Barco makes it big on the small screen
ITN, suppliers of Channel 4 news, have chosen the Barco Rear Projection units for its latest news studio upgrade.
Barco, having already supplied the Master Control Room at Channel 4 with excellent results, seemed the right choice for the new studio.The 3 x 2 67” XGA seamless cubes were installed in just one day to fit in with the tight schedules and were live on air on Saturday 18th December 2004. While it was not expected that the cubes would be available so quickly, such was the ease of installation and first time quality of image that ITN insisted on their use that very day. The 3rd January saw the official go-live with the complete new studio look.
Chosen for their clarity, and high resolution they can be seen on television now and Channel 4 are delighted with the result. Gay Flashman, Managing Editor, Channel 4 News stated “We had already seen Barco's work at the London Stock Exchange and were very impressed. Despite tight deadlines Barco’s team managed to deliver a great product smoothly and efficiently that looks fantastic on screen. We are very pleased with the result".
The high resolution rear-projection modules support 3200K colour temperature to match with the studio lighting, provide excellent on-camera performance and offer wide viewing angles for maximum flexibility of camera positions. The high quality projection modules incorporate dual lamp with hot stand-by capability and are based on the latest DLP TM technology. The Dual Lamp allows an automatic lamp change over within a quarter of a second when necessary. The units currently operate at 6500K and the seamless screens (less than 0.2mm mullion) provide an overall display area of 4.1 x 2.0 meters.
ITN is one of the largest news organisations in the world, producing news and factual programmes for television, radio and new media platforms, both in Britain and overseas.
ITN, founded in 1955, is celebrating its 50th year this year. It began as an independent organisation owned by ITV companies producing news programmes for national broadcast on ITV. Today ITN produces not only news programmes for ITV1, but also for Channel 4, as well as news for over 260 commercial radio stations through Independent Radio News (IRN). ITN also produces the ITV News Channel, the 24-hour news service available on digital satellite, cable and Freeview.
Channel 4 is like no other media organisation – commercially funded with a public service remit to foster creativity, diversity and innovation in its programmes and services at no cost to tax-payers or licence fee-payers. This combination of cultural and commercial objectives has created one of the world’s most distinctive and admired television channels; the UK’s leading independent film company and one of the most enduring and potent media brands.
Channel 4’s dedication to innovative and quality content and equipment attracts to the core channel a discerning audience of particular appeal to advertisers. This audience regards Channel 4 as its channel, and is also the audience that is most likely to adopt digital television, the internet and interactive services, so that Channel 4 is well placed among UK media companies to take advantage of these new media platforms.
Simon Turtle, Business Development Manager – Barco, “We are extremely pleased to have again worked with both Channel 4 and ITN in facilitating this high profile application. Thanks to a close working relationship and our flexible approach we were able to deliver the solution with minimal lead time to meet and even exceed the ‘go live’ requirements.”
Simon Turtle continued “The use of Barco’s proven DLP projection solution designed specifically for high utilisation, content rich and performance critical applications such as ‘back drop’ displays has yet again provided a truly exceptional visualisation solution”
About Barco
Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company (Euronext: BAR; Reuters: BARBt.BR; Bloomberg: BAR BB).
