GlobeCast invests €2million in upgrades for HD delivery of UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League

Partnership with Satlink enables maximum geographic reach

Paris, 11 September 2009: GlobeCast has renewed and significantly expanded its contract with UEFA in a deal to provide HD coverage of the UEFA Champions League and HD and SD coverage of the UEFA Europa League to non-European rights holders. As a result, GlobeCast has made a significant investment of more than €2million in HD upgrades for its two UK sites, making it one of the most HD capable ad hoc service providers in the world.

For the UEFA Champions League, GlobeCast has partnered with Israeli-based Satlink to deliver all games of Europe’s most prestigious football competition in HD to 26 territories across the Americas and Asia each night of the competition which runs from mid August to May.

Up to eight games per night will be downlinked in HD from the Eutelsat W2A and Eutelsat W3A satellites using a wide range of new Tandberg RX 1290 receivers across both sites. In order to fulfil such a large capacity requirement, each feed will then be compressed, using new Tandberg E 5782 encoders, into four multiplexes of two 31Mbt HD channels – to fit within 36Mhz satellite transponder slots. English commentary mixes will also be added to all games via ISDN.

For broadcast across the Americas, GlobeCast will convert all eight games using new state of the art Snell & Wilcox Alchemist frame-rate converters. Each feed will then be uplinked out of Brookman’s Park to two Intelsat satellites for downlink by rightsholders.

For Asia, Africa and the Middle East, two feeds will be uplinked out of Brookman’s Park to the IS904 satellite and the other six out of Satlink in Israel to the Asiasat 2 satellite for downlink by rightsholders across the region.

Similarly for the UEFA Europa League, GlobeCast and Satlink will provide downlink, capacity and uplink services in SD for the early stages and the same in HD for the later stages of the competition.

GlobeCast has worked with UEFA for the delivery of the UEFA Champions League into Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas since 1997.

GlobeCast (www.globecast.com): a subsidiary of France Telecom, operates a secure global satellite and fibre network to manage and transport 10 million hours of video and other rich media each year. Top-tier broadcasters and content providers of all sizes turn to GlobeCast for ingest, aggregation, transmission and repurposing of content for delivery to direct-to-home satellite platforms; cable, IPTV, mobile and broadband headends, as well as corporate and digital signage networks. GlobeCast’s fleet of SNG trucks deploys globally to support coverage of the biggest news and sporting events each year in SD and HDTV formats. Borders are non-existent when it comes to GlobeCast’s services, thanks to the company’s 11 teleports and technical operations centres as well as its 17 offices in Europe, North and Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Vanessa Ching
Senior Manager, Marketing Communications – Asia

GlobeCast
600 North Bridge Road #13-02 Parkview Square
188778 Singapore

T : 65.6325.4222
F : 65.6227.9782

vanessa.ching {at} globecast(.)com
www.globecast.com