, you'll
find Just Fabulous TV putting the
finishing touches on a four-studio
HDTV-equipped complex in
readiness for 24-hour transmission
of its new TV channel. currently
previewing on Sky's EPG at 372.
"That, we hope, will soon
change," says MD Dowshan
content that isn't football or sport
or imported American material.
We believe our quality British
content could give Sky and its
viewers a different dimension. "
Just Fabulous TV is an
unashamed full-service network,
with documentaries, drama, com-
edy, current affairs and what
Humzah's team stress as "cutting-
edge" shows covering music,
dance, sport, motoring and more.
Some material will be acquired,
but much will be produced locally.
To help, JFTV is equipping two
audience-friendly studios (one
with retractable seating for 130,
the other accommodating 98),
plus blue-screen and green-screen
studios, backed up with 11 edit
suites, master control and tape-
I;] Continued on page 23
Humzah, who says JFTV wants
to be on the 'general entertain-
ment' section of the EPG, and
not seen as a purely music station.
Humzah comes to pure broad-
casting from his position as cable
company NTL's director/strategy
& planning and earlier experience
with players like Proctor &
Humzah says HDTV is key
to their commercial plans. "All
our shooting is in HD today and
this helps fulfil our strategy.
Obviously we will be transmitting
in standard definition initially but
as the high-def audience grows
we'd hope to migrate to a full high
def service, at least on Sky. But
"The physical investment in these new studios is
very real and we are working all-day shifts to
get everything finalised in the next few weeks"
Gamble, Hugo Boss and Orange.
"The physical investment in these
new studios is very real and we
are working all day shifts to get _
everything finalised within the
next few weeks. At the moment
we're using third-party suppliers
for all these elements."
also having the fully HDTV
equipped facility allows us to rent
out studio space to third parties
during our own downtime. We are
talking to Sky about the opportu-
nity this presents and stressing to
them that they have on their
doorstep British-produced HD
Rap star Lupe Fiasco, being interviewed
for JFTV's In The Mix show
..................................................................................................................................................
Polish sports lead with Piero
Red Bee Media announced at MIP-
COM that it has sold its Piero sports
technology to Polish broadcaster ITI
Neovision for the nsportchannel. Piero
enables viewers to see 'play' from angles
that are not captured by cameras
"There was a lot of interest in
Piero at IBC and I'm delighted that
we have been able to announce
another sale so soon after the event.
IT! Neovision will be the sixth broad-
caster this year to adopt the system to
make the most of its sports coverage,"
said Andy Townsend, design systems
manager at Red Bee Media.
Red Bee Media developed Piero
from a BBC Research and
Development 'proof of concept' in
HDbest Observe'd
through glass collaboration with BBC Outside
Broadcasts for BBC Sport. Earlier
this year Piero was also adopted by
SkyItalla, Hong Kong Cable and TV
Globo in Brazil in time for the World
Cup and later ITV in the UK for its
UEFA Champions League coverage.
The Piero technology places pic-
tures of real players into a virtual sta-
dium, where it is possible to view and
analyse play from different angles in
animated sequences. It is the only
technology of its kind with a transi-
tion between original footage and a
virtual stadium. Offside, forward
passing and other offences can be
seen from the best angle for analysis
www.redbeemedia.com
=Continued from page 14
with a niche router manufacturer
because routers are such a spe-
cialised area. It uses Leitch HD
Glue and fibre channels and Evertz
up and cross converters.
In the separate audio area it has
Dolby E 5.1 surround sound, a 2 x
64 bi-directional Madi interface,
and a "fully-loaded" 480-input
Studer Vista 8 audio mixer, which
seems to have become the standard
choice for OBs recently. "We had
ordered a Calrec, but then we saw
this and loved it" - particularly its
Making the conne~tion: HD1's input ports
ergonomic layout and its excellent
EQ. It has so many channels
because a light entertainment show
easily uses 100 channels and each
EVS has six channels, as do any
soundfield microphones and every
5.1 mix. Even a rugby match can use
up 120 channels. There is also full
5.1 monitoring in the main gallery.
www.observe.ie
Alacrity in Egypt
After a rigorous tender process the
ERTU in Egypt has awarded a con-
tract to Gee Broadcast Systems for
eight Alacrity Editors and two
Geevs servers. The AJacrity MR
offers multi-resolution support and
allows the editing of mixed format
material in the same project.
The edit suites, configured with
support for MXF and Sony XDCam,
also provide fast editing with shared
material and projects The Lightworks
console provides an efficient user
interface and facilities are also pro-
vided for voice-over.
Each Alacrity editor is based on
a Dual processor dual core work-
station and has the Inscriber
Titlemotion CG and Combustion
effects software installed. Using the
Sharknet Gigabit networking allows
each pair of Alacrity editors to share
their own storage and that of a cen-
tral NAS store. Archiving facilities
are provided with the NAS store.
The Geevs SD servers will be con-
nected to the AJacrity editing system.
by the Sharknet network to provide
easy sharing of material. The servers
provide ingest and playout facilities to
compliment the editing suites
www.geebroadcast.co.uk
www.tvbeurope.com NOVEMBER 200620

2. TVBEUROPE HO EUROPE
Just Fabulous TV
commits to HD
OTT households
set to surge
Current forecasts from predict
that the worldwide digital
terrestrial TV market will
grow signficantly over the next
five years, from an estimated
37 million households in 2006,
to a forecast 131 million house-
holds by the end of 2011.
Primarily driven by DTT
uptake in Western European
countries, the EM EA region
has experienced the most suc-
cess in DTT adoption, and is
expected to comprise nearly
62% of worldwide DTT house-
holds by 2011, according to
[MS Research.
According to analyst Mark
Meza, "The success of DTT in
Europe is due in large part to
government and industry ini-
tiatives, a growing selection of
content, and increasingly
affordable set-top boxes. This
success has created an opportu-
nity for value-added paid DTT
services, such as Top Up TV in
the UK. Paid DTT services
have a distinct advantage in
markets where a free DTT serv-
ice has been successful."
Meza continued, "Stand-
alone pay DTT services face
greater challenges in establish-
ing subscribers, often due to
limited content offerings and
pricing that is not competitive
with other pay TV options. An
example of this is the difficulty
faced by USDTV, which recently
filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
after securing only about
10,000 subscribers in three
years of operation, as well as
early launches of pay-DTT in
the UK." With the continued
growth expected for DTT
worldwide over the next five
years, IMS Research predicts
an accompanying rise in value-
added pay-DTT offerings.
www.imsresearch.com
www.tvbeurope.com NO V EMBE R 2006
"We recognise that producing content is significantly more expensive than
acquiring material but we hope that our plans to exploit our assets over
multiple platforms and overseas makes the investment worthwhile"
exploit our assets over multiple
platforms as well as the potential
sale value overseas makes the
investment worthwhile. Our
vision is to take our content and
be a Number One platform. We
like to think we are stylish and
savvy. In addition to our own pro-
duced material we are acquiring
movies, documentaries, comedies
=Continued (rom page 20
less playout. Arqiva is handling
terrestrial distribution and satel-
lite uplinking.
Humzah says he is not just
targeting the ratings enjoyed by r----------------------------------------------------
the likes of MTV "We've been
working here for some nine
months, quietly preparing for
launch. We look at [UK chan-
nels] Channel Four, Channel 5
and channels like Bravo and
Trouble and we can see that they
all have good American content.
The only way to beat this is to
have great British content for our
target audience.
"We recognise that producing
content is significantly more
expensive than acquiring material
but we hope that our plans to
and even a soap that we believe
fits in with our overall strategy.
However our own produced
material is also available for sale
to third parties. "
JFTV, says Humzah, is much
more than just about ratings.
however. He says the station
has a duty to be socially aware,
and as such is closely in touch
with the local community.
"Consequently we are develop-
ing close relations with the
London Mayor's Office, the
Police and other leading com-
munity organisations."
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