Megahertz Broadcast complete BT International Media Centre

Megahertz Broadcast Systems has successfully completed the integration and technical installation of BT’s prestigious new International Media Centre, based at the BT Tower in London.
The new centre, which officially opened in April, routes and monitors broadcast TV signals on a global scale and acts as a hub for virtually every television company broadcasting in the UK. At any one time up to 3,000 services can be passing through the center, of which several hundred will need either the signal or the picture monitoring for quality. Should a transmission fault occur, it is reported to the International Media Centre where BT staff can identify the cause and immediately allocate engineers to solve the problem.
BT Broadcast’s Philip Ballabon, project manager in charge of the new centre, says: “This centre is effectively a shop window for BT, so it was imperative that it not only worked as an efficient routing hub, but also looked impressive to external television companies, who are BT’s clients. To this end we have incorporated a curved glass rear wall with meeting rooms, reception areas and offices behind it so that visitors can see the center in operation without disturbing our engineering staff.”
Although primarily commissioned to specify equipment and handle the technical integration, Megahertz director Steve Burgess worked closely with Ballabon and his external architects at the design stage to ensure that there were no unexpected problems when the equipment was installed.
“Steve is one of the most knowledgeable people in the broadcast business and, frankly, I couldn’t have done without him,” Ballabon says. “He put forward a number of ideas that helped us achieve a spectacular result – one that really generates a Wow factor amongst both visitors and staff.”
Steve Burgess adds: “We were very proud to have been chosen for this prestigious project. Its smooth progress to completion on time is testimony to the skills of the teams from both BT and Megahertz.”
Megahertz specified a wide range of equipment, including a CCC Networks "Freevision" Switch that remotes the PC's from the work areas; a Riedel Artist 128 port digital talkback system with ISDN interface, Radio Talkback interface, and analogue 4 wire interfaces; Videotek VTM-300 test equipment; an 8 cube Synelec display video wall; Zandar DX4 quad SDI multiviewers and Zandar Fusion 26 input SDI scaleable multivewers; Megahertz Audio Monitoring Units with input select and PPM; Kent Modular Electronics TFT screens; a Quartz 64x64 SDI matrix, 16x16 analogue matrix and 64x64 stereo analogue audio matrix; Snell & Wilcox glue equipment (DA's, Converters, Synchronisers, Logo Generator, etc); Megahertz custom written Alarm software; Courtyard SPG's and changeover; Wharton GPS clock system with digital displays; Leitch Analogue displays; a Bose speaker system throughout IMC; a Sony DFS-700AP Vision Mixer for the studio and BES Electronics custom made bargarphs.
(SP)