Pharos Almanac and Pilot chosen by CNBC Europe

CNBC Europe have chosen a Pharos Almanac event switcher and Pilot reactive controller to enable remote routing and systems operation from their Fleet Place headquarters in the City of London.
Located in CNBC Europe's master control room, Pilot allows an almost unlimited range of equipment to be supervised and operated via a user-programmable touchscreen display. Pilot itself can be driven manually or used to pre-assign event times. It provides full reactive real-time remote control of CNBC Europe's BTS Jupiter 128 x 128 digital router in addition to controlling four of the station's master VTRs.
CNBC Europe have a network of satellite and 6 Mbit/s ATM optical fibre feeds including six to and from London's British Telecom Tower, a Worldcom feed to Sky, three USA feeds and others connecting with major European cities and with Singapore. Pilot enables these sources and outputs to be supervised as well as providing remote control of
cameras located at subsidiary studios in Brussels, Frankfurt, Milan, Oxford and Paris. Pilot is used for initial camera dial-up as well as remote control of focus, zoom ratio, pan and tilt angle.
CNBC Europe's Director of Operations, John Turner, explained: "The front-end of the PC-based Pharos system in our MCR is a 15 inch TFT touchscreen. We can set up a new event simply by typing in the required source, the destination and the time it is required to occur.
We chose Pilot for its cost-efficiency, its exceptionally flexible interfacing and Pharos' speed of implementation. It has proved highly reliable. We particularly appreciate the freedom to construct our own interface graphics as we expand our equipment."
(GB)