News and Updates

Broadcast Networks Helps Bring Bollywood Glamour To Asia’s Television Viewers

Winchester - June 2007: When the International Indian Film Academy brought three days of Bollywood glamour to Yorkshire during its annual Film Festival, broadcast solutions provider Broadcast Networks was on hand to help transmit all the action from its Awards ceremony back to television audiences in Asia.

The Winchester-based company’s Satellite Communications division was commissioned to handle the transmission by STAR, Asia’s premier satellite broadcaster.

The IIFA’s Awards, held in Leeds on June 9th, were the highlight of the Film Festival, which saw events taking place in various Yorkshire cities including Sheffield, Hull and Bradford and attracted more than 30,000 visitors to the area.

The Awards ceremony is the equivalent to the Oscars for the Indian Film industry and has been running since 2000. Each year it is held in a different venue and has previously visited London, Sun City, Johannesburg, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai and Amsterdam.

STAR filmed the Awards in Digibeta, then spent a week editing and preparing the programme for broadcast. Over the weekend of June 16th, Broadcast Networks provided a Satellite News Gathering (SNG) vehicle and all the necessary technical staff to transmit the finished programme from Leeds to Asia.

Tom Haye, managing director of Broadcast Networks, says: “The project involved linking up with two different satellites to bounce the signal from one side of the globe to the other. We began by uplinking to the Atlantic Bird One satellite, which is located high above the Atlantic Ocean. The signal was downloaded to an Earth Station in the Middle East, where it was turned around and sent to back into space to the AsiaSat Two satellite. From there, it was bounced down to a second Earth Station in Hong Kong for onward broadcast to the various STAR TV channels that were showing the programme around Asia. Throughout this process the signal was encrypted to guarantee security of content.”

Broadcast Networks carried out test transmissions prior to the main event to ensure that the satellite links were correctly in place. The actual broadcast was flawless and within seconds of the first uplink, STAR was receiving the programme at its Earth Station in Hong Kong.

Arif Shaikh, senior operations manager for STAR, says: “The IIFA Awards are a major event for our audiences and therefore it was important that we provided them with full coverage. We chose Broadcast Networks as our technical partner in the UK because they were able to offer all the facilities we needed for a reliable satellite transmission. The Broadcast Networks team were very helpful and responded promptly and positively to all our requests. We were delighted with the service they provided and with the smoothness of the operation.”

Launched in 1991 with five television channels, STAR has pioneered satellite television and redefined the viewing experience for millions by providing more people with more choice and setting new standards in content, production and variety.

Today STAR broadcasts over 60 services in nine languages and offers a comprehensive choice of entertainment, sports, movies, music, news and documentaries. It reaches more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries across Asia and is watched by approximately 100 million viewers every day.