Manchester United scores with Pharos Playtime

Manchester United Television, one of the world's most innovative sports television channels, has chosen Pharos Playtime as the core of a new state-of-the art technical gallery and transmission suite.
The £500,000 development enables the network to deploy automated transmission directly from Old Trafford. Pharos Playtime allows MUTV to create dynamic presentation effects without need for external postproduction facilities. Traditional broadcast control systems rely on a video event playlist as their timing reference. Playtime creates a package with independent tracks for each event sequence. Individual tracks are displayed on the Playtime control screen as separate timelines, typically representing main video, backup video, discrete voice-over languages, GPIs, mix/effects, logo and subtitles.
MUTV's Managing Director Peter Brookes commented: "The ability to control all our own output from our new transmission suite and technical facilities means we can be much more flexible and offer viewers even greater value for money. Nobody gets more exclusive interviews with Sir Alex and the United squad than MUTV - and these are now going to air within minutes of being recorded. In addition there'll be a new late-night talk show, more match analysis and the usual menu of player phone-ins, live Reserve games, Academy matches, new features and documentaries...plus, of course, the full 90 minutes of every United first team game."
Colin Renwick, MUTV Chief Engineer, added: "We chose the Pharos system for its operational versatility. Things change very quickly in live sports coverage. We needed the ability to make major changes to our schedule at very short notice. Playtime enables us to do that quickly and efficiently. It has allowed us to expand the station's output, going on air for the 2005/6 season with a new daily schedule from 2 pm, three hours earlier than before.
"Playtime is controlled from our MCR and keeps the engineering supervisor in close co-ordination with our schedulers. The GUI is very user-friendly and easy to learn, which is important both for initial staff training and for stress-free day-to-day operation. It also allows us to migrate gradually from tape-based operation to a hybrid of tape and hard-disk server playout. We have a massive archive of sports programming and our long-term aim is to migrate this to long-lasting optical disc. Playtime delivers that open-ended flexibility."
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