ALTERED IMAGES BRING TURNER BROADCASTING ON-LINE

ALTERED Images, the fast growing London-based digital broadcast equipment resellers, have recently completed a major contract which is the company’s largest single project to date.
The project entailed the supply and installation of equipment for the recently opened Great Marlborough Street, London W1 base of Turner Broadcasting, an AOL Time Warner company.
The original enquiry from Jonathan Lukes, Turner’s Senior Director Production and Channel Management, was for Altered Images to supply two new Avid Symphony’s for Turner’s new London offices, following the company’s move from Soho Square to Great Marlborough Street early last year. The new equipment was needed to make trails, stings, inserts and promotional clips to run on Turner’s various European TV channels, which include Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
Following his initial discussions with Altered Images Sales Manager David Dowling, Lukes’s requirements for the project grew in scope, as Dowling recalled: “First, Jonathan decided that the new 'post’ system had to encompass all Turner’s existing on-line equipment, which meant us putting in a new connecting network. Also, besides supplying the two Avid Symphony’s, he wanted us to update their two existing MC1000 Avid on-line editing systems, to the latest Meridian board set specification, and to update an equivalent system at CNN’s studios, also in Soho.”
As part of the original scope of the project, Altered Images were also asked to build a new machine room for Great Marlborough Street, so the new hardware could be shared between the different editing suites, and to integrate the support system for the new Avid units and the existing HAL and Flame systems.
The new machine room features ten equipment racks, Leitch SDI, video, analogue and AES audio and RS422 matrices, six duplication bays with a Dwight-Cavendish controller, and engineering monitoring from electronic visuals. Altered Images designed the installation, in conjunction with Turner Broadcasting’s consultant David Ellis.
The two new Avid units at Great Marlborough Street were working from October 2000, and the total system was operational from January. (CD)